Textuality Writing Challenge #2

Because I never do things in order.

I'm taking the class Textuality at Big Picture Scrapbooking, and the teacher, Amy Sorensen, posted this challenge on her blog.

Today's writing prompt:

Write a vacation memory. It can be from a trip you took last week or one you took seventeen years ago; the time of the experience doesn't matter. Rather than writing a list of what you did on the trip, try to focus on exploring one small moment, some small experience (it can be good or bad) that has stuck in your memory. Write with the goal of getting your reader to feel what you felt.

This is my memory.

 

He was my mother’s uncle. Sort of. Actually, he was her stepfather’s brother. But her stepfather raised her from a toddler, so that made his brother her uncle. We visited them when I was eleven years old. The aunt spent all her time in the kitchen, wearing an apron. Even when she left the kitchen, she didn’t take the apron off. They had a phone with a party line and a mynah bird in a cage in the kitchen. The bird’s name was Joe.

They lived on a farm, but since they were old, they didn’t farm much any more. They had raised prized Herford cattle, and they still had a small herd. They also had a big garden patch, and even though there was a big fence, the deer got into the peas and beans every day. And they had Bonnie, an old Tennessee Walker mare. She was dark bay with a black mane and tail, and she had taught many children to ride. You had to work hard to fall off of her. Somehow, she just knew which way you were going, and she’d step under you. She was as gentle as a just-hatched chick, but she did have a mind of her own. And I was going to ride her. I was almost afraid to breathe. Like most girls my age, I was horse crazy. I lived, breathed and dreamed horses. I had a whole shelf full of Breyer model horses, but the closest I ever got to riding a horse was going around and around on a grumpy pony at the fair.

He saddled her up and boosted me up to reach the stirrup. She was a big horse, and I was breathless. But I wasn’t afraid. The only fear I had was that I would wake up and it would all be a dream. He had another horse, and we rode together. He told me that if I were out alone and I didn’t know which way to go, to let Bonnie go and she’d come home. We rode through some of the pastures where the cattle grazed, and the new calves watched us with their liquid eyes. He took me to another pasture with ordinary cattle and showed me a cow with one calf who had rejected its twin. He was bottle raising the rejected calf, and I wondered why a cow would reject one calf when the other calf seemed just like it. We left the pasture and rode on narrow roads through the woods, and he showed me funny looking places in the banks where he said the deer licked to get the bit of salt in the soil

And the next time I rode, I rode alone. In the early morning fog, Bonnie and I rode past the fenced garden and watched the deer, ghostlike, fly over the fences and away. We rode through the pasture of prized cattle, and I discovered Bonnie loved to run through the herd and split it into two smaller herds. With my hair streaming behind me and my laugh lost on the wind, I discovered I loved it, too. This time, the calves didn’t look at us with liquid eyes, they ran. And the bull bellowed his anger at our intrusion. I think Bonnie laughed a horse’s laugh back at him. She may have been old, but no bull was going to catch her.

We rode into the woods and let the quiet overtake us. We wandered down dark, narrow trails, almost totally shaded by huge trees overhead, and lost ourselves in a slow rhythm that must be a bit like Heaven. We rode until my stomach began to rumble and Bonnie began to hang her head just a little. Where were we? I didn’t know, but Bonnie did. I turned her around, loosed the reins and said “Let’s go home, Bonnie.” We did, and it wasn’t a dream.

Comments

[BarbBeeghly]

Thanks so much for posting your writing challenge! It made me think of several things: my grandmother's gardens and staying with her when I was young and also a friend's farm where I got to ride horses when I was a teenager. I loved horses too! Still do but haven't ridden for years.

[BarbBeeghly]

I'm enjoying looking through your blog and wondered what kind of leather chair you have in your office/scrap room? You mentioned how comfortable it is and I'm looking for a new one! Do you know the name/brand/size or anything else about it that you would email me? Thanks!

[Amy So]

Thanks for playing along, Kim! This is lovely. Maybe all girls go through that "I love horses" phase, but not everyone gets to indulge it with an actual horse. I'm glad you had that experience!

[Kim]

Barb, I can't email you because I don't have your email address! BUT, the chair came from Staples and here's what's on the tag underneath:
Global Upholstrey Co., Ontario Canada, Uniform Registry # OH21631, SKU 385414, 1-800-305-5000. HTH! And thanks so much for visiting.

[BarbBeeghly]

Thanks for the chair info! Posting a comment here requires that I put in an email address so I assumed you could see it??? I tried clicking on my name and my blog comes up but it doesn't look like my email is posted there either. Will try to remedy that! We have a lot of the same links on our blogs! I'm taking the Textuality class too.

[Cindy Dyer]

Wonderful posting. Really wonderful.