My sleeping children. Two little dreamers who trusted me so deeply they would not stir when I fetch them from the baby sitter. Who, in the morning, wake up in their beds happy and charge out to greet me as if they are birds in full flight.
Shannon, sitting behind my saddle, arms not quite able to reach around my waist, her cheek on my back, sleeping on the ride home. Cory, laying crosswise in my lap, her head in the crook of my arm, her feet on my right thigh. Her sleep is so relaxed that her head rocks and her left arm swings with each step Chewy takes.
We’ve been out for a while. Starting out through the old church yard peach orchards, cutting across the back of old Pokey Robert’s place to make a circle trip to the store to get a treat. Chewy knows that when he steps on the rubber strip in the drive through at the Dairy Queen the window opens and a hand comes out and pretty girl rubs his nose. He also knows he gets the sweet ice left in the bottom of a cup of soda, and at that specific sound of the last slurp through the straw he turns his head to look me over his shoulder, as if saying, “Remember, the rest is mine.”
Then, we’re riding home under the shady trees along Fish Creek Road. Loping a little in the open places, the girl’s giggling makes Chewy’s ears laugh. Our ride home through the gloaming is full of fire-fly wonder, clip-clop and “Mommy, why...” until leather squeak, gentle rocking rhythm and the summer night do their work and the girls grow quiet. I love the four of us this way.
Sometimes, someone is at the barn and will take the girls from me so I can dismount and lay them in the car to sleep while I do my chores. Usually though, I have to wake Shannon and one hand her down where she wobbles on sleepy legs as I swing down, still holding Cory. I carry them both to the car, a little station wagon, where they stretch out as much as they can, being buckled in, until after the drive home when I must disturb them again to carry them to their beds.
They are instantly back to sleep. As I am wiping some of the dirt from hands and faces, I wonder if they are dreaming of root beer floats, of fire-flies so thick we could not tell where they ended and the stars began, of clover chains necklaces, of chasing and being chased by Levi, a brash young colt at the barn who demands they share their cheese doodles and chocolate with him.
These are the times I remember most. I don’t remember thinking my life was hard. I do not recall ever taking my children to the sitter so I could have a break. These times were my break.
Note: This was in the mid 1980's. Most, if not all of Pokey Robert’s place is now under the water of Joe Pool Lake, Grande Prairie, TX. At the time, I exercised, groomed and fed the local police horse patrol in exchange for keeping Chewy with their horses. It was across those loamy sections of land that I worked their horses who were boarded adjacent . Though he did not care one iota for parades, the police patrol used Chewy now and then for manhunt or search and rescue because he was steady. He could be ridden on across an I-10 overpass, through an underpass tunnel, up and down the stairs in an abandoned farm house. He once pushed both of my girls away from an electric fence. You couldn’t tie him to anything, he could take down barn if you tried. But, he’d happily stay ground tied for hours if you asked him to.
When the powers that be started to fill the lake over Pokey’s place, we all dreaded it. But, a couple of us took the opportunity to ride out there with young horses and shoot the rattlers that were running from the water.