My article is the cover story of this Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine:

Beasts of Burden: What happens to thoroughbred racehorses after their retirement

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. And I realize I should write now about Haiti or Afghanistan or Iraq or the Democratic Republic of Congo—or any of the other hundreds of places in the world where death lurks in every corner. But what’s actually been preoccupying me lately is the death of horses. And I want to say right here that I believe the death of a human being—whether hundreds of thousands or one—is more tragic than the death of an animal. But I also believe that whenever a soul leaves a body—whether that body is two-legged or four-legged, or crawls or runs or slithers or flies—there is a mourning. It means a subtraction from the sum total of life in the world, and I grieve for the loss. I feel this way even when I kill bugs.

So the reason I’m so preoccupied with horse death lately is my friend Stephanie in Charlottesville called a few weeks ago and told me, through a voice choked with anguished tears, that the vet would be coming in a few days to put down Dee Dee.

Dee Dee was my first horse. I don’t want to bore you with the details of how Dee Dee came to be my first horse and then came to be my friend Stephanie’s horse, so let give you an abbreviated version: Shortly after we moved to northern Virginia from New Mexico, it was clear that Dee Dee, who by this time was 24 years old, was ready to retire. As luck would have it, one of my best friends from high school, Stephanie, lived just three hours south of us on five beautiful acres, and was looking for a horse to do some light trail riding and be a safe first horse for her two sons. I offered her Dee Dee. She took her.

When Stephanie called to tell me Dee Dee was going to be put down, I wasn’t surprised. She had just turned 29 years old, which puts her, in human years, solidly in her mid- to late-80s. Few horses live that long. I last saw Dee Dee in November, when we went to visit Stephanie and her family for the weekend. Dee Dee still looked remarkable for her age, but it was clear she was declining. She had lost weight and was losing her eyesight. When she would walk, I could tell her hind legs were stiff and likely hurting. Stephanie and I talked about it and I told her if she was still my horse, I would have her euthanized now, while she was still relatively healthy and happy. The alternative was to risk a catastrophic event—colic or a fall on the ice and broken pelvis—that would force the issue and put her through unnecessary trauma and pain. The fact was, she couldn’t live much longer. It was better to give her a peaceful, pain-free death.

Stephanie agreed in theory, but as the person who had to make that very real decision, it was torture. She had a horse who, by all measures, seemed okay. How could she make the decision to end her life?

***

Dee Dee was, quite simply, an exceptional horse. I’ve ridden probably fifty horses in my lifetime, and I’ve never known one who was as kind, trusting, and willing as Dee Dee. She took me over my first fence. She carried me over miles of trails. She would be the guest horse for anyone who came to visit. She would give pony rides to my nieces and nephews. She taught Dave how to ride. She was the first horse both of my kids ever rode.

And yet none of that really describes why she was exceptional. This is just what she did, not who she was. The essence of her was much greater than that…

Our property in New Mexico was bordered by a narrow, fairly deep irrigation ditch. The only way to get off the property was to either drive across the cattle guard that lay across it, or walk across a small, very old, very rickety footbridge that was about eight feet long and only three feet wide. Within a few days of Dee Dee’s arrival in New Mexico (from California, her home state), we decided to take her across the footbridge. This was a really bad idea. The bridge was barely strong enough (or wide enough) for a full-grown human to cross safely, much less a half-ton horse. But I was stupid and didn’t realize this, so I led her across it. She hesitated, but trusted me and followed. The bridge held.

The way back, however, was different. Once again I crossed first and once again she hesitated. Once again I encouraged her to follow me, and once again she did. But this time, the second her hind legs were on the bridge, Dave and I heard a crack. The wood buckled and broke to pieces under her feet. She fell into the ditch. She managed to pull her front legs onto the other side of the bank, but her hind legs were caught. For a frantic minute, she struggled to pull herself out. She snorted and dug her front hooves into the dirt, but kept losing her footing. The whites ringed her eyes. I dug my own heels into the ground and leaned back on the lead rope that was attached to her halter, hoping if I could bring her head far enough forward, she’d have enough weight in front to pull herself out. I pulled; she continued to scramble for purchase. Finally, she lunged forward and dragged herself out of the ditch. I was relieved, but as she walked away, she hopped on three legs, refusing to put any weight on her left hind. I looked under her to see a deep cut on the inside of her thigh and blood running down her leg.

We called the vet, who drove out to the farm to look at it and assured us the cut wasn’t bad. She would need a few weeks off for it to heal, but no muscles were torn. She wouldn’t need stitches. Still, it was clear she was in pain and I felt terrible that I was responsible for it. After the vet left, I stood with Dee Dee for a good while, my face pressed into her neck, whispering my apologies. Every instinct in Dee Dee told her not to cross that bridge—but she ignored them and crossed because I asked her to.

A few weeks later, after she was healed, and after we had built a strong, solid, wide bridge with rails that the horses could cross, I led Dee Dee up the driveway to it. As we approached, she stopped and stretched out her long neck and snorted at it. I stepped onto the bridge and told her, “Come on, girl. It’s okay. I promise.” She took one hesitant step, and then another, until all four feet were on the bridge. She stood there for a moment, and then tentatively walked across it.

This was the essence of Dee Dee: her willingness to trust the people around her again and again, even after they’d betrayed her. But she did it with a certain dignity. She didn’t follow blindly. Rather, she had the air of a monarch who bends to the will of her subjects because she knows her duty is to serve.

