Ashley, aged nine, has close-cropped hair. She has just undergone a non-malignant brain tumor operation. What an ordeal for a small child. She is calm and reserved, while her six-year-old sister is wild and enthusiastic. Well, she was named “Haley” after all. She is eager to help brush Peanut, watching me pick his hooves, dashing here and there.
Ashley stands on the mounting block and manages to hoist herself into the saddle. We walk down the dirt drive all the way out to the road. I am happy to give these girls a chance to ride. Lucy is all eyes, and though she just rode Peanut yesterday with a parent on either side, today she declines. So Haley the comet gets a turn in her purple helmet. The girls discuss their favorite colors, and Lucy pipes up, “I like maroon!”
Haley would like to trot or even canter, but I am leading, and Peanut is taking his time. I tell her that I think she has “the horse bug,” and that she will become a real rider. “You can even ride with me in a few years,” I say.
Sharing my riding life with these girls, I am reminded of all I received in my childhood. I was passionate about horses from an early age, strapped into the saddle by the time I was two. As a child, I found the greatest times of togetherness riding alone with my father. Off through the open fields of Wisconsin—off into the dairy wind.
Out on the trail we were free, part of nature, at one with our horses and each other, embraced by the deep green foliage of the Prime Woods or the Nashotah Mission forest, alert to holes when we galloped the trolley track, whisking the heads and rumps of our mounts, so they knew we were not so unlike them.
After putting Peanut away, the three little girls explore the courtyard and all the secret hiding places—the gate that leads to the back garden and the pathway up to the mesa. Haley’s mother has to keep telling her younger daughter to slow down, be careful, stop, to not grab everything, but it falls on deaf ears. She is dealing with a comet, after all, a rough rider in the making.
Bringing the Horses In
Snow on the Road
This morning looks like it will warm up quickly, and I decide to trailer Barranca up to Flux Canyon. There are still remnants of snow here from the big storm ten days ago. We climb the hill from Mowry Road, and begin the descent on the other side of the ridge. My Standard Poodles, Bali and Cello, are with me today, padding along in tandem. There is nothing nicer than riding out on a good, steady horse with attentive dogs by your side.
Maybe this isn’t snow, but a strange white powder— calcium, gypsum, alum? There has been a lot of exploratory mining going on in these hills recently. It seems tragic to disturb the peaceful grandeur of these mountains just to collect copper, silver, or manganese for fiscal gain. But today it is amazingly quiet. I feel like I am the only one enjoying this great expanse. Nobody else is out here, just me and the drug runners.
Continuing on down the slope, I can see Mount Wrightson poking up in the distance behind Red Mountain’s muscular yet feminine form. Up ahead there’s a huge grey outcropping I like to think of as “Rhino Rock”—so different from the rest of the iron-rich, red-colored mountains. I wonder about this landscape, its geologic history—what it is made of, when it was formed.
A deer bounds away up the slope, and I am aware that mountain lions are becoming more of a presence. Recently a friend saw three grown lions crossing Harshaw Creek Road just a hundred feet from our driveway. Surely there are enough deer around to satisfy these carnivores, but still it worries me. I imagine seeing a big cat, and wonder what I would do to scare it away. Would it be interested in my dogs, trotting along so faithfully?
I have forgotten my water bottle and am now very thirsty. Barranca stops to sample various puddles—some of which are probably filled with iron or sulphur or worse. Who knows what elements the mining has disturbed? The proposed Wildcat Mine is planning a massive 150-acre open pit with trucks running down Harshaw Road every eight minutes. I wonder how the Forest Service, which is supposedly the steward of our public land, can let this happen. Who knows what this operation will do to our already compromised water, not to mention the rest of the local ecology?
Barranca on the Move
Sisters in the Saddle
My sister Cia arrives today with Mom and Wanda, our mother’s caregiver. Mom’s Alzheimer’s has clearly progressed. After greeting me, she asks, “Whose house is this? Have I been here before?” though she has visited me three times since November. Her mind is like a Teflon pan—everything sliding right off. Mysteriously, this disease—so terrible in many ways—has allowed her to forget many of the conflicts of our past and has made her a much nicer person.
