To kick things off here, I have a confession to make, which I suspect will shock exactly no one familiar with me through my writing thus far…I have never had much time for Nice Guys. My first boyfriend was sweet, but he was also a former enforcer for a gang (I did say former, just to be clear). He had walked away from “the life” a few years before we met, but he had a marked edge, still. I was drawn to that combination; gentleness towards me, from a guy who clearly had a capacity to be dangerous. Mind you, I didn’t know many specifics about his past when we were dating. He told me all about it a year or so after we’d split, and then only because he was in some trouble, and worried about his family. I was kind of taken aback (he had even been using a fake name, though virtually all the guys at the racetrack who came from the same area knew, of course, exactly who he really was), but it also explained a lot. Even if his real name was new to me, I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t “that guy” anymore, so I helped him, as did my parents. With the whole truth out in the open at last, we became genuinely good friends. Before he moved up north, sixteen years ago, we went and got our eyebrows pierced together (in some sketchy guy’s basement); we joked that this was like having friendship necklaces, but, cooler. Way more our style. I eventually lost touch with him after he moved, though I still have my “friendship” eyebrow ring.

Whether as friends or romantic interests, I’ve always had this gravitation towards guys who were (at least) a bit on the wild side; past or present troublemakers, with outlawish leanings. Happily, that road never once led me down a path where I experienced violence at the hands of a man I was intimate with, though I have on occasion experienced a touch of violence and threats of same from stepping between other women and the sort of men who do use their strength against women.

I once had a boyfriend’s roommate stand about an inch from my face and scream that he was going to kill me (and teach me a thorough lesson first) if I didn’t get out of his way, slamming his hand several times into the wall right next to my head to reinforce his point. The worst part of that experience for me, really, was the way that his yelling right in my face like that misted me with spittle the entire time. It was totally gross. The boyfriend, by the way, was a lamentable departure from type, a “nice guy”; he was basically wringing his hands in the background.

Admittedly, the situation was a bit awkward. We’d heard the roommate smacking his girlfriend around, and her crying and pleading (none of which, according to Boyfriend, was a first, though I’d not been present for it before). Then he’d started in with the “I’m going to kill you, do you understand? No waking up again, dead Shae, gone, no more!” I guess he was making sure to paint her a picture of just what death entailed, in his view, in case she didn’t understand. Anyway, upon hearing that, after one incredulous look at my unmoving boyfriend, I walked in and joined them in the bathroom. Poor Shae was naked; apparently the fight started when she was getting ready to shower. Somehow, that made it much worse.

So I got in between them and there was a lot of the to-be-expected yelling and drama, and Shae assuring me that she was fine and “could handle him”. Now it was my turn to look at her incredulously; when I’d walked in, James (not all J names wind up my friends) had her by the arm, wrenched up high behind her back; you know, where it hurts like hell and holds you helpless. He was bending her backwards over the tub like that, spitting highly convincing, if somewhat redundant, death threats in her face. But hey, apparently, despite appearances, she was “handling” the situation, and him. My mistake.

There’s not much more to tell of that particular evening’s drama, except, I didn’t get out of his way, and he didn’t kill me (obviously, here I am!), or even actually touch me. I didn’t expect that he would; he wasn’t crazy. Vicious, sure, but not out of control enough to be stupid. Men like him know exactly what they can get away with, and with whom. I think he could certainly tell that I wouldn’t be falling in line and assuring the cops everything was fine.

Meanwhile, as I’ve said, my boyfriend of the time just stood there. I get it in a way. It’s deeply awkward for a man to arrive upon a scene like that, with a woman in that position; exposed, humiliated, helpless. Also, I’ve no doubt that James would have actually hit him. Between two men, that scene would have ended very differently. And honestly, in my assessment, James was by far the tougher man, with a lot more fights under his belt. He would’ve kicked Boyfriend’s ass, I’m afraid, in short order. Sometimes people end up killed or crippled in fights like that. And for what? To defend the woman who would just stay anyway, to be beaten again and possibly killed another day? The woman who usually hit James first, and repeatedly, before he started hitting back? Rationally, I can’t say I blame Boyfriend for hanging back, or for being angry with me for pointlessly intervening. But there it is, rational or not; I guess I’m just not built for being able to kick back and enjoy a TV show while trying to tune out the sounds of a woman getting battered and threatened in the next room. There was no saving Shae from herself, but I had to try. I think maybe some part of me also just wanted to remind her somehow (or point it out to her for the first time in her wretched life, perhaps) that this was insane; loving a man is not supposed to include disagreements turning potentially deadly at his hands.