***

Stephanie called me the afternoon Dee Dee was put down. “She’s gone,” she told me quietly. It was clear she had been crying, but it wasn’t the anguished sobs of her earlier phone call. It was a cry of grief, unadorned and unburdened.

She told me how, a few hours earlier, when the vet came and inserted the first syringe to sedate Dee Dee and the second syringe to send her into an irreversible anesthetized sleep, Dee Dee quietly bent her legs and laid down with the dignity that had accompanied her the span of her long life. She told me how peaceful it was and how she could feel her spirit leave her. She told me how it was not so much a death as a moving on, a transition from one place to the next.

I’ve written a lot here about my agnosticism and reluctance to believe in things I can’t see, including heaven. Yet for some reason, whenever an animal I’ve loved has died, I have no problem imagining it in paradise. I can easily imagine Dee Dee in a field with endless green grass and clover, in a herd where she is most definitely the boss, perhaps with a foal at her side. There are no flies in this place and no predators. Mostly, she spends her time grazing and galloping with the herd and taking long naps in the sun. Occasionally she jumps a log on the ground because she remembers how much fun that used to be. And she eats the apples and carrots the kids bring to her, and she’ll even take them for a ride every now and then.

But even as I write that, I doubt it’s true. It’s not that Dee Dee’s spirit doesn’t live on. It does. But it’s not in a place. Where Dee Dee lives is in the lives of all the people who rode her throughout the years. All the people, like myself, she ferried over their first fence—giving we earthbound mortals the sense that, for a moment, we were flying. All those she took exploring over unknown hills and across vast deserts. All those who rode her in horse shows and won ribbons that they hung on her bridle and could see in her a pride that told them on some level, she knew she had won. Where Dee Dee lives is in all those who asked her to trust them, and felt her whisper a quiet “yes” in reply.

Yesterday Dave and Noah went to the Redskins game, which meant Gwyneth and I had a full day to ourselves to spend however we pleased. We decided to go to the barn where I board Chama The All-Powerful and Extraordinary Thoroughbred (as I believe he refers to himself when I’m not around). Now, before everyone gets all up in my kitchen about the fact that I took my daughter to the barn on this special day together, I want you to know that it was her choice. Granted, I could have steered her to something else. I could have suggested we go ice skating or shopping or to the seventh circle of hell (oops—that’s redundant…I already said “shopping”). But I didn’t. She suggested the barn and I jumped at the chance because (and it won’t surprise you to find out my motives were selfish) I had to shave off half of Chama’s fur.

Quick explanation (and for my non-horse-loving readers, don’t bail…this post isn’t about horses, I swear): In the winter, horses grow thick, furry coats to protect them from the elements. But if you exercise a horse during the winter months, they get super sweaty, which puts them at risk of getting a chill and getting sick and costing you a small fortune in vet bills and antibiotics. So every winter I do what’s called a “trace clip” and shave the bottom half of Chama’s body. The top half stays furry to provide some protection.

It’s a long process. First you have to bathe the horse. Then you have to let the horse dry (which takes a couple hours). Then you have to clip the horse, which can take, depending on your skill and the horse’s willingness to stand still (both of which are limited, in my case), anywhere from one to two hours. So you’re essentially committing a full day to do this. And it’s rare that I have a full six to eight hours to spare hanging out at the barn. So I saw this day with Gwyneth as the perfect opportunity to have some quality mother-daughter bonding time while checking this chore off my list of things to do. This is called multitasking, or killing two birds with one stone, or being self-serving.

I woke up yesterday and checked the forecast for rural Maryland. At 9 a.m. it was 25 degrees. It was expected to warm up to a balmy 35. Oh, and it had snowed about six inches the previous day. Not quite ideal weather for taking your five-year-old on an all-day excursion to the countryside. But the sun was shining and the wind was calm, so I figured it couldn’t be all bad.

I dressed Wyn as if she were headed out on Shackelton’s polar expedition: tights, leggings, pants, boots, undershirt, overshirt, sweater, coat, gloves, hat. Then, anticipating these all might get wet, I brought a second pair of tights and leggings and pants and shirts and gloves and hat.

So we got to the barn and our first order of business was to take the dogs for a walk through surprisingly deep snow (I’m terrible at estimating these sorts of things, but I’d swear it was a foot deep, not six inches). Wyn’s boots were almost immediately soaked through. Despite all my planning, for some reason I forgot to bring her waterproof snow boots and instead brought her faux-suede Uggs from Target, which are as effective at repelling water as the Secret Service is at repelling unwanted guests from the White House…ba-da-bum (God, I suck at topical humor). So Gwyneth’s feet were already wet and cold, and it was only 10:30.

But she didn’t complain. At all. In fact, she didn’t complain once the entire day.

And I’m not sure why…because it wasn’t what I would describe as a really fun day for a kid. Giving a horse a bath in 30-degree weather and then spending a couple hours shaving him isn’t, I don’t think, on most kids’ wish lists. And Gwyneth isn’t even a horse-crazy kid. She likes them, but she’s not one of those girls (like I was at her age) who would sleep in the barn and eat grain if given the opportunity.

