Horse Love

When I was young, I wasn’t a horse girl. You know what I mean, a lot of girls obsess about horses. They knew a palomino from a pinto. And a bridle from a stirrup. They collected plastic horse figurines. Some of them even wore cowboy hats. (Or at least had them in their rooms.)

But I never got that. A horse is an interesting animal. And I enjoyed riding them. But like Mr. Ed said, “a horse is a horse.” I was much more interested in books. And, obviously, not the Misty of Chincoteague novels.

That was the extent of my interest in horses. Until I was about thirty, and my son Matthew was born. As most of you know, Matthew is autistic. What you may not know is that he had serious sleep problems. He only slept three hours out of every 24. Which didn’t work well for him or us. Most of the rest of the night he cried. It was misery...until we found Black Beauty.  Matt loved horses, and someone gave us a video of Black Beauty. Matt loved it. So we started putting it on every night for Matt to watch while we slept. He sat between us in our bed and watched. Twice a night he watched the entire video of Black Beauty. Of course, he woke us up every time BB got caught in the fire. Cal would say, “Matt, he’s going to be fine. They’re going to rescue him like they did the last 2,000 times.” (He also woke us up when BB pooped in the house—Matt didn’t want us to miss the funny parts.)

Interestingly, the movie has subliminal messages. No, that’s not the result of sleep-deprived hallucinations. In some of the town scenes, people will walk through the corners of the scenes carrying placards with instructions on them. It’s only a frame or two long, and if you’re not looking for it (or haven’t seen the movie 2,000 times) you’ll miss it.

But subliminal messages aside, Matt’s obsession with BB gave me an idea. I wondered if he might like the Triple Crown, especially the Kentucky Derby. All those thoroughbreds racing. So we watched it. Matt adored the backstory on each horse and usually cheered for the horse-who-overcame-the-most-obstacles. Ariel and I fell for the hat parade. And okay, I’ll admit it, I fell in love with the horses for the same reason I love baseball. It isn’t that the sport is so amazing to me. It’s watching the near perfection involved. I love watching Mariano Rivera or Tim Wakefield pitch. So I love watching the horses do what they were bred to so—run like wind. I also like the irony of watching the “it” horse have a snit and deciding it doesn’t really care to win this particular race.

The Kentucky Derby is this Saturday. We’ll be watching. I’m rooting for Uncle Mo, and Matt’s rooting for Dialed In. (Neither of us will root for a Bob Baffert horse.) So my horse love came late. And that’s okay. Especially since I’ll get to enjoy a mint julep with the race. Yum. 

Derby Day

Growing up, I had a cousin who was gaga about horses. Why was a complete mystery to me. Until I was in my thirties.

This is a roundabout story so you’ll have to be a bit patient, but we’ll get there eventually. When Matthew was born, he didn’t sleep much. Not your typical newborn thing, this went on for years and his total sleep for any 24 hour period was about 3 hours. The other problem is that he cried for the remainder of the time.

As you can imagine, this did not bode well for Cal and I getting any sleep. (Though I learned important things: One, like a horse, you can actually sleep standing up. And two, without enough sleep you begin to have funky hallucinations.)

Still, you have to get some sleep. We noticed that Matt loved horses and would actually sit without crying when Black Beauty played on the VCR. At night, every night, we put Matt between us in bed and turned on BB. When it reached the end, we rewound and played it again. Of course, the viewing was slightly participatory because every time BB pooped in the house Matt had to wake me up—apparently, he didn’t realize that seeing that scene once in my life, instead of twice a night, was enough for me. And Matt would wake up either Cal or I to comfort him when the barn caught fire. If I remember correctly, I was woken up more often than Cal because Cal’s response ran along the lines of “Matt, remember a couple of hours ago BB was in the fire, and he got rescued then. He’ll get rescued now too.”

All that to say, after hundreds of hours of BB, you develop a certain appreciation for horses, especially thoroughbreds—their beauty, elegance, and yes, their arrogance. And so, we began watching the Triple Crown, which consists of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. Matt and I study the horses and decide who we want to root for. The Derby is always the most fun because we get to choose from the whole line-up of horses, after the Derby we root for whoever won the Derby in hopes of seeing a Triple Crown winner. I also make Mint Juleps—though we drink them with tacos. (Apologies to all you purists.)

Who are we rooting for this year? Looks like we’ll be rooting for Regal Ransom because he’s one of two horses running in the Derby who are owned by Sheikh Mohammed, the ruler of Dubai, and my dad used to work for the sheikh years ago

Run Regal Run!

(Of course, by the time you read this. Regal will have probably lost—most horses do.)