Please note: this story is fiction, with some true facts.
It was four years after I was born. My parents decided to move back to my mom’s old homestead. My dad was a lawyer and he knew how much my mom loved living on the farm. She thrived in the openness and the caring for life. After all, that was why she had become a veterinarian. My dad’s firm had a satellite office within a 45-minute drive; an easy commute he though. The read deciding factor however, was the knowledge of my mom being pregnant with my younger sister Jill.
Life in the country was quiet, serene, but far from easy. Even though we didn’t have cows, chickens or a cornfield, we had horses. My mom loved horses, and she taught both Jill and me how to ride at a very young age. We learned how to feel the rhythm, glide our body with theirs, and understand the movement of the horse’s silent musical time – to flow with the animal as one.
My favorite way to ride was bareback; here you could feel the movement of the horse’s muscles. It reminded me of riding in a smooth, high-powered convertible sports car. Both left you with memories of freedom and feeling of empowerment over the constraints of life.
Early on Mom taught Jill and me two very important lessons. First, always be aware that freedom does not travel alone; it enlists danger as a passenger. Second, sometimes the least unexpected sound can spook the horse into unpredicted movements and situations. Always expect the unexpected.
One cool spring evening a light rain was falling and the unexpected was looming around the bend. It was on this evening an engine sputtered, the muscles stopped, the phone rang. A tractor-trailer had crossed the line of the narrow, winding road that led to our farm. In an instant, my father’s life was taken.
The memory of that evening always brings tears to my eyes. Tonight was not any different, as I wiped the wetness from my cheeks.
It is the sound of Jill and my mom crying, though, that stops the running reel of film from that pain memory.
Pic credit: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_182/1188917300w1WoX1.jpg
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