The beds are all made, and supper composed, so I urge my sister to come out and ride with me. I am willing to give her my best boy, Barranca, though she is somewhat wary due to her last ride here a couple of years ago, when a friend’s horse dumped her in the wash.
As we head out, I suggest that we try to focus on riding, and not talk too much, for I have noticed when riding with groups of women—and surely I am as much to blame as my companions—there is an almost compulsive need to communicate. Often a ride of three or four can be a cacophony, close to distracting.
It is nice to be comfortable enough with a riding partner (like I am with my cousin Helen) to not have to talk constantly. But Cia and I have a lot of catching up to do. We are both concerned about our mother—her medications, her bruising, her balance, and of course, her mental state.
We proceed up a very steep hill where Cia can get a full view of the mountains. It pleases me to hear her awed response to this expansive desert landscape.
La Roca
Cia would often visit me here in Arizona, bringing our ailing father down from Scottsdale. Since I was not welcome at my mother’s house for the past few years, this was the easiest way for me to see them, and I always looked forward to their company.
On his last visit to Patagonia, we took Popi across the border to La Roca, in Nogales, Mexico. But did we push him too far, ordering chicken mole, letting him drink margaritas, forbidden in terms of his therapy? We hired mariachis to play “Rancho Grande” and had our photo taken together, one adoring daughter on either side. At the time, we didn’t realize that this would be our last meal together.
Popi’s story is a big part of this narrative, for he played a major role in the conflict between my mother and me. I cannot really understand my mother or the dynamic between us, without looking at our family as a whole.
As children, we would wait for our father to come home, anticipating his return. Mom would dress up every night like a good fifties wife, meeting him at the door with a hug and a kiss. They would have cocktails, usually a glass of sherry in the library, and I would fiddle with the combination on his caramel-brown briefcase, 3-9-5, until it popped open, exposing his gargantuan legal files.
He was a big important man, not only to me, but to that other world of business. Yet I could see he often drifted in a daze. I was like him, both in temperament and looks, big-boned, hazel-eyed, with a naughty sense of humor. Popi liked to have a good time and his circle of friends embraced him. He liked to include anyone and everyone, while my mother wanted to keep everybody out. She wanted him all to herself.
On those nights when we ate together around the formal dining room table, it was a chance to teach us manners, but with milk spilling down the mahogany cracks, my jumping up and down, David’s antics, Cia’s diabetes, George’s baiting, and Popi’s amusement by it all, how could our mother maintain a civilized dinner? She often ended up in tears.
I didn’t realize that what was bothering her was something more important than manners. I remember her sometimes sitting there in silence, barely picking at her food. Even if we asked her a question, she would not speak. One cannot say the unthinkable.
But when they went out in the evening, it was a different mood. Popi would be all dressed up in seal-like-sleekness, with flat pearl studs running up his crisp looking shirt. His gloves were immense and lined with real cashmere. His ring was a garnet signet ri
ng. The emblem on that impressed me. Now I wonder— where did that ring go? Did he give it to one of his “friends”? And how glamorous she looked on the way to the opera or symphony, her hair done to perfection, her jewelry and dress so elegant. She would walk away on his arm with such grace.
But I felt a pang of abandonment when they left me at home with my siblings, all of us together in the breakfast nook, inspecting eggs for that dreaded clot of blood, or eating creamed tuna fish in fried potato baskets as our elegant parents slid past us, wishing us all a most fragrant goodnight.
I liked the roughness of my father’s cheek on the weekends, his long yellow legal pads, and his peculiar print-script, the cardboard embedded in his freshly cleaned shirts—which I collected for my writing and artwork—his impressive china dog collection, which I emulated with my own assortment of horses. He had a compulsion to see things clean and neat—Saturday morning room inspection, mad polisher of shoes. He would lead wild dashes in the airport, hollering for attention, “Run! RUN!!!” Just-making-it-without-one-minute-to-spare was his favored method for takeoff. To him, creating anxiety was part of the program, though he thought it all a big joke.
