Sometimes…
all you really need…
Is just a small little change…
In perspective.
Perspective
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Author Archives: Cassandra
North to Alaska
Our July is usually so busy I want to run away when I get to the end of it.
I’m totally overwhelmed, drained of energy, and ready to up and move to a place where there are no farm animals, no fishermen, no motor homes, and no boats.
But every July, on the 27th, I remember…
I chose this place!
It was nineteen years ago today that I rolled into this amazing place that became my new home.
It had been a boyhood dream of my husband’s to move here after high school with his best friend, but meeting me changed all of that.
When, years into our relationship, he told me of his past plans, I chastised him for not telling me sooner and told him I would’ve gone with him.
Thus began the planning and the saving and the letter writing with his friend, who’d long since settled in the land the two of them had talked of.
And when his friend came back for a visit and his folks were planning a haul of goods up the AlCan, we took our dreams and we hit our knees and we asked if now, right now might be the time.
Those good folks were thrilled to have another driver and they packed their goods and they packed my husband and I sent our valuables in the valuable trunk he’d built on our first Christmas. His Daddy shook his hand and told him he always had a home to come back to and we all stood and waved goodbye as the tooley fog lifted off the cornfield that June morning.
I talked to him every night, but one afternoon he called in the middle of the day and a call at work meant something big and the big thing was a job and a job was the go ahead for me to give up the steady paycheck that tied us to somewhere secure.
I hung up the phone and went to my boss and gave her my two weeks’ notice and that night I started selling all that was left of our stuff.
I was Alaska bound. Even though he was already there, WE were officially Alaska bound.
On a humid July morning, my mom and I rolled out of the only state I’d ever lived in with my big brown dog and my little tranquilized cat and all I owned on the top of my red four-door sedan.
We rolled into Alaska six days later, and on the night of the 27th, when I’d made it to our new town and stopped at the first gas station I found for a pack of cigarettes and a Diet Coke, I knew I was home. I knew I would never want to leave this place.
And I haven’t.
Oh we’ve flown out a few times for family trips and the occasional vacation, but this place is a place that holds a person. When we think of how much easier it’d be in the Lower 48, how much more affordable it is in other places, how many more people there are for our kids to know…
…we come back to the fact that we’d have to leave Alaska.
I lost the cigarettes and my ability to drive in big cities and freeways.
But I found the Lord.
We came up not knowing one another that well.
But we wrestled our way into being best friends.
The two of us didn’t have any furniture.
But now we have a house full of it because we have all these kids.
We only knew one family and held them close.
But now we know many families who hold US close.
Nineteen years.
Not long at all.
And when I look at my calendar and the crazy amount of writing on all the squares this month, my eyes fall to today’s and I remember that I really don’t want to run away. I already did that nineteen years ago and every day since…
I’m home.
I am Woman. I Bought a Gun.
I bought a gun today.
I took my ten-year old daughter with me.
When I learned that my trusty old revolver -the one I am comfortable with, the one that has few moving parts, the one that fits my hand just right- well, when I learned that it might not be the best gun for a woman to become too comfortable with, and that the instructor of the class I’d signed up for wasn’t excited about having me use it over a semi-auto…
I looked down at my sweet daughter, -patient and holding Mama’s cell phone and keys at the gun counter- and I decided that I’d move out of my comfort zone just like my girl does all the time with her many 4-H projects.
I decided to follow her example and step out of my box and push myself to learn-by-doing just like any good 4-H’er knows is the very best way of starting something new.
So I bought a gun.
I bought a gun without even talking to my husband, or consulting any other man, (unless you count my pal, my husband’s handsome lifelong friend who happened to stroll up to the gun counter and, when seeing I was buying a gun, offered a once over, a word of caution about the thumb safety on my model, and an atta girl) and with no guidance from anyone other than a brief chat with the kind-eyed woman who will be my shooting instructor.
I bought a gun even though we own many and I’ve shot most of them and I even have one of my very own that everyone calls Mom’s Rifle.
But those guns my husband bought.
This one I bought.
I am now the proud owner of a Smith and Wesson 9 mm, complete with a magazine (not a clip folks, never a “clip”), a holster, 100 rounds of ammo, and a soft-sided case. The whole shebang.
And do you know what I heard after I walked out with my new gun?
I heard that just this morning, in our fair state of Alaska, there was a massive theft of guns from a small gun store.
Today my girl and I spent over one hour legally procuring a weapon, filling out pages of paperwork, having my height and weight (so what if it was just my driver’s license weight, STILL) blown up to 8×11 size for the file, having my drug habits and mental status queried, having my name run through a federal registry, having my signature scrutinized, having to provide all the basic information that anyone would need to steal my identity and wreak havoc on my life, all so I could be declared “safe” and walk out of the store with a weapon.
