And this is how it started

It starts on a walk through the neighborhood. You bring along a bag of carrots to feed the horses that occupy a nearby lot and notice a connection. Daughter and horse. She should be a little afraid given their big feet and huge teeth, the aggressive way they bite and stomp when a new horse comes close, threatening to take the carrot she offers. But she doesn’t.

One day she inquired about ballet and tap and tae kwon do and you figured, maybe someday. And then she asks about riding a horse, and you think, I can see that. Together you read Black Beauty and talk about what it means to care for a horse. You buy more books that explain tack and hands-high, and she spends hours in a virtual world playing Let’s Ride Dreamer, but it’s not the same.

Then she spends a Saturday with her daddy, visiting some stables and asking about riding lessons. They form a connection with a trainer named Kate and want you to check out some of the stables too. Like Goldilocks choosing her lot, you find one stable too fancy, one too stinky and a third that feels just right. Kate’s place.

And so you sign her up.

But first you need the accessories. Like a dancer with the right shoes or a martial artist with the right gear, she needs stuff—helmet and boots and gloves. You take her to a tack store and a teenage equestrian, with years of riding experience, shows your daughter her choices. Two helmets. One that’s good. Another that’s better. Because this is your daughter’s head and not just anyone else’s head, you figure this is not the time to save twenty dollars. The boots with zippers make the cut and choosing the gloves is easy. Only one pair in the store is small enough.

On the first day of lessons, you take her to the stable and meet Kate. You knew about Kate’s condition, that she’s a paraplegic who was patching a barn roof in the middle of a storm and fell through. You immediately admire this woman who has not let adversity keep her from her passion and can’t think of a better role model for your young girl.

Then you see the massive beast your daughter is to ride. Where’s the pony? The gentle little guy who has to be bribed with food in order to trot? And then you see the way your daughter walks up and pets this huge animal, talks to Crissy and laughs as the horse nibbles at her helmet. You relax just a little and try not to think about the caveat someone offered you yesterday: She’s not a true horsewoman until she’s been stepped on, bitten, kicked and thrown. Please, not today, you think.

As she mounts the horse in the center of a sawdusty ring, you take your cue to step aside. Kate’s got this. You watch this orchestration: trainer and child and beast while they form a bond. You watch the little girl you sometimes consider obstinate and argumentative and hear Kate compliment her assertiveness and confidence and think, Well, yes. That’s another way to look at it.

Thoughts of dance recitals and martial arts competitions fade away to images of future riding shows. Of one day, your daughter spending time in a barn, mucking stalls and offering apples to her best friend instead of riding in cars with boys of questionable character. You watch a beautiful teenage girl at the barn one day, long legs tucked into tall boots, her hair in a sloppy ponytail as she washes down her horse. Her boyfriend stands nearby, holding a piece of tack, clearly taking a backseat to her true love.

You can see that. You can totally see that.

Fail to compete but find inspiration

My son is starting to write his own music. He's worked out the melodies of quite a few songs, but the lyrics seem to stump him. At seventeen, he's admitted that his pocketful of angst to draw from is pretty empty. (Thankfully, I suppose!)

This week, he sidled up to me in the kitchen while I was cooking dinner and said, "I thought I had a pretty cool song written, and then I listened to 'Ain't No Sunshine' by Bill Withers and decided mine sucked."

I told him I could relate. I just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett and felt the same way. I read her wonderful story and decided I needed to take up meter-reading or burger-flipping—some line of work where my woefully inadequate story-telling skills wouldn't be as apparent. Then, after some mutual ego-stroking, my son and I both decided that we don't have to try and compete with greatness--only aspire to it.

If you haven't read The Help, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy today. Just make sure you have nothing else planned for the next few days. You won't want to put it down. And if it’s been a while since you’ve listened to Mr. Withers, enjoy!

"The Way You Do (the Things You Do)"

Recent choir concert.

Jacob is the first soloist.

