Bartering for Loveliness

There’s an advantage to being forthright about your passions: people find opportunities to feed them. This week, my daughter Sarah, while doing an English assignment, came across a poem by Sara Teasdale she thought I might enjoy. Not that she cared at all about the poem, of course. She just thought I would like it.

And I did. I wasn’t that familiar with Teasdale’s work. I knew she was a poet because I’ve come across her name frequently in crossword puzzles. But knowing the spelling of her name is about as close as I’d come to reading anything by her.

The poem was “Barter.” The first line is a stunner:  “Life has loveliness to sell.”

It’s an intriguing idea. We all want lovely, meaningful moments in our lives, but what cost would we pay to get them? Teasdale offers an answer: anything and everything. The last stanza of Teasdale’s poem reads:

Spend all you have for loveliness,

Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of peace

Count many a year of strife well lost,

And for a breath of ecstasy

Give all you have been, or could be.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the cost of following one’s passion. It’s been a while since I’ve been stretched this thin. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot on my plate. In addition to spending time in art classes and on art homework, I made a commitment to speak to a group of people about writing life stories, which took a fair amount of time to prepare for. Plus, my application for the art therapy program at Marylhurst was due last Tuesday. It had about 10 different parts to it, including three pieces of writing. And, of course, I wanted to keep up with my weekly blog posts.

In addition, Sarah had swim meets each week for which Doug and I were timers. Then the sump pump in our basement broke when we were having record rains in Oregon. Last week, Sarah hurt her back diving and needed to see the doctor. Then our college student daughter Kate called and said she’d like to come home for the weekend (hurray!)—and that she’d like to bring five friends with her. “Absolutely,” I said, and tracked down air mattresses and towels and stocked up on pizza and chips. Not to be left out, Sarah said she’d like to have two of her friends join the slumber party. Doug and I looked at each other. Two more people wouldn’t make a difference. They were all great kids—all nine of them. I didn’t want to say no, regardless of how busy I was.

And that’s the point. All these demands that threatened to overload my life were things I had invited on purpose because I loved them. Well, that’s not strictly true; I could live without the sump pump repair. But all the rest—art classes, art homework, writing, teaching, parenting—are types of loveliness I would happily spend all of my emotional and physical capital to obtain.

There is a cost, of course. I had to let some things go. Actually, I had to let a lot of things go.  Here’s a partial list:

• Cooking (Not necessarily a bad thing, in my case). We’ve eaten a lot of Costco casseroles.
• Cleaning my house (Poor Doug. He’s been vacuuming like a wild thing.)
• Reading for pleasure. I can’t tell you the last time I got lost in a good mystery or read a magazine. This is quite a departure for me.
• Sleep
• Getting my hair cut. I finally raided Sarah’s stash of elastics and bobby pins just to keep my hair out of my face while I’m painting.
• Shopping for anything—groceries, dish soap, cute shoes.

So, I ask myself, is it worth it? What am I hoping to gain from  my crammed schedule, the barely-keeping-up-with-everything pace, and my shaggy hair? My answer? I’m getting the loveliness life has to sell. There was a moment last weekend when I was sitting in our living room working on a drawing assignment. I was deeply absorbed in my work, but occasionally I’d catch a conversation between Kate and her friends discussing their classes, their friendships, or their futures.  I heard the laughter of Sarah and her friends from the other room. Doug was in the kitchen, mixing another batch of dough to turn into cinnamon rolls or a loaf of ciabatta bread, which I would later eat with too much butter.

These are the moments worth having, for which I will barter quite a lot. The ironing and dusting can wait. We can eat Costco casseroles. I’ll catch up on sleep when I can. I’ve paid for these moments, and I plan to enjoy them.

What I Intend, and What I Get

Two stories.

1.