Legally.
That is the process.
That is how it’s done.
I did everything right.
And I told my girl as we drove off that today was an important day for her.
That today she got to be part of witnessing a free woman in a free country exercising one of the rights so many that have come before her fought and died for.
Today was the day when she saw her grown up mama become a little more of a grown up.
Today was the day we talked about countries and laws that aren’t friendly to women and how in this land, we don’t yet live that way.
Today we talked about how it’s important to use the strength God gave you in the place that He put you.
How having a good husband is a wonderful and amazing thing, but that not every woman has one, and even if they do, it’s good and pertinent for her to know how to make decisions for herself.
How men and women fought and died so that we could do what we did today.
And she said That’s right Mama. We can bear arms.
I did it legally.
And what took us an hour, buying that gun with hard-earned money my husband toils for week in and week out and generously provides for me to use as I see fit…fulfilling all the government’s requirements to purchase and possess a weapon…
it took the thieves 28 seconds.
Twenty-eight seconds of video footage showing them stealing many weapons, taking all they could fill their shirts with, fulfilling zero governmental requirements other than those required to be considered a gun thief.
They didn’t even have to give their driver’s license weight.
Do you see why gun owners have a hard time when folks start murmuring about upping the requirements for gun ownership?
I did it legally.
Someone bent on destroying lives will do it whether it be by a knife, a step van, a bomb, or an illegally-obtained weapon.
Gun owners, responsible, law-abiding gun owners…
we own guns legally and we use guns legally.
We fill out the paperwork, we answer the questions, we write down the serial number, we pay the money, we carry responsibily and we shoot responsibly.
Do you think the little 9 mil I’m now so proud of and a little scared of and can’t wait to practice with is going to mow people down by my legal hand?
Or do you think one of the many that those thieves so indiscriminately stole will?
Do you see the difference?
After today, after exercising my freedom and proudly practicing my independence, and teaching my daughter to do the same, I feel a little tug to throw a Don’t Tread on Me sticker on the back of my mom-SUV.
I feel a need to maybe get a little more vocal about our Second Ammendment rights, maybe even get my Concealed Carry permit.
Not to show off or sound big.
Not to paint myself as a knuckle dragging Neandrethol that many today in our society are quick to label us gun owners.
I feel the need because today I exercised the right that so many fought and died to provide for me.
For my children
For you.
For your children.
For my daughter, my precious girl who smiles at me when I tell her how proud I am of her and the young woman she is growing into.
I may take flak from some but you know what?
I am a woman and I bought a gun and I bought it legally and I will learn all I can about it and I will practice with it and it will be my tool.
I am a woman and I bought a gun.
Many picked up their weapons and they said we have a right to defend ourselves. To defend our loved ones.
And today I could almost hear them speaking to me and my girl.
They were saying That’s right Mama. We can bear arms.
Short and Accurate Post on Life With a Teen Boy
Snapshot of a Week in the Life of Being the Mama of a Teen Boy:
Scenario 1: (Watching the garbage truck pull out)
Me: “Well hm. I guess I didn’t need to go into all that with the garbage guy. Sometimes I think I just talk too much.”
Teen boy: “Yeah.”
~
Scenario 2: (In the hay field)
Teen boy: “Man mom, a cold lemonade sounds good right now.”
Me: “You want ME to fetch drinks? Hey I’m buckin hay here, not fetchin drinks. I’m not just a pretty face ya know.”
Teen boy: “No. You’re not.”
Me: “Uhhhh?”
Teen boy: “You’re the PRETTIEST face.”
~
And that, folks, pretty much sums up how it is living with the wild and growing creature we all call a Teenager.
❤
For I too was a son to my father, still tender, and cherished by my mother. Proverbs 4:2-3
The Haying
Our haying for 2016 is done.
Over the past two days we’ve moved 200 bales of hay, a small haul for a small farm, just over five and a half ton. We’ve spent over ten hours in the amazing bake of Alaska sun. We’ve laughed, we’ve snarled, Mama secretly cried a few times over memories and tiredness and quiet grief over a pony we don’t need to buy chow for any more, Daddy not-so-secretly got a sunburn on his bald spot, and we’ve bonded as a family.
Tucked in alongside hay trips, we’ve learned how to put stitches in a lamb’s leg, we’ve met new people who love 4-H and want to support us in small and big ways, we’ve reunited with some favorite music that speaks of the Great North like no other, and we’ve gone out to eat for the first time in forever.
I thought after Beau died that maybe we weren’t meant for the farm life.
