Riding Lessons: A Triptych Essay

My dad hands me an envelope. My mom smiles, if this were a movie she’d be fuzzy in the background. We’re in the living room of my first childhood home, the carpet is an emerald green. I hold out my hand to receive my last gift of this small family birthday celebration. My younger brother is likely here, but he could have already been in bed. My sister was getting her finishing touches in my mother’s belly. I’m not yet at the age to know this specific type of gift, the flat kind that comes without a big box or fancy paper, is a good thing—I haven’t yet lost all my baby teeth. I take the envelope with some hesitation.

Once open, I pull out a thick, folded piece of paper. With our typewriter, my dad created a certificate, sectioned in two: a letter, in explanation, up top; the bottom half is six separate perforated tabs. Small dots, that even now as an adult, I do not understand what kind of tool he used to make it, create the horizontal and vertical lines. He’d typed each one identically: good for one horseback riding lesson.

Floating around the basement of my second childhood home is a picture of me at nine months old sitting in a saddle atop a chestnut quarter horse in front of my neighbor’s house. His oldest daughter holds the reins—and me. We lived in a sleepy college town, both our fathers were professors. From where and how she got a horse to our quiet street just off campus, I do not know. But there I am, dark eyes the size of quarters, chubby cheeks taking up the remainder of my face. I am not smiling, but this must have been the start of my love affair with horses.

At county fairs—and the Midwest takes their fairs very seriously—I wanted nothing to do with throwing a baseball to knock down those dumb milk cartons. No to shooting hoops to see how big of a stuffed animal I could go home with, though I did love stuffed animals. All my ticket money was saved for the pony ride. Two if possible. How old was I, sitting on that small western saddle, pretending, even for just for the length of eight circles, that this pony was mine?

In kindergarten, I found out my teacher’s daughter, who was my age but in a different class, had a pony. I befriended her and at recess we’d pretend to ride horses, skipping and loping with our arms flowing out in front of us until the bell rang. She lived outside of town, but my mother would drive me to their farm, where we would play with kittens and brush the little brown pony named Buddy. She’d put a lead line on his halter and we’d take turns walking him around their property. Eventually, she moved a milk crate next to him for me to climb on. We took turns riding bareback, holding on to his mane while the other led the way. When I was much older and we’d moved away, my mother once wondered if I’d become friends with her just because of Buddy. A flame of guilt rose in my belly. But we’d kept in touch until just a few years ago.

Certificate for riding lessons in my hand, I never once thought to use them all at once. Rather, I used them here and there, for special occasions, like a treat. When we moved away to my second childhood home, outside of a bigger city but still in the Midwest, I’d call a horse stable and ask if I could take a lesson. Sometimes they told me there wasn’t room, and I didn’t understand. Other times I was told I could join. I’d give my mom one of my coupons, and she’d drive me over and sit in the stands reading a book or doing needlepoint. The instructor knew the other kids’ names, and it took me some time to understand they came every week. It would be months, sometimes a year between my lessons.

But I’d walk into that big barn, go get whatever horse they told me I could ride, and lead it where they’d groom and tack. Was the teacher nice? Did the other kids talk to me? I have almost no memory of the instructions, though I know how to hold reins, use my legs to direct, and post at a trot. What’s clear to me is my mom sitting like a dot against a brown background, the sweet smell of manure and hay, the chilly expanse of the indoor ring, and the feeling of being so high in the world on that horse’s back, even when I felt so little.

After each lesson, my skin would prickle with familiarity and longing as my hands would smooth over his shoulder, back, and haunches, following the curve of the powerful muscles. I’d take as much time as I’d be allowed to untack, groom, and lead my horse back to his stall. And I’d walk back to where I’d get picked up, savoring the smell of the barn and the wide-wobbly feel of my legs. The inside of me would burn deep. As if even at ages seven, nine, twelve, I knew that this—being around horses—was something I wanted for the rest of my life.

For her thirteenth birthday, I give my daughter three options. All are amenable to me and within the budget. I’d decided a year or two before this that I’d like to go away, just me and her, for a special mother-daughter trip. When I told my husband my idea, I could hardly say the words without choking up in tears.