My sculpture class meets for six hours each Friday. It’s the third of  three art classes I’m taking this term, and the one in which I have the least experience. And by least experience I mean absolutely none. Nothing. Other than the Play-Doh I messed around with as a kid, I have never sculpted anything. I signed up for Sculpture-Mixed Media with the expectation that I would learn techniques to work with different materials—clay, wire, wood, paper.  I figured I would be given  specific assignments, as I was in both my drawing and painting classes, that could help me gain skill and feel some measure of success with each type of media.

The teacher for my sculpture class apparently had a completely different idea. Instead of opening the first class by taking attendance and figuring out who was  going to spend the term with him, he instead asked if anybody had seen any good art lately. Or even bad art. He didn’t get around to the class list until well into the third hour of the class. I scanned through the syllabus, frantic to figure out what I would be learning and how it would be taught, only to realize with ever growing panic that there would be two assignments all term, giving us roughly half of the term to work on each one. Aside from a brief research project on the work of a living sculptor, there were no other requirements. No supplies list. No schedule of techniques taught. No guidelines. We were instructed to show up the following week with sketches for our first sculpture and the supplies we wanted to use.

I was not only panicked, I was angry. How was I supposed to learn anything if the teacher didn’t seem to want to teach me. At the end of the six-hour class, during which I had learned nothing more than what tools were available in the wood shop, I approached him, asking if he could give me any further guidance. I explained that I was a rank beginner, and until I learned what types of materials were commonly used and how to use them, it was hard to know how to create anything. His response?

“What do you want to say with your art?”

Really? That’s all he had for me? How do I know what to say if I don’t know how to say it! I was seriously peeved and huffed my way home where I proceeded to vent for about an hour to Doug and Sarah and just about anyone else who would listen. After I calmed down, I decided that I would just have to figure it out for myself. As upset as I was, I was convinced that my teacher was a caring person who wanted to help me if I could formulate a question, but that it would be up to me to decide what I needed to know. I made a trip to the art supply store, wandered through the sculpture aisle and bought some wire and some clay.

But I also thought about his other question. What did I want to say? Since I plan to work with art in a therapeutic context, I wanted my sculpture to say something about my decision to go back to school, to combine art therapy with writing and teaching. I wanted to say something about what I’ve learned in my fifty years about where your life leads you, even if you are surprised along the way.

2.

This morning, I woke up early and checked my computer. My daughter Sarah had posted something to my Facebook page the night before. It was a quote from Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,  an influential voice especially for my children’s generation. This quote was from his book The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul:

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

How could she know that that was the message I needed today. Well, to be fair, it wouldn’t hurt me to be reminded of it most days. Where did I intend to go? When I was in grade school, I wanted to be an author/illustrator. I was an avid reader and a bit of a loner and found comfort in books. I  was captured by the notion that I could feel so connected, so understood by an author of a story, even one I’d never met. That’s what I wanted, to write something that would touch another person in that way. Over the years, I refined what I wanted in a career and in  life: that connection through meaningful work and meaningful relationships.

For the most part, I’ve been successful in achieving both. I’ve been able to work as a writer, a teacher and a counselor, all of which is meaningful to me. I have many relationships that enrich my life—my husband and kids, parents and sisters and in-laws and friends, the baristas at our coffee shop, my ex-husband’s family, my husband’s ex-wife. However, the path to achieving those things has been anything but smooth.  And I must say, I expected them to be smooth. I’d always imagined  I would marry and have children. I planned to have an interesting, challenging career that paid well and allowed me to wear nice clothes to work. I’ve had lots of intentions and five-year plans and ten-year plans, and for the most part, they worked. They got me moving and pointed me in the direction that I wanted to go. Without intentionality, I run the risk of wandering around in the dark, depending on chance to light my way. I’m a big fan of planning where I want to go.