Maybe she didn’t complain because I let her get hot chocolate and pancakes for lunch at the restaurant about 20 minutes from the barn, where we went while Chama dried off after his bath. Or maybe because we listened to Hannah Montana the whole way to the barn (folks, that’s 45 minutes of listening to, “All right! Come on, everybody! Woo!”) and the High School Musical soundtrack the whole way to and from the restaurant (that’s another 40 minutes of listening to, “Woo! All right! Here we go, everybody!”). Or maybe because being smack in the middle of horse country on a cold, sunny day following a big snow is probably one of the most gloriously beautiful places in the world to be. Seriously. I felt like I was living in a Currier and Ives painting. But I don’t think Gwyneth really noticed that as much—except when I would say, over and over again, “Look at how beautiful everything is! Do you see the snow on the trees? Doesn’t it look like flowers?”

After Chama was clipped and Wyn and I swept up the small mountain of fur that had accumulated on the floor, I tacked him up for her to ride. Both Noah and Gwyneth have ridden Chama several times before. Although he can be a hotheaded nut job with me, he’s always exceptionally quiet and calm with the kids. I think he knows they’re small and vulnerable—and that I would put him in a can of Alpo if he ever hurt them. Thus whenever I put them on his back, he dutifully walks in little circles and over poles on the ground (that he usually spooks at when I ride) as if he was a hired pony at a kid’s birthday party. I walk alongside him the whole time in case he misbehaves, but he has never even so much flung his head when the kids are astride.

So I helped Wyn put her little pink helmet on over her pigtailed head, and then placed her on top of Chama. I handed her the reins while I held onto the lead rope and we walked through the snow, down the hill, to the indoor arena. After about 15 minutes there, I led Chama out of the arena and up the road toward the barn, with Wyn still in the saddle. We came to the top of the hill, where there’s a turn in the road and a row of horse trailers, which partially obstructs the view of the rest of the road. Just then, another boarder and her horse came down the road, appearing suddenly from behind the trailers. At this, Chama forgot that he had my five-year-old daughter on top of him and the whole Alpo thing and spooked, leaping sideways. It wasn’t a huge spook, but big enough to unseat Gwyneth. I turned around just in time to see her sliding off his side. Chama is 16.1 hands, which means his back is five feet, five inches tall. This is the height from which my daughter was falling headfirst to the ground.

Luckily, it was a slow fall—more of a slide than a crash. And by the time she hit the ground, it was her bottom, not her head, that impacted. I think I did something really calm like shout, “OH MY GOD!” at the top of my lungs.

She stood up, looking a little surprised by the whole thing. “My pants are muddy,” she said.

“That’s fine,” I said, breathless. “Are you all right?”

“My coat is muddy, too.”

“That’s okay. Are you all right?” I asked again.

She looked at me a little puzzled about why I would be so concerned. “I’m fine,” she said, nonplussed.

I took a deep breath. “Okay. You really should get back on Chama,” I said, expecting resistance. “I know it’s scary to fall, but you don’t want to end your ride being scared. So let’s get back on and walk back to the barn. He’ll be okay. I’ll make sure it won’t happen again.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Okay,” she said, reaching up for me to lift her back on.

I did and she rode the rest of the way back, chattering away as if nothing had happened: “Mommy, tomorrow I’m going to wear my blue dress to school if it’s clean. Did you do the laundry today, Mommy? Because if I can’t wear the blue dress I’ll wear the pink one. But I need to wear my leggings and those are muddy, so maybe I should wear pants instead…” and so on and so forth.

We arrived in front of the barn safely. As I lifted Gwyneth from the saddle, I realized that my hands were shaking. “My goodness,” I said, “that really scared me.”

“What?” she asked.

“You falling off.”

“Oh.” Then she laughed. “I’m the kid and I wasn’t scared. You’re the grown up and you’re scared?”

I wanted to say, “Yes, because I understand words like ‘head trauma’ and ‘spinal cord injury.’” Instead I just said, “You’re right. It’s scarier for grown ups.”

The sun was beginning to set. I put Chama’s blanket on him, fed him his dinner and then put his halter on to lead him down to the field he calls home. To do this requires walking a ways down another hill that’s quite steep and the snow quite deep. I didn’t want Gwyneth’s feet to get wetter than they already were, so I asked her to stay at the top of the hill, by the barn.

As I descended the hill, I looked at my watch. It was 4:30. We’d been at the barn for six hours. The temperature was dropping. I was cold to my core. I could only imagine how cold Gwyneth was. I opened the gate to the field and took the halter off Chama, who went galloping toward his friends on the far side. I started the trek back toward the barn, anxious to get back to Gwyneth and get her in the heated car. Just then I looked up to the top of the hill and stopped. There Gwyneth was: running back and forth through the snow, her arms outstretched like she was flying, her little body silhouetted against the sky that had now turned a deep indigo, her pigtails trailing behind her. She was not a little girl at that point. She was a spirit. She was the snow and the wind and the sky—bold and fearless.

That’s my girl, I thought.

I was really hoping to write a nice long, thoughtful post today, but real work (you know, the kind I get paid for) got in the way. So I just want to give you this:

When you’re first learning to jump a horse–or, more accurately, ride a horse that jumps over fences–you’re taught to always look beyond the jump. The old horseman’s adage is that you go where your eyes go. Look on the ground, and more than likely that’s where you’ll end up. I’ve been riding and jumping for more than ten years now, yet I’m always amazed how often I still find myself riding to a fence with my eyes trained directly on it.

