“People will come up to you,” Cosmo’s
owner told me. “He draws a crowd.”
We were a bit of a freak show. Almost
always taller than any other horse at whichever event we were attending, Cosmo
drew more than his share of looks. I was fifteen and looked eleven, like a
child at the end of his lead rope as he walked and snorted around the barns at
the Horse Park, reacquainting himself with his old show grounds.
“How big is he?” was the question I
heard most as I took him for walks before and between classes.
“How old are you?”
“Where’d you get him?”
“What level are you riding?”
“Who do you ride with?”
The outwardly curious were not bashful about asking anything and
everything about him. Others gave looks – everything from disbelieving to
amused. I’m sure there were many who thought someone my age and my size had no
business on a horse his size, and really, I didn’t. I would never recommend an
eighteen hand, sensitive show horse as a mount for a dressage newbie. But Cosmo
wasn’t picked for me – he came to us, needing to be saved, and in return, he
was happy to teach me. I was glowing to think that here he was, fat and shiny,
healthy and happy, fit and sound, but others were sizing up the competition. Competition? It was laughable.
Worse were the accusations that I was
just lucky, that it “wasn’t fair” I had the chance to ride a horse of Cosmo’s
caliber. So many people had watched Cozzy come into the barn like a corpse and
were our biggest cheerleaders when it came time to take him back to the show
ring, but as in all things in life, there are those unhappy with their own
accomplishments who begrudge the successes of others. To them, I was “lucky”,
and that’s all there was to it.
In truth, I was lucky. Lucky that of all the farms she could have chosen, Cosmo’s
owner brought him to us. Lucky that she saw something in me that I didn’t see
in myself, and entrusted her horse to me. Lucky for the chance to know him.
But the people who called me lucky
weren’t there that first day, when he dropped his head into the halter for me.
They didn’t skip school so they could carry him bucketfuls of lunch and sit
outside his paddock. They didn’t put on a paper dust mask and give him an
iodine bath. Rolled their eyes when I took him for walks. Didn’t have the
patience to call one trot lap around the arena a good workout for the day.
Their shoulders weren’t where Cosmo tucked his head when the vet came for
vaccinations twice a year and the big baby was frightened. They didn’t spend
forty-eight hours a week cleaning stalls and sweeping aisles so they could
afford to feed the elephant that he was. And they weren’t there the last year
of his life, when he wasn’t able to be ridden, when lymphangitis had turned his
left hind leg to a tree trunk: when I cold-hosed and wrapped, applied poultice and
sweats, medicated him twice a day and again, skipped school so I could sit
outside his stall in a lawn chair because he felt so bad and just wanted to put
his head in my lap. They weren’t there his last night when the vet stopped his
heart.
I know exactly how lucky I was – too lucky
for words – but I didn’t work so hard, didn’t give so much time and energy, for
accolades. I am not, nor have ever been, competitive. And on an achingly bright
spring afternoon at the Horse Park, when my Big Realization hit, it had
absolutely nothing to do with ribbons or personal glory.
Cosmo and I waited, watching the three
simultaneous tests being ridden inside the Conyers stadium, and I was hit with
a sudden revelation. This was the same stadium where Cosmo’s father took the bronze
in ’96. And here we were, awaiting our turn, Cosmo braided and bathed and
gleaming like a new penny. He was the son of an Olympian who’d shaken hands
with death, who’d been given up on by everyone else, and yet here he stood,
back where it all started.
As small as I am, I felt even smaller.
Who was I? I was nobody. I was a girl with a red pony and a boxed up collection
of Breyer horse models in the attic. I was a geeky barn rat with no sense of
adventure.
But I had touched greatness.
Cosmo did not go to the Olympics. He
didn’t win the Derby. Didn’t save anyone’s life in a war. But that was the kind
of heart he had. I was not remarkable, but he
was, and he let me be his person. He carried me into the stadium that day and
we walked away with two blues and the high scoring Trakehner ribbon for the
entire competition. And I was humbled, in a way I haven’t been since, to know
that I got to be a part of his story. It is a rare and special thing to know
someone who truly inspires you.
Even if that someone is a horse.
 |
| Dedication plaque in the front of my barn |
No comments:
Post a Comment