1.6.25

You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt.

You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.

––Cheryl Strayed

I have built my character within the ability to rise up and absorb challenges as swiftly as a sponge. But what’s come my way has made me feel like I am trying to take water from a bucket with said sponge; it’s messy and pointlessly precarious, difficult with no guaranteed end in sight.

In late November, Raine was diagnosed with a freak injury to her foot and ordered stall rest for four, six or possibly eight months.

Think bed rest, but for a horse.

She has had intermittent lameness since mid-summer. The vet couldn’t see anything wrong, and I was told she just needed to build more muscle and learn some balance. So I committed myself to working her and onward we went. But then I’d notice the off-ness in her movements again. I made two appointments with a lameness specialist and cancelled both each time, because the voice in my head was hesitant to waste money and maybe I was creating a problem with all the worry.

Fast forward to the fall, when both the farrier and vet came out again and each proposed different plans that had me crying when I watched Raine walk in her field, because what I was being advised and what I felt in my gut were not aligned, repelling the way magnets on incorrect ends would refuse to connect. 

I had a long phone conversation with Eran, who is the heart of the barn. She is the trainer and manager and caretaker of the facility and horses and she does such a damn good job at it all, I might as well be talking with the president when speaking with her. I am awestruck by her wit with horses and therefore get a bit topsy-turvy when conversing, like I’m in kindergarten and not my thirties, but perhaps that’s a bit endearing and there’s something about her that reminds me of you. She seems strong and like a go-getter and someone who wouldn’t take any shit from anyone. And also very kind.

Anyways, she suggested I schedule an MRI for Raine, and I was relieved to be told what to do. An MRI is way more hesitant inducing than those lameness exams I’d previously cancelled. It involved inconveniencing my best barn friend to haul my trailer because I am still too sissy to drive Raine. And a whole day away from the kids and thousands of dollars. But after two seasons of watching me wonder what was wrong with my horse, Chris would’ve willingly paid the sum, just to shut me up.

So we did. And we went. And the vet took Anna and I into this little room with dimmed lights and showed me black and white images on a computer screen, pointing to a fracture in Raine’s foot. She had plucked a ligament out of place and took a piece of bone along with it.

The vet said she’d only seen this injury a couple of times, but if stall rest could be handled well and Raine behaved and I followed the proposed protocol, her prognosis could hold a lot of promise.

When walking toward the barn to retrieve Raine afterward, all I said were the famous words, “What am I going to do?” And cried. Anna put her hand on my back to reassure me, and her hushed attentiveness to bring me comfort made me cry even harder. I will never forget it.

Reunited with Raine, we laughed at how she’d managed to clog her water bucket with mouthfuls of hay. She was content on the last bit of sedation and her calm was a contagion.

Relief replaced my sadness: I had found an answer.

Outside, it had begun to pour.

In all ways, it was fitting weather.

For the first month of stall rest, I questioned if it was possible to hold a horse confined within four walls. Medicine does not keep her from forgetting where she is. I tried handfuls of drugs and different combinations and doses and felt like I should’ve been awarded a frequent buyer card each time I walked into the vet office for another drug pick-up, but it was torturous to watch her be so miserable and I would’ve allowed someone to gut me if it meant bringing her peace. More than once, I thought I’d have to put her down, because successfully getting through the rest period was proving to be too big of an ask. She bites the walls and kicks the boards and her stall looks like a cave that a primitive human lived in, with marks marking each day passed. Her legs swell from limited movement and her body is rapidly changing; there is little muscle left, and I feel a deep sadness when I think of all the times I exercised her on a lunge line to create that sinewy strength because I was supposed to, and all the while, her foot was breaking apart and I was too scared to listen to her.

And the most recent side effect to stall rest has been spooking. When I walk her down the barn aisle, our one vet-approved activity, she jumps in her skin at nothing, the way a person would when being startled from behind: big and sudden. So I am walking a 1,200 pound jack-in-the-box, who could re-injure themselves or accidentally hurt me at any given moment, but my only job is to remain cool as a refrigerated cucumber.

On the contrary, I am more like a hot tamale. She has always been brave and steadfast, so this behavior is foreign for me. But everything is a learnable skill, and I have the right resource to help teach me the needed confidence to stand still against her ghosts.

We have managed to somewhat stymie each set-back, though, and things are okay. I make the barn commute daily, trying to pretend she’s the mare that would nicker in the field when I’d walk to her gate and not the mean monster in the box. Some visits are better than others, and after one particularly bad “Raine day,” I called Dad on my way home, trying to lull it better.

A part of me silently hoped he’d tell me to stop the sponge method and just dump the bucket. But nothing, not even a hint of permission was given to quit, because there was no reason to.

I’ve probably already told you this story, like a repeated old fable that fumbles in form overtime, but it’s pertinent and important and so here it is.

The morning after you died, the football team and cheerleaders were all to meet at the high school track for yearbook and program pictures. I had curled my hair and done my makeup and was walking out the door in uniform, when Dad said my name. He was at the kitchen stove, directly to my right, and I wish I could remember what he said but it may not have been anything. I can just see his face and the tone in which Hayley was spoken. It said be brave. And remember who you are and whom you come from.

And I pulled up to the school and walked toward a fourth of my classes’ population, consisting of everyone that was socially important.

All I can recall is Mrs. Manfredo, a football mom, looking for me as if I was a lost child at a noisy summer carnival and finding me and hugging me with such urgency, I could have been hers. It was powerful and I can still see the outside clouds and hue of blue sky I blindly stared at while she spoke condolences.

In the group photo that made the yearbook, unbeknownst to me, my husband was standing right behind me.

And he still is. Because we are building a barn and bringing Raine home to heal.

This decision took more discussion than when adding each baby to our family, and we may have wrangled through some arguments the way two alligators would twist between a piece of meat, but we did it and truth be told, this was all his idea to begin with. I just took off sprinting with it, though that should come as no surprise .

She needs a large stall with an attached run to it, which would grant access to the outside, but not warrant enough space to hurt herself.

She needs a companion, so yes, we agreed to get a couple goats.

And if she makes a full recovery, she will still need trained, but I can haul her. 

I feel excited then terrified and circle every emotion in between on a daily basis: I’m a ball in a ping-pong game. I cannot settle on a side.

But the resistance I’ve been putting up has begun to feel alarmingly obvious, and I have to toss it and squash it and let it roll down a hill, the same way my fall pumpkins tumbled to their earth graves.

My awful mindset could all most definitely just be my period talking: it’s due in two days and the luteal phase over holiday break has been an absolute brutal one. The kids ran around like the chickens do each morning when the coop door opens––fresh and excited and squawking and hungry, and I yelled endlessly because I simply didn’t have the capacity to hear, “Mom! Forrest is in my ROOM!” one more time, their tattles having flowed like a forgotten faucet.

So I will give a bit of grace but it’s time to get over myself. Because holy shit! I will have my horse home.

That is something to celebrate, not marinate in fear.

With clarity, I can see that every unexpected set-back has led us here. It all lined up to grow big and bring her home and the Pinterest pictures of barns and paddocks and feed rooms and pocket-door gates that have been taped to my vision boards for “someday” are pudding proof that the saying be careful what you wish for isn’t just folklore.

Because the universe is always listening. And it never delivers the way you intended, but when it holds its arms out, whispering an opportunity, you play the hell out of the cards it hands you.