Jul 23, 2020
The weight of heartbeats
With love comes responsibilities: to shelter, to nourish body and soul, to guide
They trust that I won’t leave them.
Sometimes my heart beats too fast and forgets the rhythm of life. But I can’t be old. I still bear the weight of heartbeats.
Post-feral cats: Two. Twined around my legs. Predators. Free to sleep on fuzzy perches in a tack room above their kibble and their daily catch, safe.
They trust that I won’t leave them.
Rescued mutts: Two. One from mental trauma, one from physical. Adventurers. Leaping, streaking up and down the gullies and slopes of acres of dog-fenced terrain. Fed, brushed, trained, hiking partners, sleeping buddies, pushed against my legs for attention.
They trust that I won’t leave them.
Mustangs: Two. A wild-born steed from the high Ponderosa forests and pinyon-sage dotted drylands adjoining the Jicarilla Apache Reservation of northern New Mexico. Reactive, vigilant, self-reliant yet insecure.
A captive born colt from a wild filly who, still a babe herself, sacrificed sprung ribs and muscle starved frame to give birth in the rock walled desert of McElmo Canyon, Southwest Colorado, bred by a stallion from the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation who may have been her brother or her cousin. The colt confident yet reliant on the human he has known since birth.
Travelers. Sheltered, fed, brushed, cleaned, and most importantly taught to accept and even seek a partnership with me.
They trust that I won’t leave them.
My husband, my partner in work and play for 46 years, my friend and classmate for 49. The father of my sons.
He trusts that I won’t leave him.
My sons, spread so far apart, from me and from each other. They must trust that I won’t leave them at least in spirit, because all that they have been, are now, and will be, I love and respect and encourage. I hope that they can fly.
And lastly, my grandsons, those little minds and bodies soaking up the world in a much more complex time. I can only hope that they will remember a hug, a laugh, a story, a hike, a lesson in horseback riding or archery. I hope that they will always know that I loved them. Their sense of me is my memorial.
Sometimes my heart beats too fast and forgets the rhythm of life. But I can’t be old.
Not yet.