I thought maybe we weren’t good enough for this life with animals and farm folk and feed stores and hay fields.
But after this weekend I realize that the farm life isn’t a matter of who’s good enough or not good enough.
It’s a life that changes those who choose it.
And that with each passing year, with each turn of the season…
you buck bales a little quicker and you learn to steer a little straighter and you get more efficient at driving the field and your muscles get a little bigger.
And just like the hay…
you reach toward the sun and you grow.
~
Pushing
I decided to update my folder of barn records in the morning and before long there were surprised tears in my coffee as I typed up Beau’s last notes.
Our long weekend with him…
and then his final lay down.
The afternoon was filled with 4-H and phone calls and sunshine and then yells from the front yard that the dog had eaten the sheep’s leg off.
There were angry tears when I saw that the dog hadn’t actually EATEN the sheep’s leg, but had tried to herd the sheep and a tied sheep won’t herd and a cattle dog without a job sometimes herds too hard.
The evening saw us in the hayfield, dropping everything to go on that one day a year when the hay man says it’s here, and the injured sheep stayed home with his girl and my boys donned gloves and my big man does what he does best, he hefts and he pushes through life so he hefts and he pushes through the field of hay and I want to lay down but I drive slow instead and sometimes heft too and then, when my littlest baby is driving the truck and the music is playing and the sun is shining, tired tears come because sometimes a mama really does just want to lay down.
Because sometimes all life is, is hopping from one mishap to another…one mess to the next…one big job to one more big job…
and it can be overwhelming.
And a mama gets tired.
But when a few more quiet tears come on the way home, hay loaded up and midnight approaching, they’re both sad and sweet and grateful because sometimes in the tired we can forget who we are and where our strength comes from.
And while I follow in the second truck and the hay on the trailer in front of me rocks through the Alaska wilderness and the construction zones, I realize how far I am from where I want to be. From where I should be.
All the things…all the places…all the words…how have I gotten this far and left them all undone, unsaid?
But as the midnight sun glares and my baby switches songs on the playlist like a big boy next to me, I remember that I’m close to the One who’s taking me there.
And that every breath is the opposite of mishap and an opportunity to do the things and go the places and say the words.
The mountains are purple on the flats and we take our hay home and my men unload and my girls put the crock pot away and we tuck in the sheep and we go to bed.
And I tell myself that tomorrow there will probably be more mishaps and messes. But that I need to listen. I need to remember the wide open sky and the freshness of hay and the muscles that move.
I need to listen to it all.
So I’ll remember. I’ll remember that tears come when I’m listening and when I’m listening, I am strong.
I’ll remember that my job is to grow into who He made me to be and while I’m doing that, to love.
To share.
To remember where I get my strength.
And to use that strength to manage the mishaps and weather the worries and surrender the sorrows so that I’ll keep standing.
I’ll keep standing and I’ll keep lifting and I’ll keep pushing and I’ll keep hefting…
All the way up to my final lay down.
Great is Your faithfulness oh God
You wrestle with the sinner’s heart
You lead us by still waters and to mercy
And nothing can keep us apart
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough for me
~Your Grace is Enough, Chris Tomlin
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13
Hug a Teacher Today
When I was my Ella’s age, my mother began her trek as a single mom. She worked hard, my grandparents worked hard, we all worked hard…and with the money from our family’s town-wide paper route, and the efforts from all of what extra time she had, she studied herself as far as she could go through community college classes.
When I was my Gracie’s age, my mom made the hard decision to uproot her little family to a town two hours away from our home where I started a new high school, my brother started Junior High, and she started life as a college student with two kids. Over the next four years, we lived in cinderblock campus housing and she studied and she studied.
When I was my Colton’s age, my grandparents and my brother and I all put on our Sunday best and we went to the big stadium where we watched my mama walk across the stage in her graduation gown and her yellow honors neck cord and we clapped and we clapped and we spray painted her name on the big rock we’d driven by every day while reading hundreds of names painted on it for the past four years.
Since she was a little girl, all she ever wanted to be was a teacher.
And today, twenty-six years since she was officially certified as a teacher, my mama and her best friend, a fellow teacher, walked out of the classroom for the last time.
She has taught me to be resourceful.
She has taught me to be independent and strong.
She has taught me to work diligently when something needs to be done for the betterment of others.
She has seen so much change in the public school system and the past five years have been hard on her. When a teacher isn’t allowed to teach, there is something in their spirit that is stifled. When a teacher is only allowed to teach-to-the-test…when their every minute is regimented…when the bureaucracy goes against their natural teaching instinct, it is a burdensome load to carry.
But her greatest joy every single year has been to teach a room full of missing-their-front-teeth children to pick up a book and READ it.