This morning I was cross-country schooling my horse, which means we went to a field with a lot of logs and ditches and banks and water and practiced jumping them all. Rebecca, my trainer extraordinaire, was there, and noted after Chama and I cleared a few fences that he and I were getting stuck right before them. He would jump the fences (except for one small log that he could literally step over…I think he deemed it beneath him) but not after first slowing down on his approach and peering at it, as if to say, “Really? We’re going to jump THAT?” As a result, he wasn’t so much jumping the fences as crawling over them.

“You need to really ride him to the fence,” Rebecca said. “Get aggressive. Don’t let him slow down to look at it.”

And I realized that one of the reasons he was slowing down to look at the fences was because I was looking at them. There’s always part of me when I’m jumping cross-country that’s hesitant. It’s a blast, but it’s also a little scary, and part of my brain likes to remind the other part that the ground is hard and unforgiving, so I better be careful. But the counter-intuitive truth of riding is that as soon as you’re “careful”–as soon as you back off and don’t completely commit to riding your horse–is when bad things happen. I can remember every time I’ve fallen when jumping, and every single time it’s because I got scared and didn’t ride as aggressively as I should have. The horse relies on his rider for confidence. If I ride Chama to a fence with any doubt, he can feel it–and reacts accordingly. You can almost hear him saying, “Well, if you’re not sure we should jump it, then there’s no way in hell I’m doing it.”

So on my approach to my next fence, I did what I learned over a decade ago: I kept my eyes up. I rode beyond the fence. I didn’t even look at the fence I was jumping, but to the hillside in front of us. I kept my legs tight around his barrel and squeezed with as much certainty as I could muster. And Chama responded in kind: flying over the fences without so much as glancing down. He landed on the other side, stretched out his stride and galloped on to the next one.

I think of how often I get stuck in life. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t feel stuck in my abilities as a writer, as a mom, as a wife.  The challenge of making each of those things work, and work well, can feel utterly impossible sometimes. So I find myself staring down at the obstacle in front of me wondering how the hell I’m going to get over it–and do I really want to? It’s so hard. Wouldn’t it be easier to just pull the shades and call it a day?

Someone recently told me that to get from a bad place to a good one, you need the creativity to imagine beyond what’s in front of you. You need to be able to envision a new reality. I thought of this on the drive home from the barn today. Of how, in the end, life really comes down to being able to look beyond the jump and ride to it–confidently, even if you’re scared shitless the whole time. Because it’s only then that you get the sheer joy of feeling a stride stretched out in a full gallop beneath you, carrying you along with the wind to the next discovery.

This morning, my friend forwarded me a news clip about how women are less happy than men. This according to several new reports (here’s one) analyzing data that tracked happiness trends among women over the last 35 years. It seems all the choices feminism has given us since the early 1970s have resulted in us feeling not a greater sense of freedom, but more burdened.

But the real kicker is the consistent finding that motherhood makes women less happy. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how much money you make, or your race: having children is a major downer.

Awesome.

Actually, this doesn’t surprise me. And I doubt it surprises most mothers. While I feel like my life is richer and more interesting because of my kids, I don’t necessarily feel that it’s happier. The fact is, parenting is exhausting, guilt-ridden, often unrewarding work—particularly in a perfectionist culture that reminds us hourly of how important it is that our children be the centers of our universe, and how we’re failing them if they’re not.

A scan of the magazine covers in the grocery store checkout line is proof enough: For every headline telling mothers “Give YOURSELF a Time Out” or “10 Ways to Take Care of YOU,” another dozen warn us of the dangers of not living a child-centered life. “Put yourself first and watch what happens,” is the not-so-subtle message we’re bombarded with daily.  The “what happens” ranges from ruining any chance your child has of getting into an Ivy League school to raising a serial killer.

No wonder we’re depressed. I know women who, with the birth of their children, gave up nearly everything that used to give them pleasure: fulfilling careers, yoga, soccer on weekends, lunch with friends, sex.  We’re told that by putting our children first we’re better mothers who are bound to have happier, more successful children—shouldn’t that be reward enough? I don’t buy it.

Before I got pregnant, my life was about as near-perfect as I could have hoped. I had a career that I loved; a great marriage; and my horse hobby (I promise I’ll try to keep the horse talk to a minimum–but it’s relevant, I swear). I was ambivalent about having children, but Dave’s certainty tipped the scales and at age 31, I was pregnant. The second people found out I was expecting, I was told how drastically my life would change: I wouldn’t have time to ride anymore. I probably wouldn’t have the money. And even if I had both, fear of getting injured or, God forbid, killed would overshadow my love of riding. (I compete in the same sport that critically injured Christopher Reeve.)  I met these warnings with scoffs and shrugged shoulders. As a die-hard equestrian, telling me I would no longer ride was akin to telling Amy Winehouse she would give up pills.

But much to my surprise, they were right.  For the three years during my pregnancies and after my children were born I hardly rode and didn’t compete at all. Part of it was due to lack of time. Part of it was lack of money (I had to jettison my more time-consuming—and lucrative—freelance writing projects right at the time I acquired bank-account draining childcare expenses). And part was concern for safety. But mostly it was because this voice echoed through my head telling me that I was a mother now; things changed; horses would have to wait.

Through it all, I was miserable.  I was angry. I was resentful. I resented my husband for wanting children in the first place. I resented society for putting such a huge burden on mothers. And I resented myself for having a hobby that seemed antithetical to being a mom (why couldn’t I have a passion for knitting?).  But when I began to resent my kids, I knew something had to change.

