Horses in West Virginia

Dear AnneGG,

Remember our first horse, Sugarfoot. He wasn’t truly ours, but we owned him with our hearts and sense of adventure. You and Carrie and Stevie owned him the way three, then four (Diane), small children own anything, carelessly and carefully. You owned him carelessly in the abandon of your pleasure with doses of dirt and energy and daily questing. You owned him carefully with the intensity of the first experience of holding the life and welfare of another being in your own sphere of responsibility.

Remember your great fall. The icy ride and the buck, the toss, and tumble has, I fear, ruined your love of riding forever. I regret that, especially now that I find such moment in my time on horses.

Your father tells the story, proudly, (you have heard this many times) of the dark winter evening when we sat at the dinner table with your grandparents in that ample kitchen of an otherwise very small house on ten acres in the coal hills of West Virginia. We loved that place, with its magical evergreen forest where you played on piles of fallen red needles, it’s giant rock where you occasionally camped out, and it’s grand canyon carved by some miscreant coal company that cut but never reclaimed, leaving for us a wondrous geologic playground, complete with a mine portal and exquisite danger. You were such a little person that night at the dinner table and the night was so dark and the air was so cold, but it was your turn, so when your father said, “Did anyone feed Sugarfoot?” you wordlessly rose and went for your coat. Grandma was horrified. How could we let this tiny child brave the elements to feed and water a horse all by herself?

And that perhaps is still a good question. How could we do that? Why? Did you wonder? Well, here are some reasons. I was very pregnant with your sister Diane. I remember days during that pregnancy when I was forced to stretch the hose to the furthest length and fill 5 gallons buckets, half full each, and carry them the rest of the distance to the horse. I did it slowly, step by step and with some weariness, like a scene out of “Little House on the Prairie.” But your father was injured. His back was “blown,” and that injury had blown some of his other psychological cover, too (another story for another day). So it was up to you children. And you were brave and helpful. Did you know? And a lot of it fell to you and Carrie because you were oldest. You can see from the picture what oldest means!

Thank you my dear AnneGG for the character you displayed then and that you have carried with you far beyond your loss of love for the equine.

Love, always,

MOM
XOX

Tags: Horses Family