Seems like what I do when I have a crisis of feelings, I buy a horse.
I don't actually need another horse, or any more poop out there. The poop is the hardest part about having a horse in the city, you have to scoop and lug and battle dragging two ton trash cans on gravel roads for trash pick up.
But having the face there. On a daily basis. The little red face.
Sometimes when I'm changing my mom's diaper, and she's turned over in bed, and she's never mean, she never says anything but I'm sorry, and thank you
But sometimes I'm in the middle of my job with her and I have to go outside and I leave her on her side, she's safe, and I walk right out the door and I go to the horse fence and I stare at the horses. Because I feel sad or horrible or terrible for her and for me, and I take a break right in the middle and stand at the fence to look at horses. And they look up at me, the shape of their faces, the biggest eyes on any land animal, and those eyes are always gazing at me like you're okay pickle.
So I go back in and finish my mom work. And tonight I kissed her all over her face and pretended to bite her chest and arms like you would a baby and she was laughing so much. Her face all lit up. Love matters. Even if she doesn't know who I am. She knows she's loved and cherished. How is that not like the whole red carpet.
So there was this little red horse out near Emma in Colorado. I think I woulda rather had Emma come back and live in the living room and I could keep her in a glass case and only take her out when I needed her but instead she's having a good life, she's having a better than glass case life and I'll see her as soon as I can. In the meantime there is this little red headed horse, and she's one year old, and she could do some damage to our hearts, with her gentle face.
She's coming here.
I figure Meriwether is almost all used up, now that he's getting ridden a little bit and slowly learning what he'll be doing as an adult horse. As soon as I did the terrifying thing of sitting on him, my first baby horse that I ever raised, for the very first time, a few months ago, I sat on his back and felt suddenly like oh my GOD I can do this! Maybe I'm stupid I'm old and I don't want to break every single bone, but I am learning I can start from the ground up and make a decent, kind, easy family horse. So I immediately wanted to try again. I had lifetime enough to try one more time. But start at a yearling, so it's not so long til they're ready to work. By the time she's ready, in two years, to have a person on her back, Meriwether will be solid on the trail, and ready to have her come along. Dewey and Mags will be getting older and I will have yes too many horses, but what does that even mean. If the work is bringing me joy. I remember as a little kid all I wanted since I was three years old, according to my mom, was horses and babies.
Seems like all the good stuff in life does come with trash cans full of shit. It is not as clean as it looks on instagram. Life is alot of reckless hell. At times. Although these last four dementia years have been a treacherous muddy swamp of thick shit.
But I've had her face. My mom's face. That's the whole red carpet.
So I spent the first part of this year reading all about Bob Fosse because his life was funny and broken and his dance the same. Because my heart is funny and broken and my writing the same. And he called his daughter pickle, and he was a bad dad but he still got a pickle and I feel like a pickle most of the time and we will name this horse Jane, Calamity Jane Austen
but we will call her pickle
because we are all in one
and now it will have a face
a little red face with a white star
