On the 22nd of this month, my daughter’s heart horse welcomed a foal we had waited for, five days shy of a year being pregnant. Like a pot of water that won’t boil while you stand there, we hovered for two weeks past her due date, looking at her from every angle for any impending sign.
New moons came and went, the barometric pressure dropped with storms, it snowed, it rained and still she held on to her foal. Odessa began to look more like the cow on the container of a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream container than the athletic horse she was a few months prior.
Then it happened, early in the morning of April 22, Tex made his appearance. It may have been Earth Day, but on that glorious early morning, my daughter’s whole world changed when the little paint colt wobbled to life on his unsure legs and greeted a world that had surely been awaiting him.
It’d been a rough go, even touch-and-go, for the last 3 months. Heavy with a foal, in late pregnancy, Odessa was injured badly, and we weren’t sure if she or the foal would pull through.
Something so big and powerful was at the same time so fragile. With a badly severed artery on her rear foot, a subsequent cellulitis infection and the incessant battle of proud flesh, my daughter feared she would never race her again, much less get to see the hopes of a future with her foal.
We transferred her to an intense rehabilitation program at Tuxon Ranch, and they dove in with precision and determination to save her foot and my daughter’s dreams. Her injury could have gone either way, but they were determined to stack the deck in her favor.
Fait had bigger plans for Odessa and Tex. They would both pull through and the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, they will both turn and burn around barrels and live long lives. Fate flips both sides of the coin, though. On that same morning at a ranch down the road, we had a friend lose a little colt that had been born four days earlier. Life and death all at once, parallel to each other on the same dirt road. A beginning at one end and the end at another, with a reminder that the in between is shorter than we can control.
We pulled up at their ranch to drop off medical supplies, hoping to help and in that moment, my kids learned the lesson “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Just a few miles down the same dirt road, new life awaited us, and in this moment, life was fleeting before us, as they loaded the little colt in the trailer to race to the vet for one last hope. In that moment, any excitement in our hearts was replaced with emphatic sadness, as we had been in those boots before and felt that exact pain of losing a colt you tried so hard to save.
In sobering moments like those, when the silence becomes loud, I told my children, it’s the best time to listen. There are lessons in quiet pain and perhaps when our hearts break like that, it’s not to fall apart but to break open and allow more love to come into them. I knew in that moment there was nothing we could do because I had been there, while others stood as we did, knowing there was nothing to do. Empty hands and hearts can feel so heavy.
What is the lesson in something so senseless asked my son. How do you explain that to your children or offer peace to someone when you know their pain and you know that there are no words to take it away or make it better?
We got in the car and drove the dirt road down to meet our awaiting foal, and I explained it’s chance over advantage and that triumph and misfortune walk a fine line.
Some horses are born with wings, and they need to fly and not run. Their impact on your life can last forever, whether they are here for moments or years, they still leave you with memories and lessons. My son perked up and added, “Some horses give you lessons, and some people take lessons from horses; there is a difference, and I saw that today.”
Jenny Johnston is a fourth-generation Durango local, part-time rodeo announcer and full-time wrangler to two lil’ buckaroos. You can reach her at [email protected]