My daughter chooses the two-night horseback riding trip. We have trouble finding a weekend that will work with our busy family’s schedule—and we have to reschedule once due to weather—but on a Friday afternoon in July, we drive three hours deep into the heart of our state of Virginia. We arrive at the farm, guided only by small wooden signs, and find the farmhouse we’ll be staying in unlocked: full kitchen, living room, one bathroom with two bedrooms upstairs. The two of us have the entire house to ourselves.

“We’ll stay in here,” I say, after looking around. The main bedroom has a fireplace built into the brick wall and a quilt covers a single queen four-poster bed.

“I’m not sleeping with you,” she says, her face wrinkled.

My heart squeezes. How do I explain that I don’t want her to sleep upstairs and away from me? Doesn’t she understand she grew in my body? How close we once were? I want to give her independence, but I also want this time to be intentional. We can’t talk until we fall asleep if we aren’t in the same room.

“I don’t want you to sleep in another room,” I say, feigning fear of an old unfamiliar house and strange noises to make my case. “We’re here,” I pause, realizing she doesn't, can’t, understand how much this time with her means to me, “to be together.”

“Fine,” she says. “But don’t try to cuddle with me.”

We explore the farm, walk from pasture to pasture breathing deep the fresh country air and admiring the horses. The host family eventually arrives, and I recalibrate my expectations. We’re not in a big rushing city anymore. Time expands. Informality and hospitality supersede productivity and efficiency. We eat dinner family style and then have s’mores under a starlit sky. We’ll meet again in the morning for breakfast before our ride.

Over the next two days, my daughter and I spend close to ten hours on horseback, trail riding through thick woods and open fields, walking through tall grass in the blazing sun, and crossing streams under a cool canopy of trees. The guide talks much of the day, telling stories about the farm and his life, trusting his horse to lead the way. He twists backward in his saddle to face me, next in line. My daughter and her horse followed me. I try to turn to talk to her, but between his friendliness and the two of us not being next to the other, it is hard to keep a conversation going.

I wish I could remember my daughter’s first time on a horse. If I’d look through the tens of thousands of pictures we have, I might be able to figure it out. Was it a pony ride at a country fair when we visited family in Ohio? Was it at a friend’s farm? During a one-off lesson I gifted her for a past birthday? When she was ten, I sent her to a week-long faith-based overnight horse camp. Every day she rode for two hours, followed by barn time, followed by all the usual church camp activities — rock walls, swimming, devotions, singing.

Not long ago I’d said, “I can’t believe I sent you away that young,” wracked with guilt.

“That was the best week of my life,” she laughed.

I wonder what she will say in the future about this weekend with me? What I thought would be hours of us talking and riding horses together, an activity we both loved, was in many ways two separate experiences. Is this what happens—what must happen—between mothers and daughters?

The spring before my daughter graduates high school, the therapist I’ve been seeing suggests I think about doing something just for me. As in, even though it’s been twenty-eight years since my mom was diagnosed with cancer in March and died only days before my high school graduation, the dates this year line up exactly; given that I have a senior at the same age that I was, and she has her own spring of senior year experiences to live, I will be entering what is called a '“reenactment event.” Grief has a long memory, and I could use all the support I can get.

The question is: How might I care for myself during what is shaping up to be an emotionally charged season? Because let’s be clear, unless I ignore, numb, or distract myself from every warning bell in my body, I will inevitably see my past eighteen-year-old self—everything I went through, the confusion, the loss, the trajectory of my life changing—all while planning my daughter’s party and sending out announcements and slowly coming to terms with letting this child go. Part of me is still that grieving daughter, but I am also a grown-up mother now. One might label my therapist’s suggestion as self-care, though it feels a lot more like survival.

What would the eighteen-year-old in me like to do? I’m asked. Before the question mark scoops up her words, I already have an answer.

It takes some time to find, but a farm thirty minutes from my home offers adult lessons during the weekday. They require me to attend three private lessons, to ensure my safety and evaluate my ability. “That’s all I’ll need,” I tell myself, just a little time in the saddle.

“No way,” my daughter says when I mention these lessons. “Can I go?” she asks. I want, more than anything, to say yes, to do this together. And yet, for many reasons—she is still in school, it’s expensive, and because deep within me is a knowing that I need to do this alone—I tell her no.

