For as long as I can remember, my riding lessons have been filled with the order to, “Look up!” It isn’t that I find my hands particularly fascinating, but it’s just that when I concentrate on something, I tend to stare fixedly at it. My surroundings disappear, and it’s just me examining my fingers and begging them to stop moving so much. And that’s a problem.
There are obvious reasons this is an issue: I could run over someone or something, I could miss terribly at a jump, I could get off my line. But that’s not why I am writing this blog.
I am typing this (quietly) while my 4-month-old baby is asleep in his car seat. We just got back from getting his shots, and after the screams over the pain and unfairness of life, he finally fell asleep and I am not moving him.
I haven’t blogged in almost a year. It isn’t that anyone would have noticed, but more that I am in awe over how much has changed in that year.
I got pregnant.
I sold my one-star horse.
I got a new house (and moved the week I had the baby).
The greatest illusion in life might be that there is more time. Time to get things right.
As Americans we obsess over checklists and preparations for life events; we want to make sure things are right before we do things. I have friends that wanted to make a certain salary before proposing, or wanted to achieve a certain work milestone before getting their passport, or wanted to consistently place in the top three before investing in their dream destination event.
The thing about sitting on a really talented horse is that you begin to think that you are a really talented rider. And while sometimes that is the case, I think more often than not, riders are weakest where their horses are strongest. That is the nature of partnership, after all.
When I was bringing up my off-the-track Trance, a look at our results would have led to two conclusions about my riding:
This is my last day in my 20s. Is that a milestone? I always find thinking of age as an achievement to be bizarre, as the years come and go whether you actually do anything with your time or not.
Looking back on my 20s, and ahead to my 30s, I don’t really think much of my life strategy has changed. Perhaps that is a red flag of immaturity, but I always have and still do think the goal of life is to bust seams.
I have blogged before about owning my first mare, and how Khaleesi has been trial by fire as she is the most marish of any mare in the program. For the past year and a half, we have managed her hormones very well, and she has only had one heat cycle that snuck through. While hormones have not taken away the reasons she is nicknamed “The Black Dragon,” and I still tack her up with a helmet on, they have managed the physical issues associated with cycling that left her unwilling to work for days at a time.
I haven’t written in months, and to be honest, it has taken me months to want to write about something horse-related.
My last blog was in June and was about the loss of my own father. Shortly thereafter, a very close friend unexpectedly lost her father. When real tragedy strikes in life, the whole horse thing seems terribly unimportant.
My father gave me lots of things over the years, but it is what he didn’t give me that defines the woman I’ve become. My dad had a remarkable life, and he made it a priority to build my character and foster my independence from an early age.
Father’s Day, to me, is a time to appreciate how hard some men try to improve the lives of their children and to be there for their kids when they struggle with their own paths in life.
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