Gifts my mother gave to me... A tape recorder. I told her I wanted to be a writer before I could actually write and she gave me a tape recorder to tell my stories to. A fur coat. Political incorrectness aside, she gave me the one thing I was certain she never would - and I still have it hanging in my closet today 40 years later - the perfect bunny fur coat. A white gown. I didn't want any of the dresses on any of the racks in any of the stores and so she made me a white, silky, simple, elegant gown to wear to the prom with my senior boyfriend when I was a finicky freshman. Hope. "This too shall pass", she always said and those words still roam inside my head... until things pass and they always do, just like she promised. A reason to change. Of all the things my mother has given me, she gave me a reason to try to grow myself into the kind of person she is. I may never come close to being anything like her, but I'll always aspire to be half as wonderful.
If I had just one word to describe her, what would it be?
I've thought long and hard to figure out that ONE word...
Honest.
Out of all the beautiful, marvelous, groundbreaking, accomplishments my incredible mother has achieved in her 80 year existence, I have to admit that nothing is more stunning then her pure, innate, steadfast honesty. She is my go to person, my touchstone, my past, present and welcoming future She is my dearest friend, my lifeboat, life coach and butter-rum life saver She is fish Friday and band-aids She is John Denver music on a Sunday morning She is a County Squire and Autumn leaves She is brussel sprouts and home made quilts She is candle light and campgrounds She is the original "Material Girl", but never materialistic She is ahead of her time, every moment of her precious and much admired life She is Mary Tyler Moore meets Shirley Partridge She is licorice bits and sewing kits She is blue lakes and baking cakes She's must go meals and high heels She's mugs of tea and home to me She is planet earth and the stars above She is everything in this world I love
Happy 80th Birthday to my beautiful mother; a perfect, complex, elegant, shinning bridge over sometimes troubled water.
We've had this crazy wind that picked up around 3 am and my eyes are tearing up. There's all this silty grit in the air.
I'm righting fallen umbrellas, shoving uprooted cornstalks back into disinterested, dried out soil, salvaging the wind-torn garden. Next I'll dive in the pool and drag out the mess of palm prongs floating like dead men over the now placid, blue surface.
We get these Santa Ana winds blowing from our deserts every now and again.
I wipe my teary eyes and she walks away from me.
Why do I feel so emotional about my daughter?
Why is she the ticket to my insides?
What did I do to deserve her and all the hardships, guilt-trips, sleepless nights of worry and hours of blessed wonder, why me with all these gifts hidden beneath tiny disasters which she's brought into my life?
I remember when she was four years old and her pre-school teacher told me that something was wrong with her.
Every ounce of me wished that woman ill.
Denial is a lovely and powerful thing.
Then later when others proved there was something wrong with her, I took it upon myself to prove there was something right with everything about her.
I won.
All I have to do is look at her and my eyes feel as though the Santa Ana winds are kicking up.
Everything she does, she does well or not at all.
And there are plenty of "not at alls".
She's no joiner, my daughter.
The idea of changing out of clothes and into a swimsuit was enough to make her nearly skip taking the place she earned on the high school swim team.
But she worked beyond nudity and the rest of it.
Now she walks from her solitary space on the bleachers at swim meets to the platform she jumps from with relative ease, or so one would think, but I know better or maybe only I know her period.
There is no relative ease about her life.
"Who is that kid?", one coach asks the other. "I don't know, but she's killing it".
'She's my little girl', I want to say, but like her, I find myself quiet...
Every sentence she speaks in public is an effort.
Every fragile friendship she makes will eventually evaporate, like the blue water in our dead man pool, after a Santa Ana windstorm.
I remember the first moment I was certain I mattered to her.
I'd gone away over night, semi reluctantly and she'd stayed with my mother.
In the morning, I walked into my mother's pine paneled living room to find my daughter, in purple corduroy overalls, watching out the window instead of watching Elmo on TV. She turned to look at me and came to hug me, repeatedly. I held her in my arms and she'd bury her face in my neck then pull back to look at me, bury her face, pull back. Not long after she said, "the mommy person came back..."
I was delightedly offended, moved and appalled.
Even when she was inside of me, she felt like a separate entity and I can rarely get close enough.
Yet, I get so emotional - over her...
She goes to Saturday school to raise her steady A to an A plus.
She doesn't need a "talking to" ever.
She needs someone to talk to, but they don't exist.
I do though.
And I won.
She talks to me and I listen as hard as I can.
And I'd listen forever, because whatever I don't have or can't find is nothing compared to what I was given.
It's a long road, raising a daughter on your own is, but raising a daughter with Asperger's is a different road. It's a trip...
It's a long and lonely and exhausting avenue, which leads to an open road, if you stay on it long enough.
Recently we moved.
I have 93 pairs of various footwear.
I counted.
93 pair of shoes.
I'm sorry.
I'm greedy.
She has 6 pair of shoes and three of them are converse. Two high tops.
She only can handle six pair of shoes.
