Favorite Place
When I was a little girl, we would spend a couple of weeks each summer at "the ranch." The ranch was several hundred acres of land owned by my grandfather outside of Flynn, Texas, a little town near College Station.
My grandfather (we called him Gramps) was well educated and self-made. By the time he retired, he worked daily on the ranch at the chores he didn't mind and paid someone else to do the rest. He had some horses and he kept a Shetland pony for my twin sister and me.
That pony was a miserable animal. He hated us. By the time he finally died, I think he was 117 in human years. He had course gray hair in his mane, mustard yellow teeth, and a belly so fat it didn't seem possible. He bit us. He kicked us. He threw us off the instant we mounted him. But we didn't care. We were eight years old and we had a pony. And that's what eight year-old girls want: a pony. We weren't about to concede defeat.
His name was Sunshine. The irony.
We climbed back on him every time he bucked us off, because we wanted to be no place else in the world besides square in the middle of that saddle, feet in the stirrups, pits in our stomachs, hot sunlight beating on our heads, sweat in our hands holding tight around leather reins. It was our favorite place, if only because we decided beforehand that's what our favorite place should be.
Now, when I take the kids to their cousins' house, the first thing Elias does is climb the rocking horse in their back yard.
He rocks himself forward and back, pushes himself up and down while whinnying and laughing. He neighs and smiles and I imagine he believes that's as good as it feels to actually ride a horse.
I'll be content if he never knows the difference.
____________________________
My grandfather (we called him Gramps) was well educated and self-made. By the time he retired, he worked daily on the ranch at the chores he didn't mind and paid someone else to do the rest. He had some horses and he kept a Shetland pony for my twin sister and me.
That pony was a miserable animal. He hated us. By the time he finally died, I think he was 117 in human years. He had course gray hair in his mane, mustard yellow teeth, and a belly so fat it didn't seem possible. He bit us. He kicked us. He threw us off the instant we mounted him. But we didn't care. We were eight years old and we had a pony. And that's what eight year-old girls want: a pony. We weren't about to concede defeat.
His name was Sunshine. The irony.
We climbed back on him every time he bucked us off, because we wanted to be no place else in the world besides square in the middle of that saddle, feet in the stirrups, pits in our stomachs, hot sunlight beating on our heads, sweat in our hands holding tight around leather reins. It was our favorite place, if only because we decided beforehand that's what our favorite place should be.
Now, when I take the kids to their cousins' house, the first thing Elias does is climb the rocking horse in their back yard.He rocks himself forward and back, pushes himself up and down while whinnying and laughing. He neighs and smiles and I imagine he believes that's as good as it feels to actually ride a horse.
I'll be content if he never knows the difference.
____________________________
(This entry is a very belated response to Nicole's relatively recent theme of the week at Three Boys O' Mine: Favorite Places.)
Comments
Oh, and mine tried to get me a horse too. I named it Yankee Doodle Dandy. I never even got to ride it because it was so wild and they never could break it. Sigh...