For a child to delight in books is one of her greatest delights in all the world.
And from the best I can gather, twenty-six years of an average class of twenty-five students means that she has had a direct impact on 650 lives. When you add in me…my brother…our spouses…our kids…our friends…their kids…
her influence adds up to many, many more.
Teachers touch lives.
My mama was a good one.
And while she’s done in the classroom, there is no doubt in my mind she will continue to teach for all her days.
Hug a teacher today. They devote their life to the lives of others.
So thankful for you mama.
Your hard work has changed the world.
Her children rise up and call her blessed….Proverbs 31:28
It’ll Be Okay
There was something wrong with my Wishy.
Lord, No. Please.
It’s too soon after Beau.
I wiped the inside of her hind legs off with a warm wet cloth and tried to figure out what could be causing her diarrhea.
I’m irritated with myself and wondering how it was that her symptoms slipped by my eagle eye that’s become even more watchful this spring.
She’s my low-maintenance mini. Beau was our big boy and Charlotte is our keyed-up mare, but Wishes…Wishes is a go-with-the-flow horse if ever there was one. Her previous owner compared her to Eeyore, and the personality suits her perfectly. She goes along and gets along and she’ll get a little pout to her every now and then, but nothing that a few soft words and two soft hands can’t soothe.
I love that horse.
And now, as I put her back in the pen with Char, my brain goes into high gear thinking on how I’m going to get my kids to the good-bye party for friends that we all realllly really want to go to, yet be here too in order to assess Wishes a little better while trying to get the vet out. My hands tremble while latching the gate and in my mind I’m standing in the barn at 4 a.m., exhausted after days on my feet in hopeful vigil while watching a brave and noble pony’s lips clamp tight in pain and dehydration just hours before his body lies down one last time.
I can’t stand up under it if something happens to her, Lord. Not now.
A sweet friend shuttles my kids, and my man-boy and I watch Wishy in the pen, and before I say anything about what I think, he tells me “I think she’s having a hard time holding her back end up. She’s swaying in the hind.”
Which is a sign of neurological damage from the common weed called mare’s tail that grows prevelantly in our area. I’ve not seen it in our yard, but I remember a week or so ago when we found her grazing behind a new shed we put up last year. My boy and I wander back to take a look and sure enough, the area is packed full of brand new shoots of the toxic horsetail.
My heart falls and I get my horse friend on text and she’s Googling and I’m researching and watching Wishy at the same time, and there right in front of my eyes she tries to pee and can only pee down her legs.
I can’t stop scared tears from coming and I’m trying to keep a grip on my fear and my big boy, he tells me it’ll be okay Mama.
I breathe deep and amp up my calls and texts to the vet and track down another one that’s a friend-of-a-friend and we all suspect plant toxicity and if that doesn’t take her, it’ll throw her into colic and if she pulls out of the toxicity, she might not pull out of the colic and that’s what took Beau and there she goes swaying her hind again and then settling into a new place that she’s never lain before in the shady part of the pen not the sunny, and that’s a bad sign too so I text the vet.
Again.
He tells me just what shot to give her to relieve pain and help her pee and says he can come see her some time the next day.
So we order pizza and eat out at the barn and I watch her and as I watch her close…so closely…I remember something small.
Small like her.
The day we rolled our little horse trailer onto the barnyard and walked the new pony Beau over to the horse pen, both minis went into a wild fit of star struck crazy horse love. They fussed and fought and bucked and ran around him so much it was like watching a bunch of barfly groupies at a Tim McGraw concert.
Both of them were thrown into heat that day and for about a week, every time we’d go out to do chores, we were stepping into a world of premenstrual high school girls. Hair flinging and head tossing and eye rolling and snap talking had become the norm on the barnyard.
Our boy horse, though castrated, (gelded in horse terminology) had thrown both our mares into heat.
But once things leveled out on our barnyard, -in the hormones and in the herd- I never saw either of our mares behave that way again. The three of them made a happy herd, and if any one of the three got grumpy, it was usually Beau, tired of their constant snuggling up to him, them preferring to stand in the warmth of his flanks over the barn almost every time. Marish behavior had gone by the wayside after that first few days of getting over their boy-horse crush and a calm, serene trio prevailed.
And now, here they were, just over a month without him, and right around the time when mares in our area go into season.
But why wasn’t Wishes drinking much water? Why was her hind end swaying like her back legs weren’t working? It couldn’t be that my wee little mare was just in heat. These symptoms were so different from anything I’ve ever seen before. She’s so level-headed and submissive and quiet, this couldn’t all be just a normal hormonal thing.
