My brain is so frazzled, Lilly knows the words popsicle and trampoline and gestures for them, Barry fell off a ladder, everything's on fire -- Los Angeles is on fire! And we drove through the orange clouds with our throats hurting because Mommy had to look at horses down by Knott's Berry Farm. There's just - life just reaches a point where I can't make another a chicken sandwich before I do something that feeds my own heart. Yes, the kids feed my heart, the kids are my whole raison d'etre (that's french)but the horses... they stare at me quietly and they're furry. I needed it.
We drove to Los Alamitos Racetrack on Sunday morning at 8:30. It seemed far -- apparently there's a 605 freeway, and that's the auto parts section of the world. Too far to go and maintain sanity. And yet. We're going. The kids brought arts and crafts for the car, but there was so much smoke and various fires out the window, it was like being on fireman safari. They didn't crack a book. Plus they loved saying "ash" because it sounds so much like "ass." Six and eight, yep, farting noises and saying "ash," that's where it's at in the minivan right now, baby. The day started with Emma's new bunny biting her in the arm, and me thinking about sending said bunny out for a walk unescorted by Hank the huge hungry dog. But instead we fled to the barn.
Racetracks are skeevy. The word skeevy was invented by someone who had accidentally glimpsed life behind the scenes at the racetrack. Just walking INTO the racetrack made me feel poor, and indigent. Something about the low slung, dumpy buildings, the skinny, malnourished people who look like they dunk cigarettes in their coffee and eat them for breakfast, the haze of depression over the water-soggy, poo stained walkways. Maybe it was just too smokey out there. But there was a feeling a desperation -- of old guys clutching their tickets (and their young female grooms, until she quits or makes out with him), praying for this one horse to run fast enough to make all their dreams come true. It's that scent of lost money, the search for money. And all the Spanish. It's like nothing translates, and it's hot out there.
We met waifish Sophie, who helped us get in the gate with the aid of Trainer let's call him Yucky Adulterer, and then the kids and I, two on foot, one in backpack, followed her for it turns out an hour and a half (during which Emma decided she was already way too evolved to be hanging out behind racetracks). We walked around while she told me about her job, and introduced us to several horses and one goat which trampled Emma, and then we saw the biggest, gentlest dark brown horse. She led him out of a stall, and Emma and Nathan reached out to pet that silky nose, while Lilly shrieked and pointed, and that big old guy put his head down so low Emma wrapped both her arms around it and squeezed him. We gave him carrots, which he had never had in his life. He had been a racehorse, or was going to be one a year ago, but pulled some tendons and now just concentrated on getting fat and sitting in his stall making fun of all the other working horses that passed by. He had big brown eyes, and just stood and sucked in all the kid affection as they laid it on him. Think -- in prison your whole life, then one day, DONUTS. Everywhere.
We don't need a horse, was all I was thinking. Next to that horse, my kids looked small again, sweet, blonde, innocent, happy with the ice machine that they found nearby that had mounds of shaved ice, which they loaded into their t-shirts and ate. Nathan knew he couldn't pick things off the barn walls to take home with him, so he picked things out of the trash, like horse shoes and string, and stuffed his pockets, thrilled to be so close to so many wheelbarrows. Emma did the limbo under the horse's chin. Lilly stared at the goat with her computer brain working, literally amazed when it said "BAAAAA" so loudly and authentically. I could see it clicking in her brain, "I get it.... That's the BAAAAA animal. Finally. Wow."
We left, hot, exhausted, a hour and a half and three hungry kids later. Stopped at Carl's Jr for some bad food and root beer that turned the cranky minivan into a floating fairy ship of love and good will. The sky glowed a burning amber out our blurred windows as we hightailed it home, the baby chewing on chicken stars and singing "Happy Birddaytttoeewww" and the kids blew farts and said ash and laughed uproariously.
There's so much fire, sometimes you need that horse to slow you down, that huge, beautiful, lonely beast to lean his big head into your 6 year old baby, and rest.