I sat down with Dave and told him that I had to ride again—really, seriously ride. I knew we had a lot of demands on our time and finances, but whatever it cost to get me in the saddle regularly again would be nothing compared to the amount of money we were going to spend on Xanax if we didn’t. Perhaps it was the desperation in my eyes, or the fact that I, who cry a maximum of once a year, was sobbing pitifully, but for whatever reason, he agreed.

And I’m happy to say that, for the last four years, a week hasn’t gone by that I haven’t ridden at least once.

When I tell other women about my horse habit, I sometimes get a heart-felt “Good for you!”—usually from older women who lament not doing more for themselves when their children were young.  But just as often I get a backhanded “I wish I had time to do that” or “Aren’t you lucky?” Yes, I am lucky. I’m lucky to have a husband who’s supportive enough, a job that’s flexible enough, and money enough to pursue my passion.  But the implication that comes with these comments is that I’m spoiled, selfish and, ultimately, a bad mother. I would be lying if I said sometimes I didn’t wonder if they were right.

But then I remember what life was like when I wasn’t riding, and ask myself how that mother—bitter, resentful, angry—could be better for my children than the mother I am now? Are we really better parents if we abandon our pleasures for the sake of our children? Instead, shouldn’t we show our children, through example, that a full, meaningful life is about pursuing and nurturing what you love, including—but not limited to—our kids?

Whatever the answer, I know that joy should not be a casualty of motherhood. And I’m betting that if more women were willing to ask themselves, “What do I want?” and then give it to themselves—guilt free—being a mom wouldn’t result in so much unhappiness.

The other day I was walking out the barn to ride and Gwyneth asked me why I always rode horses.

“Because I like it,” I said.

She thought for a moment. “Oh,” she said, and then called after me with a smile, “Have fun, Mommy!”

I smiled back.  “I will,” I told her. You bet I will.

Usually I try not to talk too much about horses because when I do, people’s eyes tend to glaze over or they change the subject really quickly or they say things like, “Oh, gosh, I’d love to hear more but I’m late for my weekly toothpick-injury support group. We’ll catch up later, okay?”

This is the same reason I try not to write too much about horses. I can already see the small readership I’ve amassed over the last few weeks reading the word “horses” and immediately clicking the “back” button to YouTube to watch Jill and Kevin’s wedding entrance again, or that nine-year-old kid scoring the hockey goal, or the cat playing the piano.

But what’s the point of having a blog if I can’t write about the things I want to write about? So bear with me.

For those who don’t know, I have a thoroughbred named Chama who used to be a racehorse until he had an injury that ended his racing career. So I got him for free from a woman who rescues horses like this and retrained him (under the tutelage of my trainer and all-around expert horsewoman Rebecca) to compete in the sport of eventing. Let me start by giving you a brief history of the sport…

Kidding.

But briefly, eventing involves three phases: dressage (riding precise patterns), stadium jumping (jumping fences in an arena), and cross-country jumping (galloping over natural terrain and jumping logs and ditches and into water and so on). Throughout my childhood, I dreamed of competing in this sport. I was a horse-crazy kid without regular access to a horse or lessons. Instead I would spend hours pouring over picture books of riders doing these exact things and dream of one day being in the saddle. Now, I am. And I absolutely love it, probably more than anything else in the world. If I could have one wish (after world peace and a cure for cancer—ok, no, not really), it would be to compete in the Olympics. I spend an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about this. I’ve even scripted the entire NBC Sports montage:

[Background music: “Wow” by Snow Patrol]

Bob Costas: “A racehorse [cut to image of Chama galloping through a field] with a career-ending injury. A Nobel-prize winning writer [cut to image of me, except I look less like me and more like Megan Fox] with a dream. And now, that dream has come true…”

And so on and so forth. Sadly, the chances of this happening are highly unlikely. I compete at the lowest levels of the sport—which is difficult enough. Here’s me and Chama:

Now here’s an Olympian:

I can’t imagine any circumstances that would propel me to the upper echelons and the Olympic team. Ok, no, I can imagine it. It involves befriending the British royal family who see in me two things: potential and lots of spunk, so they offer to bankroll my equestrian aspirations—buying me a full stable of talented horses. Meanwhile, some sort of bizarre nuclear mishap results in giving me heretofore undiscovered talents as a rider.

Yeah, I think that’s my best shot at making the Olympic team.

But no matter. Even if I don’t make the team, I still love toiling away at the lower levels…the discipline it requires, the sense of accomplishment I get in helping bring along a horse that, when I got him, didn’t even know how to steer and now leaps over fences.

So yesterday I competed Chama in our first show of the year. For those of you not on the east coast, let me take a moment to describe the weather. Better yet, here’s a little something you can do to actually experience yesterday’s weather (and, in fact, the weather every day last week beginning Tuesday): 1) Get into the shower. 2) Turn the water on full cold (you want it about 40 degrees). 3) Stand under it. To add to the effect, turn off the lights in the bathroom, except for maybe a nightlight, so it’s really depressingly dim. Add to it two dogs looking at you plaintively wondering when you’re going to take them for a walk and two kids with cabin fever saying, “I’m bored,” over and over again.

Good. So, this was the weather I woke up to at 5:45 a.m. Saturday morning. I peeled myself out of bed, pulled on my riding pants and turtleneck, and then put jeans over my riding pants and two sweaters and a jacket over my turtleneck, and stumbled out into the dark (dark dark) to make the 45-minute drive to the farm where my horse is boarded. There I walked into a saturated field to get my saturated horse and led him into the barn to feed him his grain and try to brush off at least one layer of the mud that caked his legs.