I lunged her in circles in the driveway to make sure all her legs and her back were working. I put a bucket of water in front of her so I could monitor her intake. I tied her outside the pen so I could watch and see how much she peed and pooped.
I saw how she reacted to her half ration of feed and gave her a little more when she still acted hungry. I saw how she blinked her soft, wide-eyed blink at me, just like normal with no flaring of her nostrils or clamping of her lips.
She seemed just like my regular ol’ Wishes.
I pondered the possibilities and I put her back in the pen for the night and my panic level came down after seeing her eat and drink and poop and kind of pee. I kept thinking over her symptoms and worried about them, but felt secure enough to let her overnight until I’d do an early morning check, so I tucked her in with a fresh trough of water, a few flakes of hay, and her pal Charlotte.
In the morning the vet texted that he’d be out later in the day and I posted my son as sentry and watcher of Wishy while I went to another appointment that I needed to keep. I raced home after the appointment, anxious at the fact that she’d not taken in much water all morning. At this point I was convinced that she had an Urinary Tract Infection, which was causing her to not be able to pee, which would cause her hind end to hurt and sway, and which could be deadly.
Doc came just as I was pulling Wishes out and getting her ready to see him and he took his stethoscope and his old sparkly blue veterinarian eyes and his knarled up country hands and he looked her over.
And then he looked at me and he said if I wanted him to, he could find a little miniature stallion to come on over and visit my little mare because it was pretty obvious to him that my little girl horse was just in heat.
Oh!
My deep-down was right!
I was paying attention.
I did know my little horse.
And my fears, -those doubts, that grief, that insecure feeling that I must’ve done everything wrong with Beau since he didn’t live- they had just manifested so much louder than my deep-down knowledge of my little mare.
My tears started to push against my eyes and pretty soon my shoulders were shaking because I lost a horse once and once was once too many times but now, today, I wasn’t going to lose this one.
I wasn’t going to have to say goodbye to the soft eyes of a creature that loves so loyally.
Not today.
So I cried quietly.
All the grief that’s been working its way out…all the hoping that it would go differently…all the wishing that it could’ve been this easy with Beau too…I just let the tears fall while the sun shined and the minis munched their hay.
And my vet, the vet to all the farms and mushers and 4-H kids here in paradise, he looked at me and saw I was crying and he was quiet too and he just stood with me like a gentlemanly elderly man would while the woman next to him cries, and then he gave me a little pat on the shoulder and he said I know. It’s hard.
And I know he knows every last thing I’m crying about and how it’s all tied up into farming and the future and the kids and the critters and our hearts and our life and how a soul crumples a little when she loses a beloved animal and how the loss puts something into that soul that makes it never quite be the same.
And then he tells me it’s okay.
It’ll be okay.
So we stood quiet for a few more seconds in the sunshine and looked at my fuzzy little mini in heat and I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and he honked into his hankerchief and then we walked past the barn and past the chickens and back toward his truck that was waiting to take him to the next call.
And as it is with a farm vet, he was soon sitting on the tailgate surrounded by kids and showing them his veterinarian bible, a current edition of the book he read every night in vet school. They oohed and aahed and coveted the thick copy and learned from him and from it the number of days in the estrus cycles of horses…and barn cats…guinea pigs…goats…alpacas…ferrets…and fox.
We learn from him and we glean from him and we send him on his way with a dozen pheasant eggs and his refusal to take a penny for his care and his call and his time.
It’s good that you called he tells me.
His blue eyes twinkle when he tells me we’ll just call this one an ‘information only’ call.
And it was information.
Good information.
The disruption in the herd, losing their gelding, this being the first heat cycle of the season…those things can cause a mare to have an out-of-whack cycle, one that involves hind-end swaying and pheromone peeing and out-of-the-ordinary behavior. That’s good information. That’s information I didn’t have before.
But knowing that I can trust my deep-down when it comes to my animals…that’s good information too. Being able to sense when something is just slightly off… Knowing that I had a gut instinct and action behind it is important for me right now as we still process the loss of one of our animals and fight to not second-guess all we did.
But the best information that came out of our farm call was information that I already knew: that while us folks that manage animals and farms tend to the critters we love, one of the most valuable resources we will ever have is the kindness, care, and compassion of a country vet.
He puts on his sunglasses and starts his truck and it rumbles to life, and while I wave him goodbye and watch him leave our driveway and turn toward his next call, a farm up the road, I’m thankful…so thankful.
Thankful my wee horse will be fine…
Thankful for the life and love and lessons of the one we lost…
Thankful for this farm and these kids and these critters…
And thankful that while I tend to them all, I have a good farm vet on my side.
~
To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven…Ecclesiastes 3:1
The Leveling
I haven’t written since Beau.
At all.
