Nov
24
Next spring it’ll be two years since I started riding again. Two years, wow, you’d think I would have advanced pretty significantly by this point, but ha ha ha no! I mean I’m a better rider than I was, for sure, and now I know exactly how to put Little Joe’s blanket on instead of staring mouthbreathingly at the straps for 20 continuous minutes before attaching them incorrectly and also having the entire thing on backwards, but I’m still quite the beginner.
I only rode during a lesson when I started this new hobby. Eventually the situation evolved to me paying a set fee per month for access on my own to ride Joe twice a week, and that’s worked out just fine for me. Would I be improving faster with the expertise of a trainer? You bet. But am I riding exactly how I want each time, and more importantly, able to come and go as I please without having to coordinate with someone else’s (very busy and ever-changing) schedule? Yes, and that’s truly alleviated a lot of ongoing anxiety I was having about riding.
On Joe days, I come to the barn when I’m ready, and I do my Horse Chores: mucking out his stall, filling it with fresh bedding, filling his water, filling his hay bags, and setting out his feed. I frickin LOVE Horse Chores, let me tell you whut. Horse poop does not bother me one bit and I get so much satisfaction out of transforming his stall into a clean and refreshed environment.
Once I brought Dylan with me and as he shoveled next to me he said, “You know, this feels like real work.” I knew just what he meant: not real work in the sense that it’s hard (although it is, kinda! I set my fitness watch the minute I get there because you better believe I’m counting it as a workout) but like it means something. I don’t know why scooping out cat litter doesn’t feel this way even a little, but Horse Chores are deeply rewarding.
Then I groom him and tack him up and take him to one of the nearby arenas and ride as long as I want, which usually isn’t very long, maybe half an hour or so. If there is a particular thing I am working on, it’s finding stability and relative comfort in Joe’s trot, which has been charitably described by other people as “bouncy.” Imagine if a malfunctioning washing machine was also a horse, is how I’d describe it. I am sure I have a better seat during a trot than I used to, but there is MUCH room for improvement.
I do like riding, but my favorite parts of these days are less about being in the saddle and more about spending time with Joe, saying hi to all the other horses, handing out carrots, petting the barn cats, inhaling the cortisol-lowering combo of manure/wood/hay/horses/leather. I have no interest in competing in horse shows; the place where I go hosts a LOT of shows and it seems like that becomes the main driver for plenty of riders: the idea that you’re always working towards the next goal, which is an event of some kind. I am legitimately only there to soak up the horsey vibes and fuck around a little.
I feel like I’ve become a bit more clear-eyed about being around horses. I think you can watch too many cutesy horse videos and end up attributing too many traits to them that really aren’t there. It doesn’t feel like bonding with a dog or cat, it’s more like … an honor? Gahh that sounds so corny but it DOES feel that way, like it is a real privilege to be so close to such a big animal and to be allowed to touch it and pick at its feet and lead it around and put things on it and even clamber rudely onto its back, good god. They can be so gentle and patient, even if you are a buffoon who routinely tries to put on their harness upside down. They feel like a wild part of the earth that we humans are for some reason permitted to join, and together I get to feel a part of that wildness in me.
They are also nervous-nelly prey animals who can absolutely lose their shit over the most random things, which certainly keeps things interesting. I definitely believe in the stress-reducing benefits of horses but there probably aren’t too many other therapies where you can go from calm trauma-healing mindfulness to pants-shitting fear and/or injury/death in the blink of an eye.
All to say, it’s been a real gift to have Little Joe in my life over the last couple years. I could never have pictured this, re-embracing my inner horse girl at 50. It makes me feel lucky, it makes me feel hopeful, it makes me feel alive.
Nov
13
Well, it’s been a week. I mean it’s been a literal week since the Day After the Election and it’s been a week. It gets dark at, like, 3:30 now. Oregon weather looked at the news and said hey how about nonstop clouds and rain, that really seems like it’ll fit the vibe. My screen time notification actually tapped me on the shoulder and was like girl r u ok? I sat down to write this and I legitimately feel like that dotted-line emoji, like the inside of my head is mostly empty, just the sound of a heart monitor flatline echoing around with some dry-ass tumbleweeds or something, and so nothing I try to say sounds quite right but I am guessing plenty of you are with me. This has been a BUMMER.
Riley was home for the weekend. It was good to see him, this was the second visit since he moved to Portland and it was slightly less unnerving in the sense that I am getting a little bit used to him feeling like a … well, a guest? He seems to be doing well, staying busy with daily track team workouts and classes. He’s made a new friend group, he’s getting along with his roommate, he’s figured out the laundry. These are the broad strokes, anyway, which is all I get; if I’d secretly hoped our relationship would blossom via written communications the whomp-whomp reality is that he texts like a distant boyfriend who is about to dump your clingy ass.
We took him to the train station on Monday morning and it was appropriately gloomy and I should have planned more for the rest of the day because all I did was mope around wishing for do-overs. What I would give to hold that kid’s hand again, at some ideal age where he was big enough to really enjoy but not so big as to prefer his own interior world, and feel the gloriously roomy overlap of our respective Venn diagrams. But oh, there is no point in pining for impossible things.
I feel like this has been a season of uncomfortable and unwanted acceptance, over and over. Yes, the election happened the way it did. Yes, summer is long gone and even the best parts of fall and we have entered The Darkness. Yes, we’re down to one kid at home. Yes, I feel suspicious and sad/mad about half the country now and I don’t see any way out of that. Yes, I am lonely. Yes, I need to take steps to save my wellbeing and be of service and put the phone down more often because I cannot, cannot, cannot spend the next four years doomscrolling.
Surrender gets a bad rap; we think of it as weakness, a cowardly white flag. But I’m thinking of it as laying down arms in a battle that cannot be won, a fight against reality. A choice to stop resisting against what is. Giving up the idea of being able to control a certain outcome or time itself and letting myself breathe and look around at all the good things that are still here. Sweeping out the tumbleweeds and letting the light shine in to mix with the shadows.
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