Chama looked none too happy about all this. Not that I was surprised; Chama had looked none too happy about most things recently. Simply put, Chama had been a consistent pain in the ass for the last two weeks or more. Just two days before, it took me an hour-and-a-half to get him to walk past a ladder (yes, ladder) without him spinning and rearing and trying to dump me on the ground because, you know, ladders are soooooo scary.

While I was in the tack room collecting the hundreds of pieces of gear I would need to take with me (to give you an idea of the overhead required in getting ready for a horse show: imagine going skiing, sailing, and mountain climbing all in one day and all the equipment you’d need to make that happen…then add a 1,000-pound animal to it), Chama slipped out of the halter that tethered him to the stall and went trotting down the barn aisle. Not a good way to start the day.

I collected him and tied him again and went back into the tack room, at which time another boarder walked in. She was not competing in the show, but was coming along with her young horse just to expose him to the sights and sounds of a horse show. She looked at me and said, “We’re fucking insane.”

“No,” I told her. “I paid an entry fee [which would not be refunded if I didn’t go to the show]. You are fucking insane.”

I mean, she was going just because. And, to top it off, she got back the day before from a two-weeklong business trip to Russia. If I were her, I would have woken up, taken one look out the window and immediately gone back to bed. But horse people are a hardy lot, and she’s a good sport who didn’t want to bail at the last minute, so there she was, at the barn ridiculously early, looking way more chipper than she should for being in a time zone on the other side of the world.

She and I led our respective horses to the trailer to load. Her young horse walked right on. Chama balked and tried to run away. This is going to be a stellar day, I thought.

The collective efforts of four able-bodied adults were finally able to get him on the trailer and we drove to the show grounds about 30 minutes away. We pulled up to the parking attendant, an older man in a raincoat who looked cold and mad. He leaned into the window of the truck, regarded us all suspiciously, and said, “You’re crazy.” Just then Chama kicked from inside the trailer so hard the truck shook. Oh yeah, a stellar day.

I’m sure the suspense is killing you, so I’ll cut to the chase: It turned out that is was a stellar day. I mean, don’t get me wrong…it was miserable. I have never been so wet in my life (and I’ll say it so you don’t have to: “That’s what she said.”). Everything I was wearing—everything I owned—was soaked through to the core. During the two jumping phases, when the rain was heaviest, I couldn’t feel my hands holding the reins. Then there was the whole fear factor: Huge pools of water had collected in front of the jumps. The grass on the cross-country course was slick. Galloping a horse to fences on footing like this—when the risk of the horse slipping and falling is high—is a bit scary, bringing to mind phrases like “spinal cord injury” and “colostomy bag” and “funeral planning.”

But the amazing thing was, through it all, Chama was perfect. The rebel-without-a-cause I’d been riding for the last two weeks went on holiday and was replaced with a quiet, compliant horse that was more than happy to do his job. He didn’t look twice at the huge puddles of water. The sloppy footing didn’t faze him. To my delight, we placed second in the show—a personal best.

But the best part of the day was when we were running our cross-country course. We were at the back end of the course, far away from the other competitors, and galloping over a hillside. For a moment I looked around me and noticed the red and gold leaves of the trees against the gray sky and how beautiful they were—and I couldn’t believe I’d gone all day without noticing that. And then I noticed that the slanting rain looked like falling stars. And then I heard Chama’s rhythmic snorting as he ran, and watched the steam billow from his nostrils. And for a moment, I felt like the world was empty except for the two of us. And I thought of how I had dreamed of this as a little girl—of doing this exact thing—and here I was, doing it. And I thought of the man tending the parking lot telling me I was crazy, and I thought how wrong he was. I was the sanest person on the planet. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect way to spend the day.

I like to think of myself as self-aware. I mean, I know myself—the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I’m not ashamed to lay it all out there.

Of course, it’s total bullshit. I’m not nearly as self-aware as I think I am. And, just to prove that point, every few weeks or days or hours, something creeps up that reminds me of my uncanny ability to lie to myself.

For instance, last night I admitted to myself for the first time in my life that I am afraid of the dark. I always have been. I’ve never liked being in the dark, especially alone. As a kid, I would switch off the light in my room and make a running leap from the doorway to my bed, lest the monster or (later in life) serial killer who lie in wait under it reach out a slimy hand to grab my ankle. This wasn’t helped by the fact that my father, from as far back as I can remember, would ask anytime we were in a dark place, “What would you do if a giant tentacle reached out and grabbed you?” Seriously. Who asks a five-year-old that?

And don’t get me started on swimming in the dark. If there is indeed a hell (and if there is, I’ve got a direct flight), I will spend eternity treading water in a dark sea. Growing up, we had a pool, and even as a teenager I couldn’t swim in it without the light on. I would tell myself it was irrational. It was a pool, for Christ’s sake. But I couldn’t get out of my mind the image of something lurking beneath the opaque surface, ready to pull me under the second my gangly legs were suspended.

When I go backpacking, anytime I have to step away from the campfire at night to go into the bushes to pee, I have to do everything I can to remind myself I’m safe. Mountain lions don’t hang out near camps, I tell myself. Every other animal is more afraid of me than I am of it. Serial killers aren’t usually backpacking enthusiasts.

