I love the levels of my life.
I love the caring for my mom. Knowing that she knows someone cares about her. Someone kisses her goodnight each night. Someone touches her cheek and puts a face down to find her hidden dementia eyes and moves away the dementia til I can see her and she smiles. The things that aren't easiest to find are the things worth looking for.
I like so much the riding into the creek and the worry of training a new horse. I like that it is also levels. You expose them to so much and then comes the time to get onboard the beast and then you start just in your backyard and today I rode the youngest horse, my last little one, into the creek, in the water, and she was just fine. Because we took a bunch of time and exposure there, so she didn't care at all to be walking in water carrying a me, she trusted me. It helps that she's curious, and willing. I feel safe because I set it up to be safe. I have the old mare along with us. I only rode for a fraction of a second, just to set myself up for the next time. Just to get the feet wet and feel success. Next time we'll do a little bit more. Next year I'll be riding her in the creek all the time and barely remembering that we never used to do that. That is was at one time the scariest thing of all because of the sinky sand and the youthful horse, because it was new and who knew how it would go.
This year has been stung in the face by bees, heart attack b, evie searching for love and striking out always, nattan trying out chauffering, bess home from college but in groups of loud girls, no beach really, no trip to the fair, things changing.
But always caring for things, mom, the kids, the horses, my body, the new weirdness of reaching out to random people to try and make my Lewis and Clark show happen, realizing I am on THEIR trip, just like they were, I have to ask a bunch of people to help me so I can make it come true just like they did, and they certainly didn't know what they were doing. They were doing everything with a paper map drawn only by hearsay.
I like that none of us actually know what's going on. We sort of know. We THINK we know. We're going forward based on something we did yesterday, fragments of a plan we had when we were kids shaped into whatever ran us over as we were on our way. Lumping that in. Lumping in every disaster with every success, and maybe they're all the same thing for real. It got us here.
I feel scared that we are so fragile, little living beings on a rolling planet. I can feel the world moving and it is so hectic.
Today in the creek after the ride on young Jane, I got back on the old mare Mags and rode thru deep water and then up into the sandy woods and it was so silent in there it was like being inside Notre Dame. It was like being in Athena's Temple. It was silent like the pope's robes hanging in the closet.
We snaked through, on bare horse feet, taking nothing, but listening listening filling our hearts up with silence the most filling sound of all. You can hear everything in it.
Water and silence and horses and trying to do one hard thing every day. Many hard things. It chips away at you but eventually you become that greek statue with no arms but a perfectly tilted neck, humbled by the artist's chisel at your perfection.
They're making you just right.