The problem with my five- and ten-year plans, however, was that they didn’t allow for the times when my life didn’t turn out the way I’d planned. I hadn’t counted on being a divorced, single mother. When I remarried a wonderful man with two kids of his own, and later had another child, I hadn’t realized that the most interesting, challenging job I could ever encounter was being the parent in a blended family of four kids with three different parental structures. Two of our children spent the school year living out-of-state with their mom. I hadn’t foreseen that the only time we had together as a  family would be in hotel rooms in another state, or during summer vacations in our home. We needed one parent to be flexible and free enough to manage our non-traditional family structure.  I was working as a college counselor, a job that paid reasonably well and allowed me to wear nice clothes to work. Still, we reasoned that since Doug worked for his own business, which was harder to quit than my job at the college, I would trade in my briefcase for a diaper bag. Beyond the rationale, I knew in my heart that I should be the one to manage the home front.

And so I stepped away from the career I’d imagined—17 years ago. In the meantime I’ve cobbled together different work experiences, none of them as structured or as well-paid as the one I left. I worked part-time for Doug’s company,  volunteered at the kids’ schools, and started my own company helping people write their own stories. None of it looked the way I imagined it when I was a shy ten-year-old hiding out in the school library, imaging a connection with a distant, unknown reader. I couldn’t have predicted any of it. It’s an odd mess of experiences and lessons I’ve accumulated, filled with plane flights and parent-teacher conferences, conversations with old soldiers and young moms. I never could have planned it, but it is, after all, absolutely what I needed to do.

3.

My painting and drawing classes are full of intention. In each, I have a syllabus which lists the weekly assignments and a teacher who guides me through it week by week. I have supplies I am taught how to use and I see examples of how my work ought to look when I’m finished. I like this way of working and I’m comfortable with it.

My sculpture class is another way of working. I am learning to throw off the guidelines, toss out my expectations, and get down to the most basic question: What do I want say with my most basic form of art—my life? What materials,  experiences and techniques will  help me to say it?

I’m making a tree out of wire, one strand for each of the 100 years I hope to live. Its roots are planted in a worn, well-read book , it’s branches stretched from a twisted trunk, reaching upward, outward. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll do it.

4.

I want to go back and talk to the little girl I was and tell her that I am, after all, writing, reaching out to connect to distant, unknown readers. Every Friday.

Blooming Late

Every year, at about this same time, I find myself in a funk. Maybe it has something to do with the end of the unstructured, playful days of summer. Autumn is on us. Days get darker, the leaves on the trees die and fall, the rain returns, and I am left with the sense that I should, once again, figure out if my life is “on track,” whatever that means. It probably doesn’t help that my birthday comes at the end of summer and I am reminded that I am not growing younger. For most of the year I can ignore the relentless ticking of the clock, but come September, the sound is deafening. And maddening.

Despair is an inherent risk factor when you choose to do creative work. Unless you are one of those celebrated prodigies who exhibit unusual creative potential before you even get your braces off, it can be a fairly discouraging business. You are, after all, choosing to work outside of the mainstream, intentionally trying to communicate a new idea. The freedom of “winging it” is, in fact, a big part of the appeal of the creative life. My daughter once gave me a card for mother’s day with a quote by Dorothy Parker. The quote was taken from a review that Parker wrote about the autobiography of Isadora Duncan, considered one of the founders of modern dance, but it applies to any sort of artistic type.

Never for her was there a place in the terrible, slow armies of the cautious. She ran ahead where there were no paths.

I love this quote. It speaks to the person I aspire to be. I framed the card and put it on my desk for encouragement. Creative work usually feels like running away from the crowds, picking out a new path. This is also what often what feels most rewarding and meaningful to me.

Sometimes, however, when you’re out there running through the woods by yourself, you can get lost. Come September, I often find myself thinking that joining the ranks of the “terrible, slow armies of the cautious” looks pretty attractive. Because, let’s face it, this life is also really, really hard. There are no benchmarks to tell if I’m making any progress. No way to know if I’m losing ground or getting any closer to the finish line. Actually, there is no finish line, which, to be frank, can really suck. When do you decide that you’ve spent enough time on this endeavor, that you are just wasting your time and would be better off spending your days doing something that promised a more regular payoff, or at least a regular paycheck? When are you just too old to accomplish anything significant?