Well, a couple bursts of Facebook posts here and there, but this is the first time I’ve come back to this place I love so much.
That horse did something to my heart.
It’s only been a month since he died but it seems like a year and then at night, when I wake up for my normal 3 a.m. insomnia check…it’s last week all over again.
As with any death I suppose, I think of “if only”. If only we would’ve caught it sooner. If only we would’ve known he was compromised. If only we would’ve…
And I go round and round and while I know a horse is a horse and not a human, I still grieve. We are still quiet when we speak of him.
But I know this:
Life is fragile and life is precious and sometimes life is too short. But life is a joy and a push and an embrace and sometimes you have to pause but you can never stop.
So I’m here.
I’m here and I’m yearning to write and my heart spills over now with words needing saying and letters needing typed, and this is where I want to be.
Because when God put a pen in the heart, there’s never any stopping it.
There might be a pause.
But today, again, I write.
A word-stringer might slow and her tears might flow, and her words might cease, and her heart might twist…
but after it all settles and that grief smooths some…
a writer will write.
~
My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king…Psalm 45:1
Beau’s Birch
It’s only been twenty-four hours since he left us but I know this for sure: our farm, and our hearts…
They’ll never be the same.
*
She wanted a pony but thought we probably couldn’t have one. She’s always been so conscious of what things cost the family.
My thoughtful girl.
We had the minis…everyone was learning horsemanship. We had friends and lessons where she could ride big horses whenever she wanted.
But one night she said something at prayers that made her Daddy’s eyes water.
God please help me be happy for other people who have their own horses so that I won’t always just want one for myself.
And my husband whispered later that night…
We’re gonna get that girl a pony.
We brought Beau home after a friend told us he’d be a great match for our girl. He was so big compared to our minis, he was a Clydesdale on the barnyard. It made my head spin when I first walked him.
He’d been a Pony Club pony. He had such good manners. His girl had trained him well but she needed a bigger horse to do the kind of horse activities she wanted to do, her mama said. Her legs were getting too long.
That mama cried when we pulled out with him in our trailer. That pony had seen her little girl grow up.
And when my husband walked up to my girl with that pony and gave her the lead rope, she cried too. She couldn’t believe she was a little girl who had her very own horse.
It was the happiest day we’ve ever had on our little farm.
Beau went from being a fancy pony to a farm pony, and while secretly this mama thought maybe our farm wasn’t fancy enough and that maybe a fancy pony is meant to be a fancy pony forever, a horse friend that knew him in both lives said “No. He fits here. I can see it. He’s relaxed. He loves this farm.”
So Beau was our fancy farm pony.
And my girl said, See that patch of brown right there on his flank Mama? That color right there is my favorite color in the whole world.”
He came out of his first winter here a little thinner and weaker after a bag of bad feed had us learning how to give a horse a shot, and our vet came to put his vet hands on him for us and he told us Beau was just fine and that sometimes a horse just doesn’t winter very easily, but that we’d learn exactly what he needs as we got to know him better. Just our love and a little medicine will have him back to his big old self in no time.
We had the love and we had the medicine, and we got him on a feed that was better for his body. He went to a horse camp with my girl that spring, and even though she learned that sometimes the circles of horse folks can be harsh and assume the worst of a person by the size of their horse, my girl and her pony had a great time at that camp learning new things about each other and they grew in trust and they grew in skills…
And our vet was right.
In no time at all he was back to his big old self.
Over years, my girl’s legs grew a little longer, and Beau grew a little older and they were partners and they were friends. On our barnyard, he was the big boss of the herd and even as herd boss, he was sweet. The minis doted on him, and in the dusk, they’d find shelter under his tall-to-them flanks. Twice a day my girl would feed and water the horses and because she was horse manager on the farm, she knew them well.
She knew that she liked them to go in order when the farrier came: biggest to littlest.
She knew that Beau didn’t like it when his minis were away from him, even for a minute.
She knew when her body was growing too big for a pony.
She knew that even though riding him may not be an option, she could still teach him and learn from him, so she decided that together, they’d start training to drive a cart.
She knew he would pick it up easily.
She knew how awesome it was that he didn’t even flinch when she started walking behind him with her long reins and teaching him Gee and Haw and driving him all summer all over the round pen and the yard and up the driveway.
She knew what a great teacher he would be for her younger sister and little brother and started teaching them how to work a pony in the round pen.
She knew that the biggest mini was a little like a toddler and that the littlest mini was like a friend feeling left out, and she knew that Beau would peek over the pony wall of the stall every morning to wait for his girl to come out and say hi.
She knew that he was gentle and that he was kind.
