“Nothing is more sacred than the bond between a horse and a rider. No other creature can ever become so emotionally close to a human as a horse. When a horse dies, the memory lives on, because an enormous part of it's owner's heart, soul, and the very existence dies also.”
-Stephanie M. Thorn
A manicured iron gate. Tucked behind a lush hedge. In a neat row, seven slick gray stones. A rose placed in front of each stone. Great-grandfather William, Great-grandmother Elizabeth, Grandpa John and Mike, Uncle Nathan, Great-aunt Jane. Just one distanced itself from the others. Beneath the seventh rose gleamed a silver horseshoe.
It had been a year since Grandma Susan passed away. She was 92. No one had such an impact of my life like she did. She boiled over with wisdom and grace which I, unfortunately, discovered just months before her death. But I never regret the years I avoided her and gathered false impressions ; she taught me not to.
Before she died, four months before to be exact, she gifted me her horse, Athena. She told me that every hardship she had ever faced had been eased by her horse. Athena was the goddess of wisdom, courage, and strength, you know. In my eyes, her horse was a nuisance and a waste of time. False hope for a girl who had given up years ago.
You see, my mother was injured in a horseback riding incident when I was five. The horse slipped on a tight turn and clenched her underneath his shoulder, injuring her spinal cord and writing her off to life in a wheelchair. My dad left home shortly after, never to return. Grandma Susan continued to ride Athena and encouraged me to join her, but mother did everything in her power to keep me away from the “horrid beasts” who ruined her life. She told me Grandma Susan needed to grow up. She was irresponsible; testing how long it would take until she too was in a wheelchair, filled with regret. Mother drilled those words into my head until I thought of Grandma Susan just like she did.
I avoided Athena for a month after Grandma Susan reported she was mine. But on a stunning fall day, a strange feeling overcame me. Something I had never felt before.
I wanted to ride Athena.
I swallowed the feeling and hid myself in my room but I couldn't ignore the growing urge to enter the stable. I didn't just want to ride Athena. I wanted to travel through the forest, splash through the nearby stream, tower over the others while my hair blew in the wind. I wanted to gallop down a dusty lane, catch bugs in my teeth from smiling so wide, scream so loud that the birds shook themselves from the trees.
So I did.
And I did something else that day that I swore my mother I would never do. I visited Grandma Susan.
The moment she opened the massive wood door and saw my glowing face, she knew. I sat down on an overstuffed ottoman positioned near the open fireplace and rubbed my hands together. She accompanied me and offered me sugar cookies. They were still warm. We sat in silence for a while, studying the flames until Grandma Susan broke the silence.
“How is Athena?” she asked.
I slowly turned toward her and diverted my glance back to the fire.
“I don't know what your talking about” I whispered.
“Well there has to be a reason why you're sitting in my living room, dear.”
“I just thought I would visit you”, I reasoned, “and, and tell you that I'm giving Athena back to you. I don't want her.”
“You remind me of a young girl I once knew, Anne” she began, ignoring my confession. “She was quiet, a people pleaser. And she had one dream: to ride a beautiful horse into the sunset and forget about her problems for one evening. Her mother forbid her dream, though. But that little girl wasn't willing to let anything stop her. So, one night, she snuck out of her room, climbed the fence to the neighbors stable, and took their prettiest horse on a trail ride. Now, it wasn't exactly what she had dreamed of, but it was the start of an ongoing passion that couldn't be ceased. Not even as she grew older.” She paused. “Not even when her daughter was paralyzed in a riding accident. You see, Anne, sometimes you can't make everyone else happy. Sometimes it doesn't all work out. And those times when you feel like everything is falling apart around you, are the times when you need to forget about everyone else and do what makes you happy. Athena makes you happy, Anne. You know that just as well as I do. She's special that way.”
“Was the horse that you rode that night, grandma- Was that Athena?” I questioned, thrilled by her story.
She smiled.
“It was Athena's mother, Lady May. She was just as magical as Athena and when I caught word of her pregnancy, I was the first one in line for her foal.”
“So what should I do?” I asked, worry overcoming my voice. “I can't hide from mother forever.”
“Keep Athena. Keep her and love her. Cry in her mane when you're sad, laugh with her when you're happy. Tell her your secrets and she will guide you in the right direction.”
The next day, and for many weeks and months to come, I visited Grandma Susan and Athena everyday. She told me stories of her childhood and fantastic adventures that I later told Athena. Mother came to accept my growing love for horses, the gleam finding its way back into her eyes.
The day Grandma Susan died of a heart attack was the day I had planned to attend my first horse show. I rushed to the hospital in full show attire but the doctors notified me that I was too late as I arrived.
Grandma Susan took her place next to the other lost relatives. Only three sorrow filled women attended the ceremony. Me, Mother, and Athena. We each left a story by her grave. Mother, a baby sock, Me, a sugar cookie, and Athena, a horse shoe. The sock disappeared, the cookie was devoured, but one memory, the memory that will always live, remained:
Athena's horseshoe.