Of course, it’s also not supposed to include the man standing back and watching in impotent distress while the woman acts. Call me sexist (I don’t mind), but I think that a man should be more willing to take a hit, than he is willing to watch a woman take one. Full stop. No, it’s not fair, but nothing about life is fair, or ever will be under the sun, so there’s absolutely no point to that line of argument. Some of the most desperately unhappy, trapped individuals I’ve ever known are the ones who let themselves be drawn into brooding on “fairness”.

It isn’t fair, but it is fitting, that a man be more willing to take a punch to the face (literal or metaphorical) than allow a woman to take the same, if he can possibly help it. That, in part, is what a man is, in essence, what he’s made to be. The telos of masculinity is inseparable from this. Women are certainly called upon to offer up our bodies and our selves to risk in a different way, but, unless you’ve really cauterized your mind with too much Theory, then you’ll have to agree; we all recognize a certain kind of situation that calls for a man’s courage, a man stepping in. Usually, it involves facing down some kind of threat, quite possibly in the form of another man. We all know those situations when we see them. Just as instinctively, we all recognize the depth of wrongness about it when a man fails to do so.

I personally suspect this is part of the appeal of various iterations of the “bad boy”, even the less charming ones. He isn’t passive, at least. I know when I contemplate my own past, despite having been involved with several men who objectively treated me worse than that particular boyfriend, it’s the fecklessness of that man that makes me feel the most shame and disgust to have ever been with him. I didn’t even want to write that part of the story. I’d rather tell y’all all my wildest stories, all the stupidest things I’ve done, instead of confessing that I once dated the sort of guy who was content to work part-time, and who was also content to stand idly by while another man was in my face threatening to kill me and striking the wall within inches of my head. Frankly, I think I’d rather have stories about dating a guy who did hit me. At least he’d have been doing something. At least he’d be a character worth the ink and the time it took to bring him to life on the page.

Beyond that, though, when it comes to the appeal of bad boys, I think there’s the awareness of our own darkness that comes into play. A desire for someone who won’t be intimidated or repelled by that; personally, I admired (and desired) men that I knew I couldn’t control if I tried. Ironically, that spineless boyfriend came closer to successfully controlling me than any other man in my life; my sense that I was “too much” for him caused me to shrink in shame and self-recrimination, to flatten and contract myself into a woman he could handle. How I arrived at such a low place in my spirit, that I would choose that wretched lot for myself, is a long story, not for today, but it was, in fact, the darkest chapter of my life when I started dating him. And it only got darker from there, under his thumb. Kind of ironic that I could, at the same time, be two such living antitheses: the woman who would cooly face down threats he shied from, and also the one so controlled by shame that I would stay with him some time after that night, though I despised him as a lazy coward. Proof, if I needed it, that I can’t throw stones at women like Shae.

Somewhere deep down—very deep down—I knew I wanted, even, dare I say, needed, a very different sort of man. There’s a line in the song “Dark Nights” by the band Dorothy, I need a man/a man who’s got blood on his hands and the truth on his face; the imagery of blood on his hands may be jarring to the squeamish, but I have always been more of a warily observant sort than squeamish, myself. We do live in a dark and dangerous world, filled with “the haunts of violence”. The thin veneer of civilization in the modern, Western world often is quite successful at disguising this, at least among those of us who have lived relatively sheltered and privileged lives. It’s only a thin veil, though, easily torn aside to lay bare the frightening reality lurking beneath. The “dark places of the land”, the very darkest ones, are contained in the human heart. In every human heart.

