As a child, drawn to motion, I studied the way Mom’s thin hand gripped a rag, gliding over glass until all of the windows were streak-free. That meant she was nervous. At the dinner table, when Dad raised his brows, glancing right, he wanted salt. When he looked left, he was tired.

Even when I was alone in my room, warm, full, and tucked in tight, I was restless, searching for motion. If I stretched up to peer out my window, I could see the farmer’s field behind our house; I could see the shapes of his horses there, two shadows steadily grazing. Sometimes they trotted, tunneling through the tall grass. This field hung on to its height while the other neighbors’ yards were trimmed and cut short, and it was as if the horses were hanging on to the last land left in the suburbs, planting their positions. Nightly, I looked out at them. Or perhaps they were looking in. Whatever the case, they moved, and when they moved, I whispered in a childlike prayer, I will have one.

When I wasn’t watching the live horses, I studied the posters pasted to my bedroom walls. I would put one ear against the creases, and if I tried hard enough, I could almost hear their hooves imprinting beaches, their bodies parting oceans. I imagined them kicking up and out of their frozen frames, breaking loose of the paper to tear across my white walls. Somewhere near the torn edges, I swore I could hear them breathing.

No one in my family knew of the way my windows and walls spoke to me. Many mornings I could recall each move the farmer’s horses had made in the field the night before, and I imagined them coming to me in a slow walk. Bring me in. But I told no one–I didn’t tell Mom that I knew how she was feeling just from the way she pulled the curling iron through the tail ends of her hair. Big curls meant she would be late. I didn’t tell Dad that when he pushed his quick hand across a legal pad, I knew his study was off limits. All I told them was that I wanted to ride horses. I wanted to move, to feel their rhythms, to live with them in a silent home, to crawl inside the blacks of their eyes.

Finding My Place
At 10 years old, I finally began riding. Soon I spent most days at the barns with my hair tucked up under a black velvet helmet, my legs poured into jeans and black chaps. At horse shows, I wore breeches, tall, custom, leather boots, and wool show jackets, even in the dog days of summer. In the barns, I found others who knew my world of moving, breathing walls.

There was my first teacher, Lee Ann, whose voice was strong, much like all of Lee Ann. And just when we thought she couldn’t get any stronger, she would smile and pick up a tree. There was Betty, the barn manager, whose body jerked in a quick limp when she walked the barn aisles, hurrying to the phone to order more sweet feed. There was Barb, an instructor who taught and moved so fast that her legs, covered with tight olive chaps, seemed to beat at the ground like drumsticks. Linda and Libby taught tough, talking through their teeth. Heels down. Sit straight. Thumbs up.

And there were the other riders: Matt, Chris, Lee, Amy, P.J., and my best friend Mel, to name a few. None of us went to the same schools, but all of us knew the feel of reins. Blisters became a part of our skin. Then calluses. We knew what it was like to pile in a hotel room, back late from a show day, only to wake up at 5 a.m. for more practice, carrying our saddles in one hand and our dry-cleaned show jackets in the other. We knew what it was like to catch a catnap, curled up on a tack trunk. In the hotels, we’d take turns at a quick shower, barely staying awake through a fast-food dinner. The next day, we would do it all again. We knew what it was like to be away for a long horse show weekend, to miss a day or two of school. And more importantly, no parents.

It was the riding, the moving meditation, that held us together, but Jimmy, our trainer, watched over us all. Everything about Jimmy was lean and loose. His eyes were a soft, see-through blue. He was cool, kind, and virtually silent. Hanging on his few words, following his moves, we all traveled to the big shows in the Midwest. Saddle sores grew on our calves, our seats, and the insides of our knees. Backs ached. Shoulders knotted up. At school, I often fell asleep at my desk.

Home from the shows, the riders mostly hung out in the barn lounge, surrounded by Jimmy’s show ribbons and dust. Even after we dusted, there was dust. We sat on orange vinyl cushions, and truly, our seats made dents in those chairs. It was there that P.J. held out his arm, showing off his spring break tan. That meant he’d had a good day at school. It was there that Matt called me “Shorty,” smoothing his lips with layers of Chapstick. That meant he was ready to go home. Chris and Lee battled each other at cards, their hands moving to play so fast, the numbers blurred. That meant the rest of us didn’t have a chance. And it was there that one of the boys reached his leg over to touch the toe of his boot to mine. That meant I didn’t have a chance.

