Those who know me, or have been following my rantings, know by now that I'm pretty much obsessed with horses. Always have been and I pray I always will be. Some of my earliest memories are of going to the public library with my mother and little brother and picking out the books we wanted to take home with us for the week. Tommy, by brother, always picked Curious George, and I always picked something to do with horses. I was somewhat precocious and a voracious reader, so I usually varied my choices between fiction novels and non-fiction books about horses, breeds, care and feeding. You name it, I would read it. I even brought home Gray's Anatomy once, hoping it would have information on the anatomy of horses. Imagine my disappointment when I realized it didn't!
Flash forward to the year 1997. I had just finished the last bits of my Master's Degree and was enjoying the lull between the end of classes and the actual graduation ceremony. John, then my boyfriend, and I were driving through horse country in Hunt Valley, Maryland, on a gorgeous late spring morning. We passed a lush, green field where the horses had just been turned out, they were galloping full speed towards the far end of the field. It was awe inspiring. I hadn't realized it until John pointed it out, but I was crying as I watched them. They were so free, so beautiful. I had ridden off and on when I was a kid but quit to go to college, and I missed it. A lot.
So, two weeks later at my graduation party, John handed me a card. I opened it and out fell a gift certificate for riding lessons at a local horse farm. That's when I knew two things. First, from that point forward my life would always include horses. Always. Second, John knew my soul. He knew that I missed riding, I missed being near the horses. It was such a big part of me and I didn't even know it then, but somehow he knew.
So it's almost fourteen years later and John and I have been married for twelve. We have two horses and John has never ridden either of them. And we're both OK with that. He has his passions, I have mine, and at the end of the day we go home to each other.
Wild horses couldn't drag me away.