And she knew him well enough to know that something was wrong when she saw him standing weak at feed time, and she texted me immediately and got me coming home and on the phone with the vet. We got a shot in him right away, gave him his own room in the barn, and in the morning Doc came out and said colic was working on our boy. Told us to use our hands and our medicine to help him feel better.
He pepped up a bit midweek and his minis were glad to have him back with them in the big pen where he went right back to bossing and big-brothering them to whinnies.
His downturn was a surprise and before we could even celebrate that he’d been improving, we were camped out in the barn with him tucked into his blanket and us tucked into our Carharrts, him looking at us with big brown eyes puzzled at having his whole family sleeping in the barn in lawn chairs.
The little heater for ice fishing kept people and pony from freezing, and he stood on all four feet and drank water and nibbled hay and the doc said keep doing what you’re doing because that’s what’s keeping him here. He put a tube in our pony that night and gave him oil in his tummy to help coat things and protect him from the environmental toxin he suspected our boy had in his system. Our extra warm winter…our very early spring thaw…it’s messed with the soil and plant life this year and horses in high numbers are colicking all over he said.
But I told myself that our pony was strong and he’d be okay every time I put my hands on him and I’d pray to God, the one who created horses. Father please help us keep him strong enough to heal and we’ll keep on loving this pony all his days.
Our pony’s girl, my girl, she’d be dozing through the middle-of-the-night hours, tucked into the little pallet bed she’d made out of pillows and sleeping bags all folded up into the garden cart attached to the four-wheeler over in the corner barn.
We played the radio soft and she told us to keep it on the country station because that’s what he liked the best.
His same low nicker every time he’d see his girl was like music on the heart.
Shock after the nasal tube panicked him and I had Doc on speed dial while Matt set up flood lights over the paddock and neighbors came and friends brought stethoscopes and we monitored his heart rate as he sweat his panic out and mouth-breathed and coughed up blood clots like pudding. I never would’ve thought he was going to make it through the night but each time he coughed, he’d settle a bit more, and then at 2 a.m., he coughed up one last clot and calmed.
The doc set aside his morning and came to see him and said from the sounds of his night, he was surprised to come out and not see a dead pony. But our boy was on all fours and blinking his big brown eyes softly at Doc, and if it weren’t for his heart rate still being high and the bloodstains on the straw and on the gates and on his nose, no one would ever guess our little pony had been on death’s door just seven hours before.
We took him out into the sun and he napped like he always does on spring days.
We wondered if we’d know when it was time. Doc said his heart rate needed to come down and if it didn’t, we’d probably know which way things were going to go by noon or so. But noon came and went and Beau stood with his face in the sun and my husband said God can heal ponies too and if Doc said it’ll take 36 hours for that oil to kick in, well, we’ll give him every minute of that 36 hours to get better because it’s not fair to Beau if we don’t, and that’s our job as his people, to give him every chance he has to fight.
We kept a little bit of hay and a lot of water in front of him and we encouraged him to lay down and rest a bit, but he insisted on doing what he normally does, take the occasional sugar cube from his girl and kick his back leg in some, all while blinking a napping blink and bobbing his head lazy like in the sunshine with his minis slinking around him and stealing bits of his hay.
His heart rate came down some when he was in the sun. So for two whole days of daytime hours, he lived with his sweet face pointing south in our front yard, the Alaskan spring sun warming his white blaze and black forelock while his kids and his minis and his chickens went around him…next to him…under him…with him…
We slept in the barn again for the third night and even though his 36-hour mark had come and gone, our boy was still not showing signs of being in big distress. We still felt like if we cut his time short and opted to euthanize now, we would be giving up on him since he was still fighting so quietly and valiantly.
But there was no doubt that he was starting to weaken.
When a call to an equine vet with a clinic four hours away through the mountains gave us disbelief that our pony was still standing after almost three days with a heart rate that would’ve killed any other horse after just one day, we wondered if maybe we should load our little boy up for some big city care.
We consulted with our vet and another vet closer to home, and she showered us with words of love and kindness, having been through this with her own animals and knowing all too well the pain of trying to decide when it’s time to relieve our animal friends of their burden of illness. She confirmed what we were feeling: yes an elevated heart rate indicates trouble; he was definitely a sick boy. But being a pony, his heart rate would be a little higher than a full-sized horse, and without a baseline on him, we didn’t know if he normally ran a little higher regularly, and most of all, if he is still standing on all four feet and seemed peaceful enough to fight it out, why not give him every chance we could to let him do that?
When making a game plan for that night and weighing our options -euthanization, continuing to sit vigil, trying to load him quickly and haul him up north for specialized care- my thoughtful girl thought about it, then came to me and said she’d like to keep her pony at home where he’d feel safe and not have to be scared on top of being sick. His minis are here. The ride would be long and scary for him and she couldn’t ride in the trailer to help him not be scared, and he might not be able to stand that long and he wouldn’t want to lay down.
