Love this thread!! Too many loving things to say about my dad, but here was my social media post from when my horses got to come home in 2018. Sums up appreciation for my dad and my husband (who is about to be a dad!)
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When I was little, my dad and I would ride our bikes through Dover and Sherborn, stopping to stare at the houses with barns and grassy paddocks out back. We would joke about what I would call the place when it became mine, and what I would name all of my horses, all Arabians and Thoroughbreds and Mustangs, like any good eight year-old horse girl would have in her eight year-old dreams. We would talk about how many years it would take to get my horses were ready for the Grand Prix ring, and my dad would ask for the hundredth time if that kind of jumping is judged on style or speed – not because he didn’t know, but because he wanted to watch me talk about something I love.
My parents have always supported the horse thing. Sometimes that meant 4 am wake-ups on a Saturday morning, just to sit by the warm-up ring until 2:30 in the afternoon. When the time finally came for me to ride, my mom wouldn’t even watch because she always thought the jumps were “too big” and she had to look the other way and cover her ears until it was over. Other times, supporting the horse thing meant my dad taking off from his Boston law firm job to scrub water buckets in the dead of winter while I did stalls, or warmed up in the tack room sipping hot chocolate and thawing my fingers. Support meant making me work at the barn by age twelve to cut the cost that goes hand-in-hand with the fine sport of jumping mammals over sticks for fun. In hindsight, I doubt the $7.00 an hour I was earning really had much to do with the money at all.
Quick PSA - if this has been too sappy and emotional for you, buckle your seatbelt, because **it’s about to get real.
Years later, this whole other person showed up in my life, and for the past 10 years, has continued to show up for me every morning. My husband has worked incredibly hard to become a doctor, spending years in Detroit studying and listening to me cry through my first (and maybe second and third) year of teaching. Onto a few more years in Hartford for residency and holding it down through the loss of our Hollydog, and most recently, a year of busting his ass with long hours and the stress of being the only doctor on staff at 2am when some crazy shit rolls in. Between all that, he’s fixing the lawnmower and walking Sadie on 2 hours of sleep and cleaning the bathroom and STILL signing up for extra shifts “so we can get the horses home, babe.” It’s weird, the way love is – you work your whole life for a dream and then somehow part of your dream becomes about helping someone else reach theirs.
Which brings us to now, a few decades and some more years after those bike rides with my dad. Today, I watched Lilly get off a trailer and take a bewildered look at her new home in our backyard. She’s 25 now, and even though her eyes aren’t great these days, she recognized her old turnout buddy (and our newest member of the family!) Rizzo. Within minutes, she just wanted to eat grass and go about her senior business, completely oblivious to the lifetime in waiting for this day.
When I thought about sharing the news of the “horses’ homecoming,” I thought about two things: one, how only horse people will get how much it means to me, and two, how I can’t possibly talk about it without also talking about the non-horse people who don’t get it, but worked for it and wanted it despite that. They’re the real MVPs.
Oh, and to eight year-old me – we’re calling it Winterberry Farm.