I remember reading a story in National Geographic years ago written by a man who spent time camped deep in the jungle somewhere in the world where monkeys or apes or some other primate lived (short on details, I know). One night he stepped away from camp and looked into the blackness of the jungle. It was so dark, he literally couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. As he stood there trying to peer into oblivion, he felt the palm of an animal gently rest upon his face. There he stood, unable to see anything, and a freaking ape was, unbeknownst to him, standing a few feet away and decided he’d check him out by touching his face?! Believe me when I tell you this: there is not enough toilet paper in the world to clean up what would have happened had I been that man.

This summer we went backpacking in New Mexico, and when I made my pre-bedtime journey into the darkness, I tried to get one of my dogs to come with me. Both stayed curled in their beds in the tent and looked at me with faces that said, “Are you kidding? You want me to go out there? In the dark?” Smart dogs. So I warily walked off by myself, tentatively placing one foot in front of the other, my senses on high alert. When I got far enough away from camp, I started to pull down my pants and then heard something scurry off in the bushes. I hastily pulled my pants up again and ran back to camp, deciding that I could wait to pee. How bad could a kidney infection be, anyway?

Despite all this, I’d never really named my fear. I never wanted to admit it. I’ve always considered myself quite brave and here I am, afraid of the dark? What am I…four?

So last night I decided to go for a moonlit ride on my horse. Alone. I’ve probably done this about a half-dozen times. But only once before had I gone by myself. Last night the sun was setting at 6:45 and the moon was rising right about the same time—a full moon. It was going to be absolutely beautiful and I didn’t want to miss it.

By the time I got Chama from the field and tacked him up, the sun had already set. The moon hadn’t yet risen above the hills, so when we set out it was quite dark. I felt the tiniest of pits in my stomach. I reminded myself that horses can see very well in the dark. Besides, we would be riding on a trail both of us knew. There would be no surprises.

Lots of bad things can happen when you’re riding a horse. As prey animals, they’re a paranoid lot. Millions of years of evolution have taught them that most of the world is, indeed, out to get them. Every instinct tells them: “If you think something might be wrong, run. Run as fast you can and don’t look back.” I’ve been riding a long time and, if I don’t say so myself, I’m pretty good at it. So it’s not something I really worry about. But, kind of like you know every time you get in a car, there’s a good chance you could get in a wreck, my horse’s ability to kill me is always in the back of my mind. And the thought of Chama hurling through space in the dark with me clinging to his back (or, more likely, flying off his back) didn’t sound like very much fun. I imagined myself lying in a bloody heap on the ground, in the darkness, reaching for the iPhone in my pocket to do a final Facebook status update before I died.

I thought of this as we embarked on the little road that led away from the farm. As soon as we got past the buildings, we descended a steep hill that leads to a stream crossing. At the bottom of the hill, I saw something move. I tensed up, but Chama didn’t, so we continued to walk on. Then his head swung to the right. About ten feet from us I could make out the silhouette of a deer, regarding us as intensely as we regarded it. We walked past, both giving the other an uneasy eye. But that was it. Chama was fine. I was fine. I could totally do this.

But seeing the deer got me thinking…it’s hunting season. There’s hunting on the property where I was riding. Did hunters hunt at night? I doubted it, but the fact that I was wearing a black jacket and black boots and a black helmet riding my black horse in the black night didn’t put my mind at ease. We skirted a field and then took a turn into a small wooded area where I’d seen hunters before. I started talking, loudly, “Hello! If anyone’s out there, I’m a person! I’m on a horse! Don’t shoot us!” And, then, for good measure, I started singing. Chama actually turned his head and looked back at me at one point as if to ask, “What in the hell are you doing?” Even my horse is embarrassed by me.

We emerged from the woods and saw that the moon had risen. It was as beautiful as I’d hoped, sitting perched just above the hill, its full face smudged with the wisp of a cloud. The light helped me relax a little. And I reminded myself that Chama had actually been quite relaxed the whole ride. So I loosened my grip on the reins and felt my shoulders drop a couple inches away from my ears.

About forty minutes later, we were back at the barn. Alive. Unhurt. Emboldened a bit by our experience.

I could tell you here how much it was worth pushing my fear aside to do the ride. I could tell you how the wheat fields shone silver in the moonlight. I could tell you how the stream we crossed looked like onyx until Chama’s hoof cracked the surface. I could tell you about the transfer of trust that takes place between horse and rider when darkness falls: I, who always ask Chama to trust me, now had to trust him. I could tell you how not being able to see made me a better rider, because I had to rely only on what I felt Chama doing underneath me, not what I saw.

All this is true. But you know what? It still scared the crap out of me. But you know what else? I’ll probably do it again. Because if I’ve lied to myself for 38 years about this, why stop now?

Yesterday was weird. A quick list of things that happened: I got gum stuck to my thighs. I got in a fight with my neighbor. I was late to a movie. I called the cops on another neighbor.

But I want to start with the movie—not about being late to it, but the movie itself, because one part is relevant to all of the above. The movie was Bright Star, Jane Campion’s beautifully realized film about the poet John Keats and his romance with his neighbor, Fannie Brawne. At one point early in the film, John and Fannie (as I think they’d like me to call them) are talking about poetry. John is trying to explain it to her and he says something along the lines of, “When you jump in a lake, you don’t do it for the sole purpose of swimming to shore. You do it to just be in the water for a while. To be immersed in it and experience water all around you.” (My apologies to both Ms. Campion and Mr. Keats for inevitably messing this up.)