This is his home Mama.
One more night -even though we all knew he was getting on time to run out of time- we put on our layers and we boiled water for tea and we went to the store for another small box of sugar cubes and we put needles in our pockets for his shots and we freshened the clipboard full of our times and our notes about our boy and all his round-the-clock care.
Every walk, every pet, every shot, every movement…every moment…
Even my horse-scorning big boy who delights in telling his little sister how much he doesn’t like horses, he slept in the barn and he hauled water and he held her hand when we prayed and it’s different when it’s your little sister’s horse and shouldn’t a whole family hold out hope for one little pony?
My husband led us in prayer at every turn and we’d bow our heads and we’d cry our tears and we’d ask God to help Beau. To help him in his brave and courageous fight. To help him poop. To help his heart rate come down. To help his little body heal. To help our hands help him.
I came back to the barn from a house trip with hot coffee and tea at sunrise that third morning and there, right there over the barn was a huge arc-shaped cloud. I stood in the driveway and wondered if it might look a little bit like a white fluffy rainbow. It had that wispy cotton candy texture to it that the kids told me is called mare’s mane.
It took me a minute to realize that a shape was at the base of the arc and that if you looked just hard enough, and a little tear-stained and barn-weary enough, it could almost look like a little horse coming down to a perfect landing from a beautiful and arcing jump.
A fancy-pony jump.
And I knew when I saw it that it would be Beau’s last morning here on our farm.
He showed us that morning that his strong and courageous little body was growing tired of standing on all four feet and that our hands weren’t going to be able to help him win this one and that it was time for us to call the vet out.
Doc didn’t even have time to get heading our way. Not even a half hour later we were all cheering Beau gently and encouraging him through our tears to go ahead and lie down when we could see he’d decided it was finally time to get off his strong little feet.
He died minutes later, at 8 a.m. on Monday morning, and it was the saddest day we’ve ever had on our little farm.
Farm kids are tough but farm kids grieve and my littlest daughter brought Kleenex and my baby asked Why? Just why? and my menfolk let unashamed tears run down their faces and we all cried together and mourned the beautiful creature that God had sent our way. We loved that pony.
My girl asked her daddy if we could lay him to rest on our new land, a piece of simple north road we bought last year just a quarter mile away, a chunk of our future, a homestead we plan to settle in the upcoming months.
So the same Daddy that bought his girl a pony brought home a tractor to bury that pony. She chose a beautiful clearing under a tall birch, and while he dug, we watched and we fetched logs when he’d get stuck and we rested and we loved.
We were exhausted and we were sad and we were thankful…all at the same time.
Our girl’s fancy farm pony taught us so much in our four short years with him.
He taught us that being fancy was a good thing.
And he taught us that being farmy was a good thing too.
He taught us that friends come in all sizes and species and that sometimes friendship doesn’t look the way everyone else thinks it should look.
He taught us that a low rumble of recognition is a gift to be treasured.
He taught us to pay close attention because not everyone speaks loudly.
He taught us that good training is also a good teacher.
He taught us that true friendships adapt.
He taught us that a quiet fight is a strong fight.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the shock of what happened this past weekend on our farm.
I don’t know if the trauma of caring for an animal so closely that literally every moment is filled with them, -their breathing, their movements, their improvements, their subtle decline- and then watching the life leave the eyes of that animal as it falls to the ground after standing so bravely in hope is something I’ll ever be able to fully process.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk outside like I did this morning and not cry in grief when I see reminders of him on every inch of our barnyard. This morning it was the indent in the thick bed of straw that was the same size and shape of a miniature horse and was situated in the exact spot where Beau’s handsome head fell when he died.
I don’t know if I will.
The grief is so deep, this saying goodbye too soon to a friend of your heart…when you didn’t even know they were going to leave.
My daughter, -exhausted and processing our weekend like her pony did, stoickly, when I told our flower-bringing friend that the whole barnyard has shifted on end with the loss of one little-but-mighty pony- she said “Mama, it’s kind of like the universe. Everything effects everything else. One little change makes the whole universe different.”
Yes baby.
That’s exactly what it’s like.
One little pony…and the loss of him…
It makes the whole universe different.
*
And it’s only been twenty-four hours since he left us but I know this for sure: our farm, and our hearts…
They’ll never be the same.
Then thundered the horses’ hooves—
galloping, galloping go his mighty steeds.
Judges 5:22
In loving memory of Beau, a brave and strong and courageous pony.
2000-2016
