A Four-Legged Love

There were many things that happened, imagination-wise, after the 'emergence'. Perhaps one of the most significant- due to the fact that we lived next door to a family that owned two horses, one smaller reddish one and one larger white with grey spots- was that I started to ride a phantom horse everywhere I went in my mind.

My mother told me that I loved horses since before I even knew to CALL them horses. I would just point and point at them in books, and gravitate towards them in all things. She told me a story about looking out the window in the living room one day when I was walking to school, and watching me-- at the tender age of five or six-- walk up to the larger white horse without a trace of tepidation, which was staked out to graze alongside our driveway, and talk to it, reach up and pet its large velevety nose. She said her heart was in her throat, as she was moving out the door but I was already next to it, barely coming up to its knees in height, and she stared- completely amazed- as that big old horse just looked down on me and sniffed my hand and didn't move a muscle. After a few moments he just went back to grazing, letting me pet his neck and mane.



The neighbors noticed this infatuation pretty quickly, and one of the younger girls came out one afternoon, seeing me picking tufts of grass and holding it under the horse's mouth, watching those large, soft lips grasp at the tiny strands next to my delicate fingers, never biting me, always knowing where to stop... and she asked me if I wanted to ride him. I don't think I even said anything, just nodded with that glassy look in my eyes. She picked me up and put me across that broad, white back and tossed nonchalant advice at me that I never, ever forgot in all my horseback-riding days to follow. "Hang on with your legs!"

It wasn't like when I ask my son- bless his heart, for he is very intelligent in many ways- to please get me something from the kitchen and he goes in there three times, NOT finding it and eventually asks me to come help him, and the thing is right where I directed him it would be, just slightly underneath something else... No, it wasn't like that in the least. I KNEW what she meant, and did as she told me, as though some ancient knowledge rose up from the depths of my mind and reminded me- from lessons learned in some other lifetime- how to match the movement of a horse.

It was one of the few times in my young life that I felt like I was EXACTLY where I was supposed to be.

She paraded me around their yard for what felt like forever, and I stared down at the horse, watched its ears, fell in love with the feel of the movement underneath me, the subtle shifts of balance with every step, the push and pull of muscle beneath my legs. It was magic.

A horse became my close familiar after that, and every now and again, especially walking to or from school (which was only a quarter of a mile away) I conjured up the feeling of one underneath me, and at times became the horse myself. I taught myself how to run with a skip in my step that clapped my back foot against my front foot, giving me the third click that imitated the sound of a horse's cantering gate.

The noble and beautiful horse was my first true love, and would stick with me for the rest of my life. Even now, at the ripe age of thirty four, when I go for a walk and hit a particularly steep hill, I pull against it as though I were a horse digging in its hooves. When my son was little enough to carry on my back in a pack....yes, you guessed it. I was a horse going everywhere with a precious rider upon me. It's been a while since I did the hoofbeat skip. Perhaps I will give it a go down the Christmas tree aisle at work today, to see if I can still get that clippety clop going.