I arrive nervous, my hands light and unsure. My heart beats both out of excitement and insecurity. I follow my instructor to the pasture where I meet my new friend, a chestnut gelding named Shadow. Walking him back towards the riding ring, I’m struck by his size. Was I truly a child walking an animal this big through a barn? One could get crushed, kicked, bit, thrown. Life, when lived, is so full of danger.

We start with the basics: how to groom, tack, stay balanced on his back. I try my best to slow down each moment, frame by frame, taking in his velvet muzzle, coarse black mane, running my hands over the rippled muscles of his legs. In the saddle, the reins lay between my fingers, just like I learned so many years ago. Posting comes back as naturally as riding a bike.

I joke with one of the other women there that day, “I’m only here because I want to canter.” She tells me she’s there because she’s scared of horses.

Driving home that first day, I can’t stop lifting my hands to my face, inhaling the mix of leather, hay, and horse—as if in proof: I really did it. When my husband asks how my day was, I break into a ridiculous smile. Fridays become the best day of my week. Around this time, my daughter and I start to fight, about everything and nothing, which is really to say I am distraught and distressed, and I cannot reconcile the girl I once was with the girl I had to become, the mom I am and the mom I wish I had. After the private lessons end, I sign up for a six-week package of group lessons, this will be enough, I tell myself again. This will get me through graduation. This is all I’ll need.

“Shoulders back,” the instructor yells at me across the ring. “Keep your head up,” he says as I trot by. I bring Shadow carrots and sneak them to him after each class.

“Stop bunching yourself up,” I’m told. He mimics me all shriveled up and bent over. I do not tell him I am riding through my grief.

“Keep your legs underneath you,” he tells me at another lesson. I don’t know why, but I cannot find my footing.

“Elbows in,” he shakes his head at me, but it all feels too much to remember. Closer and closer to my daughter’s graduation, clear memories pop up—when Mom forbade me to go prom; when my guidance counselor gave me my cap and gown early to go home and try on for her; when, instead of staying the course with my plan to move away, I applied last minute to a university close enough to home I could still sleep in my own bed. All while my daughter attends prom, throws her cap and gown down on her unmade bed, and prepares to move away for college.

“Come’on girl!” the instructor says in frustration when, after all these weeks, I still can’t stay balanced in jumping position. “Heels down!” My heart aches as the clock ticks toward the end of each lesson, the end of these years with my daughter at home. I watch YouTube videos and practice balancing on my heels while I brush my teeth in the bathroom. Heels down, elbows in, head up. Shadow begins to whinny when he sees me each Friday morning. It’s because of the carrots, but it still makes my heart leap.

I skip my lesson the week of graduation, and cry every day leading up to her walking across the stage. It makes sense, yet it’s hard to describe—my heart breaking with gratitude because I am there to see her take this huge step, my heart breaking for the carefree girl I once was, and re-breaking for the girl who walked a similar stage with an already broken heart.

But the day after she graduates, the tears stop. Without explanation, they’re gone. It’s like I don’t need them anymore.

At my next lesson, my last, I mount Shadow and we begin to walk the ring. I haven’t cried in a week and feel like he understands that something in me has changed. My heels stay down, my shoulders relax, his body and mine move together. We trot, I post, my hips lifting up-down-up-down-up-down-up. I have nothing to prove, it seems, I have nothing to lose. That’s a strange thing to say, as I wasn’t trying to prove or hold onto anything before, so I thought. Shadow moves quickly, I squeeze my legs to stay on.

This ride feels less like formal instruction, and more like how it used to be when I was little and I’d jump on my friend’s pony bareback. A bit like play. Like joy. Like possibility. Back when I didn’t have a clue how to cinch a girth or place a bridle. Back when all I needed was a bit of bravery. When all I had to think about was trust and holding on.

“Well, look at you,” the instructor says when I don’t lose my balance trotting over beams. I haven’t practiced jumping position in my bathroom for weeks. After three passes around he asks, “You ready to canter?”

I almost laugh out loud. Am I ready to run? My whole life, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.

Sonya Spillmann is a nurse, an essayist, and freelance writer living in the DC area with her husband and four kids. She's incapable of small talk, loves red lipstick, and spends the majority of her afternoons driving children around in her minivan. You can read more through her Substack, Finding Feathers.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.

The Hard Stuff, PerspectiveSonya SpillmannSeptember 9, 2024sonya spillmann, fall2024part2aComment