Fat Little Horses

I am prying my eyes open from a deep healing sleep. I know it's nine o'clock already and all sensible people are at work and swimming in the true bath of reality and gainful normal life, but Monday is my day off anyway, so really, nothing is that out of the ordinary.

Except that I drove to Indiana on Friday and then drove back on Sunday and lived what seemed one small whole life time in between. I had drifted from Monday of last week through Thursday counting clothes and shoes into piles, baking, counting equal amounts of crackers and cookies into bags, going back and counting again, sifting through piles of laundry looking for lost socks and tights, counting again, and then finally organizing the car to be functional and, this is the word I worked over in my mind all weekend, combobulated. All the time I whispered to myself, “you're insane. You are a crazy crazy person. What on earth do you think you're doing?” Except I didn't say 'on earth' I said even that terrible word 'hell' that I try not to say out loud because the children have fallen into the tick of saying, and I think they learned this at church, “what the!” and not going on to the next word because they know they shouldn't say it but everyone knows what they mean.

On Friday I woke up, not on purpose, at 2am and lay around till three and then hauled my weary self up and poured tea and coffee into travel mugs and rousted the children while Matt fairly danced around in joy, trying to pretend that he would miss us all terribly. We drove away exactly at 4am which was when I had said I wanted to leave, never for a moment believing it was possible. We drove in the dark past the whole of New York, Marigold weeping for her lost father, whom apparently she believed we would never see again, while Baby Elspeth shouted “The moon! The moon!” And then, “The moon is gone! It flew away! It went through the door and shut the door!” And then, “The moon! The moon! I see the moon! Mommy! The moon!” for two hundred miles until the sun splayed the last of the New York snow with somber gray. In between cries they ate muffins while everyone else sat in exhausted silence, finally falling back to sleep in the bright morning.

Ohio rolled smoothly by, farm house upon farm house, broken and ruined truck upon broken and ruined truck. I counted sixteen abandoned trucks wrecked on the roadside and then stopped counting as I drove past a huge line up of cars behind a semi wrapped around the median. Police, ambulance, woe. Then finally Indiana. How is it that the colors of the landscape change so markedly and precisely at the state line? Ohio was rolling and clean and opulent. Amish, I thought. And then the Indiana grass pushing past so much snow was rich deep russet and…what's the word…scrappy? Is this state a scrappy hardy state? Do the people have an edge? I drove on in great hope, Elspeth shouting and screaming her displeasure.

Which led to a flash of understanding about myself and what I believe. Belief, as we all know, informs behavior and life. We live, albeit imperfectly, those things that we believe. If you believe that god is everything and everything is god, you are apt to avoid bacon and live a lean peaceable, though I would insist, wrong headed life. If you believe that children are little gods and can easily break, you will not drive nine hours with six or them. You will not even have six because each tender god needs more care than one mortal being can possibly render. But if you believe, as I do, that children are a gift from God, entrusted to my mortal and broken care, and that they themselves are flawed and sinful and selfish, and, dare I say it, evil, you will undertake to drive nine hours with six of them because it is both sanctifying for you and for them. God, you might say, brings holiness out of suffering. The cross, you could go on, was plan A not plan B. If you were looking for an experience that would be the equivalent of lolling about eating a cupcake, you would have been disappointed. But neither was it like being imprisoned in Iran and tortured. Perspective. It's so so important.

We pulled up to a little rented farm house with tiny fat real horses at 1:37. The children tumbled out of the car and fell into the snow and shouted with relief. There, staring at us with suspicion and disinterest, were some fat little horses, two tall horses, and an enormous black sheep.

Elspeth ran forward with joy and wonder, fell in the snow, and screamed, “A Horse! A Horse!”

Inside we found a large comforting kitchen, hundreds of beds (I exaggerate only slightly) and TOYS!!!