So Lucky

Just when I was thinking that things were going really well and that this summer was going to be a time when we really got things done in the yard and around the house, it all changed in an instant. 

Last Sunday, my husband, Mark, was mowing the back of our property. He was going up a small hill when the lawn tractor popped out of gear and started flying backwards. As he tried to stop it, the 800-pound tractor rolled – and he rolled with it twice. He’s alive. Miraculously, he has no broken bones, but he has some severe internal injuries.  After three hours in the operating room and days in the hospital, he’s home now recuperating. In about six weeks, he will probably have another surgery.

We are so lucky that he survived and that he didn’t break his pelvis or neck and that he is a healthy guy who is healing relatively quickly. My daughter and our friends have been incredible, and the trauma team at the Emergency Room and the surgeon were so skilled and fast. In times like that, it really makes an immeasurable difference when medical attention moves as fast as humanly possible.  Several times a day, Mark and I repeat to each other how lucky we are.

Both of us have been blessed by good health and no injuries for  many decades. Last summer at about this time,  I broke my arm and had surgery for my dislocated elbow, and Mark had Lyme Disease that affected his heart. We were barely outdoors at all for months. I've been really looking forward to this beautiful weather, but how we will enjoy it is going to be different from what we planned. So  I guess that this year too will be a time of quiet and healing.

Silk is 25!!

     It’s been quite a while since I have had time to write anything. We have spent the last month entertaining one set of guests after another in our home, and while it was really fun and lively, I am ready to step back and regroup.  The horses are happy that I am out in the pasture with them more now, grooming and cleaning up as the weather gets milder.  Everything is exploding with shades of green, and the girls are wandering around, sampling the little blades of new grass.

    We celebrated Silk’s 25^th birthday on Sunday, and my daughter and I sang her favorite song – “We love you in the morning and in the afternoon. We love you in the evening, underneath the moon. Skinneramerinkadinkydink, skinneramerinkado, we love you!” My daughter began singing that kids’ classic to her fifteen years ago, and Silk always perks up her ears and bobs her head when she hears it like she would like to sing along with us.

    I was listening to an interview this morning with poet Mark Nepo ,and he suggested looking at the first time when you had a sense of your own aliveness. I realized that for me, it was the first time that I rode a horse.  I was really young, only about 3 years old, but the emotional connection that I felt with the horse and the power of the animal combined with how gentle the horse was with me made me feel more alive than I had ever felt before. 

    Then, Nepo asked when was a time when you felt pulled away from that aliveness. I remember it came about ten years later, when my parents flatly refused to ever let me own my own horse.  My father was afraid of them, and my mother had other plans for whom she wanted me to be that did not include spending even more time at the barn.  So, I was pulled away from the beautiful creatures that made me feel most alive and sent off into the world to make something of myself that my parents approved of and understood more. It wasn’t until I had my own child that I allowed myself to have the joy of being with horses in my life again. 

     Silk touches that aliveness for me every day. The older my horse and I get, the stronger the connection becomes between our hearts.

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Catching Up

     

     I haven’t written anything for a while, but nobody has been hibernating around here. We’ve been cleaning and redecorating the nest, preparing for a guest from Japan who is an exchange student at my daughter’s school. And in the midst of all the painting and carpeting and scrubbing, the barn flooded big time last week.  Now, our fifteen-year old visitor has safely arrived, just in time for a late season snowfall.  Having a person from across the world living in our home for almost three weeks is giving me an interesting new perspective on what we do and why we do it.

