Month: June 2020

My Old Horse

Buzzy and I have been good friends for 20 years. I rescued him from the harness racetrack in Saratoga as he was actually on his way to a can of dogfood. He was 8 and robust then, he’s 30 and tired now.

We don’t have too much more time together, but we’ve had a glorious ride! Crazy times, fun times, scary times, adventures, sickness, and more. Our bond was one of sickness and health when his jaw was broken after another horse kicked him. It had to be wired back together surgically, and he then got salmonella from the whole experience. I spent nights lying with him in his stall. An IV bag was slung over the stall door, and I desperately held his exhausted head in my hands, willing him to live. Despite blood like sludge and impossible white cell counts, just like my vet said, this was a horse that had life in his eyes, however dim it might be. Life won!

I could fill a book with our times together, and as I write this, I think I’ll do just that. But in the meantime, this is a photo taken yesterday of my boy he stretched his neck to get that last carrot in the bag.

Alone, Together

Life has not been much different for us during this pandemic. We are solitary souls who enjoy each other’s presence even though we relish our separate spaces in our home. Still, knowing he is in that other room is soothing. We are well suited in that way. I am an only child and grew up in near seclusion and he is deaf, living in a world of near silence. Most of our communication is unspoken. I know embarrassingly little of sign language, and he now has a cochlear implant that doesn’t respond well to voices. (One downside of the pandemic is he has not been able to see the doc for an adjustment). But we manage and have comfort in our distinct yet conjoined worlds.

Despite our cocooning in our cozy little home, I feel strangely merged with the outside world. It is a scary world, but also a hopeful one. Fear comes in the form of the white House and the resident monster that lives there. Hope comes in the form of the hundreds of thousands who have watched a man die unjustly and come forth throughout the nation to protest his death, and that of all black lives who have been handled cruelly based on bias and prejudice.

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