I don’t honestly know the answer. If someone knows, I would appreciate it if they would fill me in. In the meantime, however, I ran across an article by Malcolm Gladwel. Although I had read and enjoyed it before, seeing it again, mid-funk, gave me a little different perspective. The article “Late Bloomers” was originally published in The New Yorker on October 20, 2008, and was later included in his book What the Dog Saw. The subtitle is “Why do we equate genius with precocity?” and it speaks directly to my September Blues.  Gladwell reports on the work of David Galenson, an economist at the University of Chicago, who found that there are two kinds of creative innovation. In his book Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, Galenson explains that youthful prodigies like Picasso, Mozart, Melville or T. S. Eliot–people to whom we assign the word “genius” because they seem to burst with creative talent almost from birth–are examples of conceptual innovators. To quote Gladwell’s article:

Prodigies like Picasso, Galenson argues, rarely engage in . . . open-ended exploration. They tend to be ‘conceptual,’ Galenson says, in the sense that they start with a clear idea of where they want to go, and then execute it. “I can hardly understand the importance given to the word ‘research,’” Picasso once said in an interview. . . “In my opinion, to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing.” He continued, “The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution or as steps toward an unknown ideal of painting . . .  I have never made trials or experiments.

Picasso is exactly the kind of artist that makes me feel like throwing away all my notebooks and going back to bed. I have never, not once, had that kind of certainty about what it is I want to do or how I would go about it. Not do research? Not experiment? It would be like asking me to writing a sentence without using any vowels. I am tempted to conclude that genius is the ability to have a creative inspiration without having to work for it.

I am comforted, then, when I read about the people who used the other artistic cycle, the ones Galenson calls experimental innovators. In other words, the late bloomers. The way they work is exactly opposite from the conceptual innovators; their approach is experimental. Their goals do not come to them as a flash of insight but are unformed and imprecise. As Galenson says in his book,

The imprecision of their goals means that these artists rarely feel they have succeeded . . .  They consider the production of a painting as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it; they typically believe that learning is a more important goal than making finished paintings. Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their ability to achieve their goal.

Now that sounds more familiar, especially that last part.

This artistic cycle was true of the painter Cezanne, who produced his best work in his mid-sixties. It was also true of Mark Twain’s trial-and-error method of writing. Twain apparently revised and gave up and returned to Huckleberry Finn so many times it took him nearly a decade to finish it. According to Gladwell, “the Cezannes of the world bloom late not as a result of some defect in character, or distraction, or lack of ambition, but because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error necessarily takes a long time to come to fruition.”

All I can say is, thank goodness. Maybe, just maybe, there is an alternative explanation for my September Blues other than it’s just too late.

That’s not to say that child prodigies and conceptual artists don’t have their own set of problems. I know it must be difficult to have achieved so much, so soon and then, for the rest of your life try to figure out a way to top early success. That said, there are specific (and, I would argue, more serious) risks associated with being a experimental artist. First, you can get really, really discouraged, laboring for years without unambiguous success. Second, you get old. You just plain run out of steam.

It turns out that Gladwell’s article has some suggestions to combat these problems, suggestions that I somehow missed when I read this article the first time a few years ago. The solution? Community. Cezanne’s work, for example, would never have become valuable and note-worthy had he not had the support of an extraordinary group of patrons who taught him, represented his work, and gave him financial and emotional support. As Gladwell says, “This is the final lesson of the late bloomer: his or her success is highly contingent on the efforts of others.” In addition, working within a community can help supply the energy and collaborative effort that keeps an artist working even when energy and health are flagging. Contrary to the stereotype of the solitary genius, which may have its root in the examples of conceptual artists like Mozart and Picasso, creativity can apparently thrive in the lives of older artists, working over decades despite ambiguity and fatigue, uplifted by a supportive community. So maybe, when an artist is intent on running ahead where there are no paths, it’s a good idea to stay connected to a few good friends.

At least that’s what I’m hoping.