I can’t quite picture our mother running in her narrow skirt and two-toned heels. Once Popi got to the gate, huffing and puffing, perhaps he managed to convince the stewardess to hold the plane until our mother sauntered up, southern style. I think he really liked her complaints, which he pretended not to hear, making her even madder. He liked playing the part of “bad boy,” doing exactly as he wanted, riling her up.
It was only after a hard week’s work that he finally seemed utterly spent. Then he was ready to get down on the dark red carpet and let me ride his back, bouncing before the fire, giving me a good buck.
Ready to Load
Back Wash
Cynthia Carlisi is coming over to give Mom a massage today, but my horse trailer blocks Cynthia’s arrival, and Barranca is balking again, not wanting to load. I’m getting really tired of this. Cynthia gives her free advice—Don’t use food or treats to entice a horse into a trailer. I agree, but often opt for the easier way out—a handful of grain or a carrot, though neither is helping today.
Barranca keeps veering off to the side, and I try backing him up, as Les Spath did when he came to train Barranca in Massachusetts. Les took his time and was clearly the boss. If Barranca wouldn’t load, he had to back up. Most horses soon learn that it is easier to go forward.
But now there is way too much nervous energy all around and perhaps Barranca is picking up on that. Finally, with Cynthia clucking from behind, Barranca makes his move and loads. I close the divider and Tonka hops in, then Cia and I drive up the washboard-rough road and disembark in front of the Hale Ranch, with its graceful meadow slopes. It reminds me of some turn-of-the-century homestead with its old wood-and-tin outbuildings and mesquite stick corral.
After warming the horses up, I suggest that we canter to the top of an incline. I go first, loping gently, but I hear a rustle in the bushes behind me and then a yelp from my sister. Barranca has shied, unusual for him. I can see that she has lost her stirrup and is unbalanced, but at least she stays in the saddle. “Did something spook him?” She doesn’t know, but I don’t want to see my sister take another fall, so I suggest that we take it easy.
Tonka feels like quite a handful today. He keeps throwing his head up and down, acting competitive—he hates to have Barranca ahead of him, especially when we canter. Barranca, always the equine gentleman, allows the unruly Tonka to go before him. Sometimes when Tonka acts out like this, I am reminded of a misbehaving child, and how that reflects poorly on the parents. Most likely I only have myself to blame for Tonka’s faults.
That night we set up a fire in the living room and turn the lights low. Our mother is in an excellent mood—so happy to be visiting, to be here with us both. The glowing hearth makes her feel at home, for she always had a passion for building a fire.
Every night before dinner Mom would crush newspaper and stuff it beneath the logs in the living room. The fire flared up beneath a painted sea scene that hung above the mantel where waves were caught in an eternal crash—far from our Midwestern landscape.
On occasion, we would set up those flimsy TV-dinner trays and watch the fire for entertainment. My older brother, George, and I would take turns throwing a special chemical powder onto the blaze, creating tongues of blue and green, while Cia and David, sprawled on the floor in their footsie pajamas. Chipper, our Boxer, lay asleep on the floor. I rubbed his floppy ears.
Once in a while after dinner, if our father was in the mood, he would clap his hands together and ask if we’d like a story. In silent agreement we would huddle together on the dark red carpet and watch the fire as it transformed his kind, attractive face into something almost scary, grotesque. We didn’t have to ask what he was going to read. It was always the same story: “Bluebeard.”
Our mother didn’t stay to listen to Popi’s favorite fairytale. She retreated to the kitchen to clean up the Formica-countered kitchen with its checkered floor, everything nice and orderly, the stay-a-bed stew put away in its Pyrex container, the budgie-bird tray swept clean. Our mother had a firm idea of what the perfect fifties family was supposed to be like and it included bedtimes, table manners, and nightly prayers.
“Open them all; go into each and every one of them,” our father read, “except that little closet which I forbid you….”