     First, I can see that my life revolves around our animals. You probably are thinking, right, Vic, no duh! Stella, the crazy puppy, is front and center most of the time. Fortunately, our Japanese guest loves her and the horses and the cat, who all compete for my attention constantly. The snow we had this week was topped by a good layer of ice and then a heavy dose of rain, so I am anxiously rushing outside, digging drainage ditches and hoping that the barn won’t flood again as everything melts. Between driving the girls to activities at school, playing tour guide and mom to our guest and keep up the usual routine of mucking, feeding and exercising, I am running non-stop.  I’m sure it’s a big contrast to the way that our new Japanese friend’s mother lives her life.  And face it, it’s quite different from the way that most of my daughter’s friends’ moms act around here.  Putting a magnifying glass on myself, I see clearly how much extra energy and time I spend each day just caring for all these critters.

    I also am aware of how when something goes wrong or is unpleasant to do, our family ethic is “don’t complain, just get ‘er done”.  I am pleased that my daughter has adopted this attitude recently without any typical teenager attempts to dodge the work or moan and groan about how tough her life is. She is also learning how to juggle her own busy schedule at school with her responsibilities as a host to her new friend. They have all kinds of special activities and meetings to attend, and she is very protective that no one offends our guest.  Since she will be going to Japan herself this summer for a month, it is giving her a good viewpoint of how it feels to be a stranger traveling alone in a foreign land. I am seeing her grow up and become more adult and more confident each day, and I am delighted.

     At the same time, I also realize that since the frightening events here in Sandy Hook last December, there is a shadow of fear and dread that passes over me each time I watch the kids get on the bus in the morning.  I am very aware that the families who lost loved ones are really struggling, and that as the reality sinks in and time passes, the grief gets stronger and harder to bear. Yesterday, we took our Japanese guest to a wonderful place that is a new healing arts center in town. A hardware store closed, and the big open space has been donated to creating a gallery for some amazing art that has been sent from all over the world in memory of Sandy Hook. There’s also a big stage full of drums, keyboards, guitars and other musical instruments that was given as a way to have performances and jam sessions. Art classes and drum circles and mediation and dance classes are offered for free.  I’ve also noticed that as I introduce our Japanese guest to the owners in stores around town, each one happily and immediately gives her a gift to take home. There is a spirit of kindness and openness that has visibly increased here.

   The horses are eager for our visitor’s attention. I have told her that her job at feeding time is to spoil them by giving them carrots. Siete is especially affectionate and calmer. She was very irritated last week when her stall flooded. The water came into the front of the barn, but luckily, the stalls are big enough that the horses were both able to stand and lie down on dry land in the back while we pumped out the water and filled in with bags and bags of wood pellets. Unlike her cranky child, Silk was very appreciative of  my husband and my efforts to make her home dry and cozy again. I don’t want to jinx it, but so far, there have been no more signs of water coming in, and the temperatures are cold enough that the melting is more gradual.

    I’ve been seeing photos on Facebook of flowers and warm sun where my friends live in other parts of the country. It does not look like Spring here at all. Snow is falling again as I write this, but we’ve got plenty to occupy us while we await the awakening of the green earth. My brave little daffodils are just outside the back door,  poking up from under the white blanket and setting a good example for me to carry on.

RIghting Wrongs

Both of my horses are incredibly bored right now, and Silk is especially cranky. We have lots of ice, more than a few inches of snow, water and mud in the corral and pasture, and there’s not really any more that I can do to make it easier to get around in there. Fortunately, both horses have the good sense not to run and try anything dangerous. Still, as they stand there, I feel like they expect me to “fix” it – make the ice and mud go away, make the grass grow.  I know that I’m just imposing my own frustrations on them when they actually are much more accepting of the mess than I am. Nonetheless, we’re not happy campers in the here and now.

Luckily for me, I can distract myself from the February blahs by reading a good book. I just got Linda Kohanov’s “The Power of the Herd”, and I am enjoying it immensely. It’s like sitting down with a very smart friend and opening up my mind to new historical information and insights into both horses and leadership. Who knew that George Washington was such a cool guy? And learning about the concept of “cathedral thinking” puts a whole new perspective on how one might regard one’s accomplishments. Kohanov really gave me an important series of “A-ha!” moments when I read “The Tao of Equus” many years ago, and I admire all of the ways that she has helped humans and horses get along better in the world. While I am only half-way through her new book, I did read something that set me thinking about how people misperceive horses’ “bad” behavior, and it made me aware that I am so much more in tune with Silk and Siete than I was when I first began caring for them.