In the barn lounge, at the round table, we fixed our “hat-heads,” we flirted, we zipped up our chaps, we fixed broken bootlaces, we cleaned tack, we poked at each other. And sometimes we were just there, silently sitting, buying time before Jimmy would stride by, slipping on his deerskin gloves. Truly, the gloves had more holes than skin. But when the gloves were on, that meant it was time to get our horses ready to ride. Now.

Back Again
I was tired. Damn tired. But the motion, the rhythm of the life, however erratic, allowed me to crawl into the world of the horses from my childhood walls, these riders joining me there, resting inside the photographs. But one by one, the other riders began to fade out and vanish–they went on to school, marriage, and children.

I grabbed at my horse. More than once, I hugged his neck. My parents put him up for sale when I, like the rest, began to fade, leaving behind the world of long aisles, leather, and sweat. But even as I vanished into the world of school, even as I heard that my horse got kicked, that his leg had shattered, that he had to be put down, I still imagined he would spring up out of some field and run back and forth down the fence lines. Come play with me.

I began taking long drives. Fast, long drives. I would drive just to be driving. I got tickets and didn’t care. I would aim for the holes and bumps when everyone else swerved. God, I missed jumping. I could stay awake and drive longer than anyone I knew. Gripping the wheel, I lived on speed and long hours. Strangely, it calmed me. And while I drove, I would see them fenced in on the sides of roads–random horses spying on me from their grass positions. I could see one squint and feel his rage. I could see one wide eye and feel the depths of her loneliness. When I stopped to touch one, a large nose pushed against my chest. Then the eyelids drew back. Feed me. Feed me.

Calling to me from the sides of roads, the horses brought me back, back to breaking ice out of water buckets, back to walking long aisles, back to showing and riding, and this time, to teaching.

And I found a new group of riders, now my students, who have joined me in the study of motion. And I found Dennis, my boss for three years, whose laugh was loud enough to shake the barn walls. He was cool and kind, and some days, when he wasn’t laughing, virtually silent. Like me, he had the hands of a horse trainer; those hands had seen some cold days. The hands grew because they had to. To hold up. The skin got cracked. Damn cracked.

Mornings, in the lounge, Dennis used to greet me with a slow “Howdy.” We might’ve talked about the weather, as if it were important, as if it were going to stop us. Hail or haze. One boot in front of the other.

We were quick, two trainers getting ready to ride. The horses did the speaking for us–they stomped hooves; they tossed heads. Daily, we began the swift brushing, picked out the hooves, put on the no-slip pad, the saddle pad, the wither pad. I could barely hear Dennis slide the saddle on his horse’s back. Fastened the girth. Tighter. Then came the bridles, the nosebands, the throatlatches. Then the leg wraps. Then the sound of the hooves hitting the ground as he led his horse to the ring.

I followed him there, and we rode in our own rhythms. While we cooled the horses down, we loosened the reins, letting them have their heads. If Dennis looked at me and nodded, his freckles moving when he smiled, that meant I rode the horse well. When he slipped on his deerskin gloves, it was time to get more horses ridden. Now.

From the movement of creatures beyond my windows and walls, from each long blade of grass that hangs on to its height, I have learned to hear tiny voices, voices that aren’t spoken, but ones that come from a blink, a limp, an ear pinned back, the restlessness of 25 horses pawing at stall floors, telling me that any minute now, we’ll have a hard rain.

Even when I am closing the barn for the night, when I turn out the lights, I can still make out the shadows of the horses shifting in their stalls. While I hear this shifting, I shut the barn doors. I shut the doors slowly. I’m tired. Damn tired. Even still, I stop to stare hard out into the field, breathing in to test the wind. When I breathe out, the horse breathes out, hard enough to make his lips quiver. As his eyes break into a squint, I swear I can see this one smile. Feed me. Feed me.