Seven makes zero sense to her.
Everything she does is beautiful, to me.
Everything I take in, moves me to tears, when it involves her.
I get so emotional.
When I was in labor with her, I was expecting a boy, a big boy
but when she finally appeared, the doctor said,
"you have a little girl, I mean a really little girl."
As if it were yesterday, I can still see him. My family would be driving along the winding, tree-lined, two lane road toward town. From the backseat of my mother's often crowded station wagon, I'd crane my neck, elongate and contort myself, to look beyond my brothers and sisters hoping to catch a glimpse of the shaggy, red and white Paint pony, grazing lonely in the long, narrow paddock, with the small red barn behind him. Years later, the man who owned that property became a friend of ours. I'd go over to visit, steal away to the now empty arena, with it's pony-less stable. Once I dared to step inside, where I found a cobweb covered saddle set upon a saw horse in a long abandoned stall. With my hand I scrubbed away the dust, revealing, smooth, rich leather. Using the sleeve of my sweatshirt, I shined silver clasps and buckles. It was enough for me to slide my leg over, straddle this remarkable prize and pretend the pony was alive and moving beneath me. I'd close my eyes and allow a contentedness I'd never known before to wash over me. I went there again and again, not caring if other children spied on me, alone, lost in my beautiful day dream. And then one day the opportunity, like the pony was gone.
A few years ago, the contentedness I discovered as a child returned to me... an expected surprise, something I didn't know would happen which felt inevitable; horses entered my life.
Meant to be.
Absolutely everything changed
yet the alteration was so gentle, so welcomed, so wanted, it caused no disruption what so ever...
And I can hardly recall what our life was like before,
Hours at the stable slowly fly by,
My mind stops whirling whenever I'm inside the barn.
I'm present, in the moment, reacting only to whats around me
and maybe that's the beauty of a life with horses, they literally take you away.
There was nothing I didn't love about horse life,
The smell of hay, the thrill of watching my daughter learn to jump on her beloved horse sweet Johnny Cash
The ease with which I lost track of time and my lipstick, the comfort of jeans, a warm jacket, sensible steal toed shoes.
And then one day, more to love... there was a pure naturalness in how my sweet son shifted into cowboy mode, hopping on Whiskey Jim and easily melding into a fine horsemen, just like that.
Meant to be
I'd heard someone say, "beware of red mares"
only to offer me one a day or so later...
I was likely kidding myself when I told my son we'd try her for a few weeks and rationally decide if they made a good match.
He knew straight away that she was his. He called her Alaska...
Meant to be
Talented and aloof
fast and clever
words I'd use to describe her and yet I could never describe her with words,
words are not enough to describe horses...
Things changed between my children when everything became equal.
Competitiveness crept up and though there were hours of pure bliss, there were also times of disquiet in a place where previously I'd experienced nothing but peace, and still, I loved the life that formed for us with horses, more then any life I'd ever lived.
When we lost our first love, our stunning Running Quarter, a part of me went missing.
I felt very much like a little girl in a barn on a saddle without a pony beneath her.
I kept waiting for the peace, the balance, the dreamy contentedness to return, but it disappeared. It won't come...
Sad, lost, angry, empty - words I'd use to try to describe this, but words are not enough to describe horses...
And I made a decision not to let anything hurt me this way again
And I decided not to love her the way I did him.
But, "beware the red mare"
I swore I'd never run my hands over her shiny red coat, which was thick and naturally glossy and felt like velvet on my palms.
I'd never sing to her, but you see, she loved the Beatles, especially "Michelle"
...sont des mot qui vont tres bien ensemble, tres bien ensemble....
I would not press my forehead to her long face, with it's snow white blaze and trust her not to shake me off, breaking my nose.
I wouldn't whisper in her fuzzy ears, my prayers to God, prayers for her to be strong again, live long, heal herself and me. "Please heal me, Beautiful"
I'd never kiss her soft muzzle, wouldn't feel her warm breath rushing down my neck.
I'll never make a habit out of tangling my fingers in her thick, rough mane, then smell the alfalfa, sunshine, all the outdoors hours later when I absentmindedly run my hands over my chin.
I'd never risk standing directly behind her, resting assured she wouldn't spook and strike me with her powerful legs.
I wouldn't take a thousand photos of her and never stare deeply into her glowing, dark chocolate eyes.
I'd be reasonable
Keep my distance
I would not fall terribly, horribly, truly in love with her, because I knew better, I knew that if anything should happen to her, I'd never recover and I'd never, ever, ever be the same.
I knew this, because I lost one horse not so long ago; one amazing, irreplaceable, unforgettable, beautiful, remarkable horse, Johnny, and that broke me in two...
And she, Ally, aka Alaska, has broken me in three...
Beware the red mare
Words aren't enough to describe horses...
and so I'll say the only words I know that you'll understand -
I love you
sont des mon qui vont tres bien ensemble...
I won't be the same. I don't want to, not ever. I couldn't help but love you Ally. rip...
