What's New, Tiger Lily?

      

It’s a good year for the lilies. I am finding delight in the bursts of orange cheerfully appearing in random patches in our yard and along the country roads at this time of summer. The wild raspberries are soon to follow.

 This is not our usual 4^th of July. Last night, our 17-year old daughter flew across the world to Japan to begin a three-week adventure as one of five American kids chosen to be Junior Fellows by the Japan Society. It was a 14-hour flight, and I woke up about every two hours, marveling that she still has 8 more hours, six more, four more, two more before she lands. I thought about how long it takes to fly to Chicago or LA, and with each sleepless hour, it felt like she was going further and further away. Finally, at 4:30 am, she texted us to say that she had arrived and she loved us. Relieved, but wide awake, I got up to make a pot of coffee.

 I began thinking about love.  The lesson I learned earlier this summer was how deep and strong the love is between me and my husband. It took two summers in a row in which he almost died (Lyme Disease that went to his heart last year and the crazy tractor accident two months ago) for me to really get it deep in my bones that this is what real love is all about.  Now, in proudly watching my daughter bloom and leave the nest, I know that I will be getting another lesson in love. This one is about letting go.  As much as I already miss her, I know that she is ready to fly and I need to trust that she will always want to come home to tell us all about what she saw and what she did and what she learned.

Meanwhile, the horses are very happy that I am paying so much attention to them.

“To live in this world

                           you must be able

                           to do three things

                           to love what is mortal;

                           to hold it

                           against your bones knowing

                           your own life depends on it;

                           and, when the time comes to let it go,

                           to let it go.”

                           ––Mary Oliver

Beautifully Uneventful

This is a rare early Saturday morning moment when the sun is finally shining, the other people and animals are still sleeping in the house and I am drinking coffee while the cat snoozes on my lap. After spending weeks with my husband recuperating from his accident, waiting anxiously in hospital waiting rooms while stressful procedures were being done, after frightening phone calls that my daughter’s school is once again on lockdown due to some cruel hoax played by a stupid, insensitive person,   after days of torrential rain that once again flooded our barn, this simple normal activity of drinking coffee, listening to the birds chirp, feeling the summer breeze through the open window is a thing of great beauty.

So, I will simply wish you all the same enjoyment of life’s precious uneventful but oh so happy moments – have a wonderful time doing nothing!

Turkey Trot

 
 Yesterday around noon, the horses were enjoying the shade and fans in the barn on our first really hot, humid day of summer. I went out to give them a couple of flakes of hay for lunch, but only Siete stuck her head out of her stall to greet me.  When I looked in Silk’s stall, mama horse was standing in the cool darknes staring out the backdoor, absolutely mesmerized by something in my neighbor’s yard.

 
   There he was, the biggest, most magnificent Tom Turkey, surrounded by his harem of hens.  This fellow was huge, and showing off for his ladies. His tail was as beautiful as a peacock’s. I stood next to Silk for a while with my arm resting on her back, enjoying the show. The air was full of  turkey love, romantic gobbling and murmured sweetly clucked  nothings.   Inspired, I ran back into the house to get my camera .  I managed to get pretty close to Emperor Tom before he became protective of the hens and started to shoo them into the bushes.

     It made me think how similar this male turkey was to a stallion with his herd. I was motivated to do a little research and came up with some pretty interesting information.  Turkeys are known as “earth eagles” to Native Americans. They are associated with feminine energy and shared blessings, using the blessings of the earth for the greatest good of the flock. Female turkeys nest together in one big nest and share duties taking care of their young.

    About eight years ago, UC Berkeley scientist Alan Krakauer studied wild male turkeys mating rituals. He discovered that the males deferred to the dominant fellow and actually helped him mate with the females. It’s an evolutionary principle called “kin selection”. “Individuals may engage in altruism – behavior detrimental to their survival or reproduction – if the behavior increases the survival or reproductive output of their relatives." The dominant male preforms a classic strut – shuffling his feet and making a low drumming noise. "While the dominant male was strutting, however, the subordinate might continue to display, like a back-up singer, or even chase away other males that got too close," Krakauer said. When I see them from now on, I will imagine a Motown group like "The Temptations" or "Smokey Robinson and the Miracles". 

    The turkey parade continued this morning, while Stella went nuts barking at the windows. The ladies regally made their way across our front lawn, eating up all the ticks and insects that the herd of deer have been leaving behind all winter.  Soon they will be escorting their baby poults, or “lurkeys” as my neighbors call them, teaching them the Way of the Turkey that will be handed down to another generation.

   Ain’t Nature grand?

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.