This (secretive, shameful) craving for a hero to cleave to in such a world, while carrying such malignant darkness within myself; it took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t pathetic, but a glimmer of truth breaking through my defenses. If I wouldn’t look it in the face, you might say that I saw it out of the corner of my eye, that this need wasn’t going away, and that it was perhaps there for a reason. I recognize it now as an instinct steering me towards one of the most important Truths in the universe; I did need saving. This was a terribly hard pill for me to swallow. Like many a woman of my generation, I’d absorbed a lot of messages (not so much from my parents, just the air I breathed in our culture) that I shouldn’t need or want any such thing. I preferred reading Angela Carter to the classic fairy tales; I’d internalized the idea that, perhaps, Woman needed saving in a way from men, the real villains of the story (though, of course, we should also embrace being rapaciously oversexed as though it was inevitable, and as though it was more fun than it was). But it was ultimately up to her—perhaps I should say, Her, the archetypical Her, to save herself.

Despite this baggage, this internal resistance, I still had a strong, almost overpowering natural urge to be the beloved, the sought after; the one whose hand is honorably sought and won, and held forever after. Words cannot do justice to just how bitterly I hated that feeling, but I could not shake it, no matter how far or how hard I ran from it. I couldn’t numb it with substances or kill it with cruelty; to myself and to the men foolish enough to try to woo me with sincerity. Not every woman handles this the same, of course; some women do try to let a man (or a succession of them) fulfill this void we carry. Sometimes, in good marriages, say; it works out well enough to distract from the aching need, perhaps even more or less successfully for a long life together. Spoiler alert, though: they can’t fix it. Good men want to, and they’ll kill themselves trying (bless them), but they don’t actually have what it takes. Not really. Men need rescuing just as badly, though I pity them, personally, for their process of figuring that out. I think it’s even worse for men than it is for women.

I’m speculating, merely as an observer, but it’s been my thought for some time that men have it a touch more complicated, in a way, than women do; we (women) have this pull, this orientation, toward men, that naturally prepares our hearts (if we let it) for the Man above and beyond the fallen ones before us. Men, on the other hand, have an inner drive urging them towards stepping into a role they can’t actually quite fill; they have, perhaps, a deeper, more persistent sense of their own failure to live with than women do. While I’m sharing my theories anyway; I think that the men who seem passive and spineless are the ones who have just turned away from that call, in a kind of despair. You might say that both men and women sense a certain weight to men’s deficiencies that is just undeniably different. Women often live with, and likely suffer from, the disappointment and hurt of men’s inadequacy, but the men carry the weight of it with them. It can be crushing. I’ve seen men stumble and fall under it at times.

I know many women, myself included, have bristled at the thought of ever being a “damsel in distress”, but that may be an even harder identity for a man to recognize in himself. C.S Lewis referred to this as humanity’s “corporate femininity”. A man, too, needs a savior, needs a “real man”, the real man; the Man who is more of a man than he (our mere mortal fella under discussion here) is, or ever could be. Men need a hero strong enough to bear the weight of their failures, someone who can truly, perfectly fulfill the role that they are haunted by all their lives; the role of the hero.

There’s a famous (and funny) quote by Dorothy Sayers, speaking wisdom for women, that goes, “The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as is commonly believed, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are hard work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.” It makes us smile because we know there’s a grain of truth in it; mere mortal men are not saviors, not even the best of them. I’m not knocking the benefit of repose upon the right manly bosom, mind you. If you’re blessed to be a woman who is married to a good man, you might find that there are few things more efficacious in bolstering your strength for another round of hard work, than a brief respite in your husband’s arms. But ultimately, we all find at times, at least, that a (mere)man isn’t really strong enough to depend on, even if his body’s strength takes your breath away.

There’s a word in Hebrew, בָּטַח, “batach”, that means to lean upon, to trust, utterly, in the way that you trust the ground beneath your feet to hold your full weight. This is the word used in Proverbs 3:5, as in “trust (batach) in the Lord with all your heart.” Trust so deep, so absolute, it almost goes without thinking, really, which is a hard concept for us to truly wrap our heads around. Even the ground, after all, can shift under us or deceive us. Whom could we ever trust like that? We are scarred and wounded people. Moreover, we are treacherous people. We’ve seen things; dark nights and violence and wreckage. We’ve done things we don’t care to remember; we’ve had such things done to us as well. We have known nothing, ultimately, but disappointment (and worse) at one another’s hands. If we are honest, if we are willing to look reality in the face…our own hands are not clean. Our hearts are not pure.