Playing School

When I was little, while other kids played house, I preferred to play school. Instead of dolls and dishes and those wonderful little play kitchens I saw at my friends’ homes, I was happier with coffee cups filled with pencils, stacks of paper, rolls of scotch tape, and whatever crayons I could scrounge from around the house. Often, my sisters were the only playmates available to me and I somehow talked them into being my students. Truth be told, I might not have given them much choice, but they were fairly tolerant of my schemes. The school room could be a corner of the living room, or high up in our crooked tree house perched over the creek. One time I think I even set up space in the dog house, but that was quickly vetoed by both my sisters and the dog.

Interestingly, my fascination with teaching never seemed to extend to my career aspirations. That slot was filled early on. I knew from about age seven that I wanted to be a writer. In my wilder moments, I would also dream of illustrating my own books. However, no matter how much I loved my classes, or how excited I got about school supplies, I never identified with being a teacher. I didn’t chase after it as a career goal.

That doesn’t mean that it didn’t chase after me. Time after time, while pursuing other goals, I’d find myself taking on teaching roles, with students other than my long-suffering sisters. I was a TA  in graduate school, tutoring one-on-one, or setting up small groups to help panicked counseling students figure out statistics. To pick up extra cash one year, it seemed like a fun exercise to teach GRE prep courses. And after I finished my masters degree in counseling, I was not drawn to mental health clinics and private practice like some of my classmates. Instead, I went to work in the counseling department at the local community college.  I did mental health work, of course, but I also taught classes–in career development, student success strategies, personal development and writing. I was, after all those years, a teacher, sharing with other people what I knew and what I believed to be true. But I also learned first-hand how empowering education is all by itself. Being a teacher isn’t one-directional, with me off-loading a body of knowledge to a waiting audience. A good teacher, in my opinion, is a guide who helps someone figure out for themselves what they need to know.

I finally figured out that it’s not so much the role of being a teacher that draws me, but education itself. Actually, I can break it down even further. Learning is powerful. There is really nothing that gives me more joy than learning something new, growing my understanding of a subject–any subject. The only thing that can equal that sense of satisfaction is being along for the ride as someone else learns something new. This, I now realize, was the pay-off in all my years of parenting, of counseling, or writing and, of course, teaching.

And now, so many years after those afternoons when I pushed my sisters through spelling tests and math problems, I am somewhat surprised that through my work with I Am Story Studios, I have become a writer, an illustrator and, at last, a teacher. I’ve done workshops for years, usually at conferences, churches or private organizations. Now, however, I’m pleased to announce that I have four classes next month that are open to everyone. Or at least, everyone within commuting distance:

Telling Your Story 2 Pages at a Time: 

I’ve noticed that when many people set out to write their stories, they make two mistakes: 1) they try to write too much, and 2) they try to write too soon. As a result, they get overwhelmed and stop. Worse, they don’t start at all. Fortunately, there are easy fixes for these problems, and this two-hour workshop will show you what they are, and help you create a 2-page story about your life. The registration fee for this class includes copies of my books Half Past Perfect and Story Starters. This class is offered at two different times.

Date:   Tuesday, October 4, 2011 OR Thursday, October 27, 2011, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Where:  Oswego Heritage House, Lake Oswego, Oregon

Cost:  $49, including all materials

Introduction to Art Journaling

Making art is a way to explore what we believe, and to make visible the stories and thought patterns by which we live.  Using the basic vocabulary of art–color, imagery, texture, shape–we gain access to what we think, even if we never verbalize it.  If we commit to art making on a consistent basis, however, it can open a wonder-filled world of creative expression, healing, stress-reduction and, at times, transformation. This introductory class will be a playful, art-filled opportunity to explore the techniques of art journaling. We will learn about different materials and media, discuss journaling prompts, and create one complete art journaling page.