Visions of Halloweens Past

The year was 1997. The child: Benjamin. My sister bought him this suit and then I bought a back-up so one was always clean. He called me Meg and his dad, Zeus. He truly believed he was Hercules and demanded to be addressed as such. Even when I went to the grocery, Herc came along.

When Halloween rolled around, it was clear that he would wear the suit--whichever one happened to be clean. And in case you couldn't tell, he is showing off his "mus-kles."

Girls go fishing

When I was a kid, I spent many happy summers at my grandparents' house in northern Indiana. They lived on a small lake--big enough for fishing, too small for water skiing. Perfect for a kid to spend a week with her cousins.

You learned to be careful when you opened up a container of cottage cheese from the refrigerator at the lakes. Chances are it held red worms or nightcrawlers. Since those summers, I've never been good at fishing with anything more sophisticated. Artificial bait just doesn't seem quite authentic to me. Real girls use worms!

I logged so many hours fishing with my grandfather that, lying in the bunk at night, a red and white bobber floated behind my eyelids. The image was burned into my brain. By about the age of eight, I was filleting my own catches and Grandma would fry up fish for supper after dredging them through milk-and-egg then cornmeal. We always kept a slice of Wonder bread nearby in case stray bones became lodged in our throats.

This summer my six-year-old daughter caught the fishing bug and proved to be a capable fisherwoman. She caught this bass from the neighborhood pond and hauled it in herself.

The photo of me was taken the summer after I turned six but, given the size of her catch, my daughter is proving to be a better fisherwoman than I. (At least I was better at losing my teeth!) She still makes me take her fish off the hook, and I'm no where near letting her fillet her own catch, but I'm sure one day she will.

I know her Great Grandpa Wilson would have been so proud of her. I can hear him say, "Mia, that's a dandy!"

Why I exercise early in the morning before anyone else is up

I’m working out to Tae Bo on Saturday while my six-year-old daughter watches from the comfortable chair behind me, breakfast of milk and banana in hand.

She: She doesn’t look like his daughter.
Me: I’ve told you before, he adopted her. That’s why their skin colors are different.
She: No, she doesn’t look like she used to. Her hair’s curly in this video.
Me: It’s always curly, just sometimes she pulls it back.
She: So is this a new video or an old one?
Me: It’s one of the newer ones, I think.
She: Why is everyone wearing the same kind of outfit?
Me: It’s a boot camp video where they do military-type exercises so everyone has on camo.
She: What’s camo?
Me: (Saw this one coming) It’s short for camouflage. Like animals. Like lizards are green so they blend in with the grass.
She: I know what camouflage is.
Me: I thought so.
She: Why doesn’t that one girl have those stretchy things?
Me: She’s showing people who don’t use bands how they can still follow this video. Like me.
She: But you have weights.
Me: Yes, since I don’t have bands, I’m using weights.
She: Then why isn’t she using weights?
Me: I guess some people might not have bands or weights.
She: Why don’t you have on camo?
Me: Because I’m not in the video.
She: He’s saying ‘right arm up’ and that’s your left.
Me: I ignore him because it’s like looking in the mirror and everything’s reversed. Why don’t you get down here and work out with me?
She: I just like yoga.
Me: But this is good exercise.
She: Not without a mat.
Me: You can use your mat.
She: They’re not using them. Why do she and her dad have on belts?
Me: Those are for their battery packs.
She: Why do they have those?
Me: For their wireless microphones. He’s talking and she’s counting.
She: Why doesn’t everyone get a microphone?
Me: Because we don’t need to hear everyone as they’re counting.
She: I’d want to wear a microphone.
Me: (thinking: God help us all…)

My story has been wordled

I found a cool Web site: http://wordle.net/. You can enter your blog address, Web site or a selection of words. Then you press enter and this cool collage of word appears. I did this with a short story I recently completed. The result is pretty cool.



If you click on the image, you can see it larger and get directed to their site.