Air, made visible by the smoky haze of forest fires, burning 800 kilometers away and scented heavy with the smell of horses, raps a mystical curtain over the fifty-acre farm.
She leans her chest and arms against the fence and as her fingers flirt across the weathered wood, she feels the sharpness of a rusty nail that has worked itself loose. A lone strand of long, wiry, horsetail hair held captive by the nail, tickles her arm. Already in a reflective mood, she does not resist the obvious analogy. Her family is like the fence, each member the nails along the rail, some still safe and buried deep in the flesh of the wood, some worked loose, and some exposed by lost splinters of wood, dangerous enough to scratch.
From the opposite side of the fence, she watches her three children, a boy, a girl and another boy, three in four years, each grown taller than her, all teenagers, 18, 16 and 14, tanned and strong, as they visit every horse.
She chokes back tears and her throat tightens with the same maddening pain she always gets when she does not want anyone to witness her emotions. She is remembering. She remembers all the hundreds of times she watched her babies race toward swing sets and wading pools, their blond curls bouncing, their thin arms and legs flailing, muscles stretching. Everything about today was different. Today they were walking. They were no longer children. They had learned a lot. The past two years had taught them that life is short. Each knew their innocent, carefree childhoods had already been spent. Today there was no hurry, only the relaxed feeling of belonging to each other, to the animals and to the hay they had come to bring in.
The girl, their tour guide, leads her two brothers through the paddock and between each horse, introducing them to all eleven reasons for her continuing recovery, eleven reasons for her getting up every morning and struggling through a school day made harder by a learning disability, and to eleven reasons why she no longer fantasizes about slitting her wrists; Kally, Gen, Daphane, Esprit, Michael, Hartley, Ruphert, Copy, Pasaz, Tory, Tipper.
She and her younger brother are becoming okay together. That had not always been the case. She had not been happy when her parents brought him home from the hospital and she remembered her horror when she realized he would be staying. He had watched helplessly, on the sidelines, and had been devastated for her, and for his family, when thing had gone so horribly wrong for his big sister. They were physically the more alike, more like their mother than their father, a little more emotional perhaps and a lot more demanding.
The relationship between the girl and her older brother, was not okay. Few were convinced that it ever would be. Until today, he had refused any and all attempts to repair their damaged sibling bond. Today the hay had finally brought him to his sister’s vision of heaven. Their mother understood why it was so hard for her eldest son to trust his sister. She understood, and she was grateful for whatever had got him here today.
Breathe catches sharp and painful in the mother’s lungs. Intuition whispers, in a voice familiar to her, that today, as her children give back to the farm; they will finally give back to each other. Today, the final piece of the puzzle, set aside when they were much smaller, will go back on the board and with luck and prayer, may find its way back into its rightful place. Today the horses, and the hay, will help them fix what they do not know how to fix.
Two years earlier their happy family fell apart. In horror, the mother watched as her only girl collapsed under the weight of severe depression, as her husband’s emotional grasp slipped away from one child in a misguided attempt to protect two others, as her sons experienced fear that quickly turned to anger. A year into their hell, the grief stricken parents were left with no option but to have their child, their sweet, crystal blue-eyed, fifteen year old daughter, admitted in a residential treatment program.
Drugs, alcohol and promiscuous sex had become coping tools for her daughter to temporarily block out her demons and to block out all attempts to reach her. Frustration quickly turned to panic as months passed. No one could get close to her and she had failed to get any better. When asked what she thought would help the team of professionals reach her, her mother’s answer had been automatic, animals, especially horses. From a time before she was old enough to speak sentences, all had been amazed to see that the little girl seemed to be able to speak Cat and Dog and Hamster and Bird and Horse. When she could not read a word, or could not recognize a single letter within that word, she could read an animal. When her teachers labeled her learning disabled and her friends called her stupid, her animal friends did not say she was dyslexic, or too tall, or Special. They did not judge her. They accepted all that she was and all that she offered. Animals could be trusted and in their honesty she could be honest.
Feelers went out, a name was advanced, an introductory phone call made, and the journey back had begun.
Walking on, posting trots, sitting trots, jumps, trotting polls, quiet hands, discipline, surrender, patience, and harmony, all combined to teach their child that she would only be whole when she had accepted the struggles life had sent her and when she had embraced the support offered. The horses reminded her what trust felt like.
The family learned to hear, not the words the young girl said, but rather what she did not say. They learned to read her the way she had known how to read a horse. Their mother watches as her children meander through the dusty paddock and she hears what her daughter is saying to her brothers.
“Big brother, come and meet the horses. First friend, come meet my new friends. Childhood hero, feel the love they have for me, the same love you use to have for me. Schoolyard protector, see how they will not hurt me. Little brother, see how my friends will let us let down our guard around them. We are free here. We are free to trust again. Can you hear what they are saying to us? Can you hear the lessons they bring for us. Don’t lag behind. We have wasted enough time in the vast emptiness of our pain and our anger.”
The melodic rattle of a baling tractor, the crunch of hay underfoot, the weighty grunt as each bale as it is lifted up onto the truck, and the relaxed laughter of siblings who have forgotten they HATE each other, reaches across the paddock to the fence. A warm hand touches the mother’s arm. With the riding instructor beside her, the mother again feels her heart swells and she is awed as they stand witness to a miracle.
"This is big.”
“It is. It truly is.”
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