When:  Thursday, October 13, 2011, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Where:  Oswego Heritage House, Lake Oswego, Oregon

Cost:  $49, including all materials

Creating Heritage: Telling Someone Else’s Story

You probably know someone whose story should be captured, perhaps a parent, a grandparent, an interesting neighbor. But how do you begin? This workshop will help. You’ll learn about valuable resources, intriguing prompts to draw out details, interviewing ideas, and brainstorming about your project. In addition, you’ll receive an organizational notebook that will help you break down the project into meaningful pieces.

When:  Thursday, October 20, 2011, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Where:  Oswego Heritage House, Lake Oswego, Oregon

Cost:  $49, including workbook

So, that’s it for Fall, 2011. I’m looking for people to join me in these learning experiences. For more information or to register, click on the above links or go to the “Workshop” section at www.IAmStory.com. You can also email me at barbara@iamstory.com.

I look forward to hearing from you!

A Story About a Horse

I spent some time around horses growing up because my parents boarded them.  I scooped grain with an old Folgers coffee can, threw hay over the fence, and broke the ice on top of the water trough in the winter, but I was never one of those moony girls who just LOVED horses.  I’d watched a runaway mare throw my sister and drag her through a field when her foot got caught in a stirrup. I saddled up and rode a couple more times myself, but after one outing when the horse spooked and ran at full gallop for 2 miles back to the barn, I’d had enough.  Horses were just plain scary creatures and I decided that there really wasn’t any reason I needed to be friends with them.

But as often happens, just when I’ve decided something, something else happens that helps me un-decide it.   Sarah, our youngest daughter,  got moony over horses.  She begged for riding lessons and I ignored her, hoping the feeling would go away.  It didn’t.  My husband, Doug, and I finally relented, bought her a helmet and riding boots, and signed her up for lessons at a nearby barn, hoping the fascination would fade and we could go back to piano or basketball or something “safer.”

There was never a moment during any of her lessons over the first three years that I didn’t feel anxiety, mixed with flashes of barely controlled panic. My little girl was sitting on top of a very large, scary animal that I could not control. And then she started jumping, encouraging her horse to take all four hooves off the ground and hurl its 1200-pound body over a wooden fence with her on its back.  Doug was sitting next to me at the barn one time when Sarah’s horse tripped, and I flinched, ready to jump over the rail and rescue her.  “You’ve got to stop that,” he said, “or she’s going to read your nervousness and get more scared herself.”

He was right.  One thing I learned early on is that horses are “flight” animals.  Their primary defense is to run away from danger—really, really fast.  They constantly scan for reasons to worry, and a nervous rider gives them whatever excuse they need to panic. I didn’t need to make things worse.

But things got worse.

At the time, there wasn’t an appropriate horse in the riding school for Sarah.  Not knowing anything about what to do, I asked for advice. We were encouraged to buy a horse for the school so Sarah could have a safer ride, and we wouldn’t have to pay for boarding.   So on Christmas Eve, we bought Dylan, a 9-year-old gelding with a heart-shaped star on his forehead and a willing temperment.  It was a sweet deal, except for the fact that it turned out that Dylan was not a good riding school horse.  He was eager to please and loved Sarah, but he was also young and couldn’t handle being ridden by streams of inconsistent riders.  There was no real pasture for him, so he spent most of his time cooped up in a stall.  He was miserable. He balked and bucked, and threw a student.  He started refusing to jump, slamming to a full stop right before a fence, nearly launching Sarah over the rails.  Sometimes she held on.  Sometimes she didn’t.  I bought her a padded riding vest and wondered why we were doing this. I felt guilty about what we’d done to this kind horse.

Then things got even worse. They told us that Dylan would never jump again, that he was damaged, maybe going blind. They released him from the riding school.  I had two days to find somewhere else for him to go.