As the four of us children heeded this warning, delivered by our father’s scariest voice, we would shudder in anticipation. I’d put a hand on Chipper’s dignified head, hoping he would protect me. My other hand would slip through the opening in the mahogany coffee table, needing something to hang onto. Or I’d play with the empty, silver humidor, which retained the delicious scent of tobacco—open-shut, open-shut.
“She then took the little key, and opened it, trembling,” our father continued, excited by the terrible tension of the story. “At first she could not see anything plainly, but after some moments, she began to perceive that the floor was all covered with clotted blood, on which lay the bodies of several dead women, ranged against the walls.”
In the story the key fell from her hands into a pool of blood. We all knew that the stain would betray her. Bluebeard would know that she knew!
The waves above the fireplace should have sprung into life at that point in the story, crashing against the shore, washing the key with its magical waters. But my father read on in a tone of great warning, as if we too must always obey and never violate the sanctity of the closet.
Luckily, Bluebeard’s wife had a younger sister, who ran to the top of the tower to look out for their brothers. LO! There in the distance came the rescuers riding—two brothers racing across the desert, approaching in a cloud of dust! I liked this part of the story—riders coming to the rescue. I wondered if my own two brothers would be as valiant.
In the story, the brothers arrived just in time, as Bluebeard took hold of the young wife’s hair and prepared to strike off her head. Before he had a chance, the brothers sprang up the steps and ran their swords through the old man’s body, and all four happy siblings were united.
After that cheery ending, it was time to kiss our parents goodnight, then trot upstairs, where we could say the Lord’s Prayer and have “Sweet Dreams.” No wonder I had recurring nightmares.
Now Mom rests in the corner of our big French-blue sofa, propped up by pillows, sipping her faux Bellini—bubbly water and pomegranate juice—served in an elegant champagne flute. I call her, “My Baby Mama,” and she smiles back, saying sweetly, “My two little girls.” Not so little, I think.
It is hard to imagine our mother dying. She has always had such a strong constitution and an almost manic energy. I could see her dwindling life going on and on, slowly rolling downhill into that murky region of Alzheimer’s land, the mind giving up, but the body resisting.
Six years ago my relationship with her was so different. Even now, I am still find
ing my way back to the mother who’d rejected me out of misplaced jealousy and anger.
On the morning of my father’s death, my mother called our house eight times telling me NOT to come to Scottsdale—I was not wanted, my father was fine, I was not allowed in intensive care, he could not be disturbed, he was stable, no problem, he needed to rest, I would only be in the way.
My husband Mason thought that I should wait and respect my mother’s wishes. But I had respected those wishes for the past several months, staying away, even though we were living only three hours south in the little town of Patagonia. When I wanted to visit my father in his failing state, I was told, “Why don’t you wait until you’re asked, Laura?”
But my older brother, George, sensed the pressure of time. “Dad might not make it through the weekend.” This shocked me. I didn’t believe it, but I called the Mayo Clinic to check on my father’s condition. “Is it true that he can’t be disturbed?”
The nurse said, “He’s expecting you.”
Luckily I had my cell phone and was able to get directions as I entered Phoenix. When I spotted the clinic across the barren field, it looked like an enormous jack-in-the-box, a monument to illness.
I dashed up to intensive care where a doctor greeted me at the security door, escorting me to a windowless anteroom. “About twenty minutes ago,” the kindly doctor began, very tentative, not knowing how I would take this, “your father seemed stable. We thought he was doing well.”
Just minutes before my arrival, Popi had been talking and joking with his doctors, and then suddenly something changed. Part of him had slipped away. I took this news in blankly.
The doctor led me to a nearby room where Popi was laid out on a table, tipped at a disconcerting angle, so that his head was lower than his feet. He was hooked up to various machines with flashing, changing numbers. Numerous doctors stood in a semicircle by his bed—one Indian doctor wore a turban and held a fist to his mouth. It was as if representatives of healing from all over the globe had flown in to be in attendance. They were silent, respectful, observing their patient.
Riding Barranca Page 2