Put a pin in that, because we’ll come back to it.

Ok, now we’re going to start with calling the cops on the neighbors and work our way back. (I feel less like a writer today and more like a tour guide.)

So as I was driving home from the movies last night around 10 o’clock, I turned on our street and saw, in the front yard of a house that has had many “domestic disturbances” in the past, what looked to be a woman getting beat up. I immediately called 911 and explained to them what I’d seen as I pulled into my driveway. And I learned something: you never want me as your eyewitness. “What were they wearing?” I don’t know. “Where they white, black, Hispanic?” I don’t know. “Was anyone watching?” I don’t know, but there was a car parked in front of the house with its headlights on. “What was the make and model of the car?” I don’t know. “You said it was a woman getting beat up?” I think so. I saw long hair. “And can you give me the house number again?” I think it’s 6610.

After I hung up, I realized I might have given them the wrong address. I called my friends Jon and Jen who live just two houses down from the “perps” (as I think they’d like me to call them). Jon answered the phone.

Me: “What’s your house number?”

Jon: “6610.”

Me: “Oh.”

Jon: “Why?”

Me: “You’re going to have some police officers knocking on your door in about two minutes.”

Sure enough, two minutes later I walked out my front door, and there was Jon talking to the cop. I approached and told him I’m the one who called 911. The cop asked for my information and then asked me more about what I saw (again, I’ve really got “I don’t know” down pat). Then he looked past me, down the street and said, “Here comes the cavalry.” I turned and saw six police cars driving fast down our street, all of which parked in front of my house.

And that’s all I know about that. I’m not sure what happened after the cops knocked on their door. I only know that for about a half an hour, those six cop cars stayed parked in front of my house. Now I’m just really hoping the neighbors at 6606 don’t read my blog.

Now let’s skip past the fight with my neighbor and being late to the movie (which were mostly just annoyances) and get to the gum on the thighs…

Yesterday morning I had to go to the barn where I board my horse, Chama. Usually, this is a joy—the thing I look forward to above all else. But yesterday was different. I wasn’t going to the barn because I was riding, I was going to the barn because Chama is certifiable and needs to be supervised as Doug, the farrier, puts new horseshoes on his feet. This shouldn’t be the case. A horse is taught from a very young age that he needs to stand still when someone is handling his feet. Chama apparently didn’t get the memo. He has, as Doug so aptly described, the patience of tsetse fly. He has reared up on Doug and kicked at him and tried to charge out of the stall. Farriers, it turns out, don’t enjoy the threat of brain injury, so now, once every five weeks, I have to go to the barn, and sit in a chair directly in front of Chama with a whip in my hand. The second he starts getting that devilish look in his eye, I smack the whip on the ground or, if he’s looking exceptionally devilish, on his shoulder. He behaves nicely after that.

So I get really annoyed that I have to do this (and we’re doing some training so I won’t have to do this anymore). The shoeing alone takes an hour and a half, and sometimes, as was the case yesterday, when I get there the farrier isn’t ready for Chama yet. So I had to wait an extra hour.

As I was waiting, I went to the bathroom—a porta-potty, actually. I sat down and, at the risk of providing too much detail, took the gum that I was chewing out of my mouth and dropped it between my legs and into the toilet. When I stood up to pull up my pants, I felt something sticky (go ahead and insert all your sticky thigh jokes here) and looked down to find the little ball of Stride spearmint gum strung between my thighs, like a cobweb. Or an accordion. Or gum between thighs. I should have taken this as a sign of things to come that day. A sticky day. An unexpected day. A weird day.

But something else happened as I was waiting for the farrier. I got Chama out of the field where he happily resides with two other geldings and took him to a spot of grass covered in lush green clover. It was a glorious fall day—the kind with crisp air and a cool breeze all blanketed by an impossibly warm sun. The trees haven’t changed colors yet, but the light is golden and everything glows amber as a consequence.  I sat on a bench and took off Chama’s lead rope, waiting for him to begin hungrily grazing. But he didn’t. Instead, he walked up to me and put his head in my lap. He licked my hands until they shined. Then he licked my neck. He then rested his head on the top of mine and tussled my hair with the quick twitching of his muzzle. Then he took that same twitching muzzle and inspected my pant leg. He did all this for about thirty minutes.

It’s rare that I spend time with my horse like this. Actually, it’s rare that I spend any time doing anything like this. When I’m with my horse, I’m usually riding—and training, at that. Every ride I begin by telling myself what I want to accomplish, and I spend the rest of the time on Chama’s back working toward that goal. When I’m with my kids, I’m operating within the parameters of a schedule that’s burned onto my brain: weeknights are snack, playtime, dinner, homework, showers, books, bedtime; weekends are Tae Kwon Do or ballet and then a school event or errands or a birthday party and then dinner with friends.  When I’m writing, I’m constantly watching the clock (as I am now), conscious that I can’t spend too much time on one thing or I won’t have time for the other things I have to write.

In other words, I jump in the lake and immediately start swimming to shore. But for those thirty minutes at the barn yesterday, I didn’t swim. I was forced to just stay in the water, to do nothing but experience the feeling of it all around me. To notice the amber light and the green clover and the warm breath of my horse on my neck. To realize it is in stillness that our souls are stirred. To remind myself that the noise of life is just that, noise, and it is only in silence that we hear the most clearly.