I talked to a trusted friend who had horses, and she said she thought Dylan was “sour” and just needed time being a horse–no riders, no stall.  I called one of Sarah’s old trainers, Adria, who had moved to another barn and she agreed.  Bless Adria’s little equestrian heart, she loaded Dylan in a trailer and hauled him to a new facility with 120 acres of rolling hills and grassy fields.  We led Dylan out to his new pasture.  Sarah unbuckled his halter, and let him go.  My memory of what happened then still brings tears to my eyes:  Dylan ran.  He galloped at thundering speed, tail high, for 10 full minutes. I have rarely seen such power and freedom and joy. I told Adria that I thought he probably hadn’t run like that in over a year.  She told me he had probably never run like that in his life.

That was about nine months ago.  Dylan spent a blissful summer in a pasture, rolling in hot dirt, playing chase with the other geldings, and splashing in his water trough. Sarah visited often–brushing grass out of his mane and coat, and talking to him. Dylan turned out to be playful and friendly and fun.

In August, Sarah and Dylan got to start over–together.  They took easy trail rides at first, then ground lessons and – miraculously – started jumping again in the fall.  I still felt nervous watching her canter over a jump, but I rarely flinched any more.   Mastery calms fear.  Although I knew that Sarah and Dylan had a long way to go, I was finally able to watch the beginning of the journey that would get them there.

It finally came together for me recently.  Sarah joined her high school equestrian team this year, and the first meet was held at Yamhill County Fairgrounds in February.   We loaded Dylan and hauled him away from his pasture.  Doug and I showed up with Sarah and all her gear, feeling completely clueless. It was one thing to figure out how to help Dylan relax in a grassy field.  It was quite another to wonder how Dylan would do in a competition around 80 or so other highly skilled horses and riders.

Sarah was new to everything as well.  Most of the events Sarah entered were Western, none of which she had ever seen, much less done before. Her first event was something called “Trail,” where you ride your horse through, over and around a number of obstacles.  What if something scared him?  Did Sarah have a plan for how she’d handle it?

About two hours before her event, Sarah and Dylan started warming up in a nearby paddock. Doug and I went into arena to watch the riders who were just starting the “Trail” competition.  These girls had shiny tack, meticulous technique, and flawless calm.  They were in total control maneuvering through gates, over bridges, around poles.  It was beautiful to watch.  It was also way out of Sarah’s league.

I marched out to the paddock and asked Sarah if she wanted me to hold Dylan so she could watch the other riders. Big mistake. I learned one thing very quickly:  when Sarah focuses on a problem, it’s best not to ask her questions.  Actually, it’s probably best not to make direct eye contact either.  Or even breathe too loudly.  Basically, she ignored me and kept on riding.  So I scurried back to the arena to worry some more.  Doug told me to breathe and to leave her alone.  I fidgeted.  I watched more flawless riders.  I searched in my purse for breath mints.

Finally, it was Sarah’s turn.  She entered the arena on Dylan and the announcer called her name.  Her face was serious, her eyes intense.  She began.  Dylan balked at the first obstacle, backing to the right instead of the left.  She corrected him, tried again, step by step until he got it.  They came to the gate and Dylan shied, backed up, and reared.  Sarah pulled him back in line.  She reached for the gate latch and missed.  Dylan circled away.  She brought him back around and opened the gate.  Dylan circled two more times, refusing to walk through. The judge excused her from the obstacle.  They continued, Dylan stepping on every pole he should have stepped over.  They came to a low wooden bridge, and Dylan totally refused to cross it.  Sarah pushed him forward, and still he balked.  Finally she was excused from the bridge as well.  She pushed him into a canter and Dylan finally relaxed, happy to be able to run.  She led him through the final pattern, getting most of it right.  She finished the course, leaned down and patted Dylan on the neck.  I could read her lips. “Good boy,” she said.  “You were such a good boy.”

And then she looked up in the stands, saw us, and waved.   She was grinning, beaming!  Although Dylan had been jumpy and skittish, she was satisfied, pleased even. She’d had fun.  She’d finished in control.

And then I got what she already knew.  Anxiety doesn’t go away, whether you’re 15 or 50.  You just have to replace it with something stronger, like tenacity or trust.  While I had been searching for breath mints, she’d looked for, and found, confidence enough to share.

Next Page →