Kohanov says: “Inexperienced equestrians often mistake a stress response for an attack, needlessly escalating the situation. Violently punishing a frightened or frustrated horse raises his blood pressure, accentuating the flight-or-fight response, causing him to act out more dramatically. Immature trainers also tend to hold grudges, treating the horse as innately stupid or arrogant. This hopelessly critical attitude, reinforced by defensive, mistrustful posturing, virtually guarantees that the rider will continue to misinterpret the horse’s behavior and overreact to perceived threats, resulting in greater confusion, fear, anger, and resentment- increasing the possibility of panic and injury in both “partners”.

Looking back on early experiences with both my horses, I recall several key instances when trainers responded to Silk and Siete’s behavior in this way.  I knew that they were mistaken, and I felt enormous frustration that I couldn’t find a teacher who would show me a better way to interact with my horses.  I quickly came to realize that I had to figure it out for myself since what I believed was so different from what most trainers were insisting was the ”right way” to do things. Linda Kohanov was like a beacon in the fog for me, letting me know that I wasn’t crazy or “wrong” in the way that I was relating to my girls.

I’ve also been thinking about how many of those harsh, grudge-holding trainers eventually came around to realizing that there were other less painful and more successful ways to handle horses.  As Henry Shukman, a writer and Bhuddhist philosopher, points out, “ Being wrong can, and often does, bring us closer to being right.”

Before I start to pat myself on the back for seeking out kinder, gentler ways to be part of my herd, I also need to stop and take a look at my own reaction after I have any of those “A-ha!” moments. Shukman also says, “We tend to cherish the new insight rather than notice the more important giving up of the old viewpoint. Perhaps this is the very mechanism by which we all but inevitably end up turning the new view into the next old one, which must in turn also be relinquished. And so our path goes on.”

Silk and Siete don’t harbor any resentments for the inconvenience that Mother Nature is causing them. Yesterday, in the moment of standing on ice, after eating all the hay that I gave her, Silk let me know that she was not happy about the situation. I get it that as Silk was pinning her ears the day before as a way of telling me “this sucks”, it wasn’t because she was blaming me.   This morning, she didn’t look out the stall door and get depressed that here was another day where the corral and the pasture were still in a dismal mess. She had let it go. Here I am, wishing that the weather report was different, getting frustrated that I can’t do anything to make life better faster, when maybe I should just trying being more like a horse.

It's V Day

"Some people wish each other love on Valentine’s Day. Some wish prosperity, health and wealth. I would wish all those onto all persons, but one more, the most critical. I would wish remembering.

Remembering that Love is not fancy, and thus to take care to adorn Love carefully, so as to not occlude its humble street origins… that Love does not stay alive by asking ‘how much’ but by ‘how well and how deeply?’"

Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The Moderate Voice (http://s.tt/1zLZv)
Read more at http://themoderatevoice.com/176215/a-valentine-for-the-world-the-lost-story/#fOppbERGcQouszyc.99 

26 Inches!!!

We woke up Saturday morning to 26 inches of snow.  It took my husband and me over an hour and a half to get to the barn to feed the horses. We were using his mighty new John Deere tractor with the world’s largest snow blower, but the drifts were shoulder high and the snow was so wet that it was hard to move it. All day, we plowed and shoveled and in the end, I must say we did a very nice job of clearing paths and runways so we can move through the white mountains.  Now, we are getting freezing rain, which is going to turn to plain old rain.

