Horse Heaven

When I was three my grandparents bought me a pony. Several months later our small East Texas community held its annual trail ride in conjunction with a week long festival. My grandfather and oldest sister were riding horses, my middle sister was to ride my pony on the seventeen mile long ride, and I was to ride in a covered wagon with Daddy and others.

As people gathered for the start of the ride, my poor Daddy was confronted with two hysterical daughters. He held me in one arm as I screamed, and pulled my screaming sister off of the pony with his other arm. As he pulled her off the pony, I grabbed the pommel, clambered into the saddle, and stopped crying instantly. As soon as my sister was in Daddy's arms she stopped her wailing, too. Those two got into the wagon, and I joined the other riders.

All of this came back to me this weekend. On Saturday, for the first time in twenty years, I climbed on to the back of a horse. I felt my face split into a grin, and that exhilarating sense of freedom flooded through me. While I'm an awful long way from that little girl, she is still inside of me, and she is thrilled beyond words that her barn will once again be home to a horse.

I must confess though, it feels odd. Almost selfish. It's something I desperately want, but I want it just for me. That doesn't feel right, but I'm pretty sure I'll adjust-especially once the grandchildren start to ride!

Teacher Bliss

My new sentence diagramming books from Barnes and Noble arrived yesterday!!!! I didn't tell Epic Husband and Youngest Epic Son what was in the box because, as much as they love to read, I was pretty sure they wouln't share my delight. One of them finally asked what I got, and when I told them, they just looked at me and shook their heads.

I can't help it; our language delights me, and its structure is facinating.

My bedrock belief is that books change lives. This belief is affirmed every single school year. This year Blake connected with Jem and Scout in a way that he never thought possible; Katie keeps several books going at a time; Cat rediscovered her love of reading and is seldom without a book in hand, and Maria laughed with me when I told her it was okay that her dog chewed the corner of Shiver (a book about werewolves; it’s an irony thing.) Chris keeps reminding me that I promised a poem a day-even though he only does it when we’re on the verge of starting something he doesn’t want to do.

Readers know something that other people can’t understand. We know that books contain entire worlds within them. We know that we can escape in them, that we can find answers, that we can, in the words of W.P. Kinsella “ease his pain.”

My childhood is defined by the horses in my life and the horse books that I read. I read every Walter Farley, Marguerite Henry, and C.W. Anderson book I could get into my hands. I supplemented my hands-on knowledge of horses with what I read in books. I studied British history through reading about Eclipse, father of the modern thoroughbred. I first learned of Ramadan when reading King of the Wind.

Several years ago my husband became concerned as I wept while reading a book. Tears poured down my face as I explained, “She wouldn’t stop; she would have lived if she had just stopped running!” I had been transported back to the 70s, sitting on the couch with my dad and grandfather as we watched Ruffian break down in her match race against Foolish Pleasure. The broken hearted teenage girl reappeared as I read Jane Schwartz’s Ruffian: Burning from the Start.

I sometimes share with my students the gut wrenching passage describing Ruffian’s breakdown, but I have to be careful. Every single time I read it, that teenage girl comes out of those pages, and I find myself choking back her tears.

And that is the crux of what I want for my students-I wish for every one of them that they carry some character, some storyline, some magical, wonderful place, or some great tragedy, with them for the rest of their lives.

Avoidance

Sitting at the kitchen counter
I should be grading papers
Instead
I'm watching that sorrel horse graze
In the bottom pasture.
Coastal's greening
And a light fog covers the hills
On the horizon
Antigone and Creon, Julius Caesar and Brutus and Marc Antony, Macbeth and Duncan
They all just needed
To sit and watch a horse graze

Jitters

It's been a crazy-busy summer with the house hunting and dealing with the off-brand insurance company handling the damage to Young Epic's truck, and that kept me from getting my normal back-to-school frission of excitment as early as I normally do. But now, the house deal is in the title company, and Young Epic, and his truck, have returned to Brownsville.

I've finished making the first day copies, and I have the second day stuff ready, my desk is mostly clean (as clean as it's gonna get), all the handouts have been loaded to my school website. I got new pens, and that ALWAYS makes me happy!

And now it's hit me. That wondeful butterflies-giddy-what-does-the-new-year-hold feeling. I chose to have seniors this year, for the first time in five years, and it's going to be fun having some of the same kiddos I had as freshmen.

So it's time to finish that last summer novel, and I'll start compiling the list of stuff I'll want to read next summer.

...or MAYBE...

...it's because the roofing guy next door came over and asked if the insurance company ever agreed to fix the roof. They didn't want to pay because they claim it was defective materials, not hail damage. And the ceiling of the garage collaped a while back. And the span of roof for the porte-cochere collapsed last year.

...or it could be because...

Your tri-level house has all of the bedrooms on the THIRD level.

You have a 600 square foot guest house that has NO BATHROOM. Do the guests just go potty in the pool?