This is the recipe for true disaster around here. When we have a lot of snow and the rain can’t drain into the ditches, the barn floods.  So far, we are on the edge of the rain on the weather map. I honestly wish we would have more snow instead of the rain.  I’ve just mucked and fed and chopped up the icy patches, and it’s only 7:30 am, so I hope I’ve got a jump on it.  My friends in California are all checking in with wisecracks, but I was reading somewhere some quote about how you don’t know how strong you are until you  have no option but to be strong.  My right elbow and arm have held up through all the shoveling, although I was pretty sore on Saturday night.

Yesterday, on Sunday at the crack of dawn, my daughter and I had to go to New York City because she had a very important interview that she did not want to postpone. So, in the dark, we drove down unplowed roads to get to the 95 and brave our way to the closest open train station.  It took double the amount of time it would usually take, and I was loving our old Landcruiser with the four-wheel drive. I felt like it was some kind of dream. We got to Grand Central, walked to the interview, walked back and got on the train and were home in record time.  I was so happy to pull in the beautifully plowed driveway and see my horses standing in their little cleared off runway in the pasture eating hay and my puppy playing with my neighbor who had been babysitting her.

Stella is a riot in the snow. I need to shoot some video of her leaping in the deepest snow banks. She has no fear and as she gets buried over her head, she shoots straight up in the air and launches herself into the next deep spot. Boing, boing! She was loving it, and the best part is that it only takes about ten minutes for her to be completely exhausted. She sleeps on the couch for a few hours and then runs to the back door, ready to have at it for more playtime. It reminds me of how I was when I was a little kid and it snowed.

How many days until Spring?

All the Trees

I woke up at 2 am on Wednesday night to a fierce wind howling and the sound of cracking wood.  There were three loud pops, and I knew that trees or branches were falling near the barn.  I leaped out of bed and ran to the window, but it was pitch black out there. For the next two hours, I fidgeted in my bed, trying to talk myself out of going outside to see if the horses were safe. Then, at 4 am, the wind started wailing, and the windows of the house began shaking like they did during Hurricane Sandy. My daughter rushed into my room, and we agreed that it would be best to go down to the living room. There are several huge trees that could hit the house if they came down, and I was seriously considering taking child, dog and cat to the basement. My husband was out of town, as he often seems to be for these major weather dramas. Sometimes I think that Mother Nature consults his travel schedule before she decides to stir things up.

For the next two and a half hours, my daughter kept talking me out of going outside to see if the horses were okay. If she hadn’t been here, I probably would have been crazy enough to try to check on them. As soon as the sky began to lighten, I rushed to the windows to see what happened out back. There was a big tree down behind the pasture and several really large branches in the pasture, but the barn was fine. This morning, as I stood with Silk while she ate her breakfast and looked at the debris still scattered across our property, I felt such strong attachment to each of the magnificent trees that I live with every day.

I realized that I can distinctly remember the trees in each of the yards that I lived in since I was a child.  There were the elm and pear and crabapple trees I climbed in Illinois, and I can recall almost every detail of the landscape where I grew up. Then, there were the grapefruit and fig trees that delighted me in Los Angeles. And the five avocado trees I loved in San Diego. We lived in an old avocado grove, and it was heaven to reach out and pluck them off the twisted branches and throw them in a salad. And the huge whispering pines in Virginia that soothed me to sleep at night. There was a time, for sixteen years while I lived in New York City, where I lost contact with nature. I did walk in Central Park often as a way of calming down and centering myself, but my attention was focused on my career and seeing the world and riding on the edge of what was next.

There’s no doubt that Silk brought back a big piece of me that had been missing when I was lucky enough to find her sixteen years ago. By the time we left North County in San Diego, there were big ugly MacMansions planted on the crest above the ranch -- but in the beginning, I could ride her up the hill, past the eucalyptus tree where the red-tailed hawk had a nest of babies, and stare out at the Pacific Ocean.  Standing with my horse this morning, while she munched on her breakfast, I was reminded of all the beautiful views that I’ve seen thanks to the trails we’ve gone down together. I’m so lucky that she came into my life.