I’ll return to speaking simply for myself here, lest I be accused of summarizing, or worse, playing theologian on the internet. Rewind a couple of years. I had a conundrum. A hero worthy of my trust (batach) on this level that I craved, would also, of necessity, be wise enough to recognize me as a villainess. A man who couldn’t see through me is not a man I could ever count on, after all. This is where I found myself between a rock and a hard place. I’d disqualified myself from the very thing I needed. I knew I was too much to handle, and also, not worth the trouble. Therein lay the problem. I would need a hero who could not only take on the world and the devil himself, but me, too. One possessing goodness so boundless that it could scatter my wretchedness as light scatters darkness.

There is such a man, after all, “a man with blood on his hands and the truth on his face”; the One whose hands were pierced for me, who bled for me, in my stead; the Man who is Truth itself made flesh. When I actually drew near, reluctantly, one of the things that moved me to love, at last, was this realization. Jesus is the fulfillment of what the very best and most badass of men only hint at, and point towards. Talk of stepping in to take a blow, or of willingness to get his hands dirty. Here at last, was a manly bosom upon which I could repose (as John did); here’s a Man worthy of the sort of utter trust and adoration that I (secretly) longed to give.

More later, that’ll do for now.

With love,

Jesalyn

Postscript:

I wrestled with that last bit so much, and with so little satisfaction, I may still rewrite it. If anyone cares, let me know and I will tag you in it if I update it. For now, it was just time to be done and move on.

I always allude to a bunch of Scripture without directly quoting per se, but comment if you’re curious and I’ll steer you towards what I was steeping in for this one. Also, the C.S. Lewis line is from his essay, Priestesses in the Church? which I first read in his collection God in the Dock. If you’ve read his Space Trilogy, you may have caught a slight nod to Perelandra here as well.

I’m attaching a song here that certainly wasn’t written from a Christian perspective, but I’d invite you to listen to it thoughtfully after reading this, paying attention to the lyrics. Like a lot of secular songs, I think that it hints at a lot of what I wrote about here; God has written certain truths so deeply into us as men and women, it takes exhaustive effort, it seems, to deny them to ourselves (granted, we do seem willing to put in the effort, sadly).

Just as an aside, the official music video to this song is hilarious and worth watching, but it is, in fact, so funny that I thought it might prove distracting from the words, for those of you who haven’t heard it before, so I skipped that one for now.

Enjoy.

I’ll just begin this by reassuring everyone, I’m not going to talk about any kind of violence in this piece; you can breathe easy. The blood in the title is for blood ties, not bloodshed. For most of my adult life, my best friend has been my cousin (hereafter christened Sinis, not his real name). My family’s move to Maryland when I was five meant that we mostly grew up apart, but we bonded deeply in the trenches of young adulthood. The summer I turned nineteen, I spent a few months living with him in Wisconsin, helping around the farm for my room and board. I was finally giving a long-overdue break to a wrecked ankle that simply could not take the strain of riding racehorses anymore until it had time to heal properly (I finally admitted it; only took me a year and a half to give in). In that season, I was a bit heartsore as well as lamed, and wanted to return, at least for awhile, to where I’d come from.

That was a glorious summer. Some of you might remember this feeling I’m talking about; the sheer exuberance, the sense of limitless possibility that can come when you’re young, and strong, with relatively few regrets to your name. Others, I know, do not get even this taste of immortality in youth; life has proven costly and crushing to some even by nineteen. But I was, admittedly, one of the Spoiled Ones. Even my griefs lay pretty lightly upon me at that age, easily laid aside in the right setting and company. And the Driftless region, together with the company of my cousin, proved to be a combination that made me positively buoyant.

I learned a lot from Sinis in those months. Working solely on horse farms and the racetrack had given me little practical knowledge of Real Farming; you know, the kind that feeds the world. I’d nailed up plenty of fence boards, but I’d never spent a week’s worth of hundred-degree-days building barbed wire fence in rocky woodland on the side of a mini-mountain. For instance. I was deputized (or rather, my smaller hands were deputized) into assisting on various cramped mechanical tasks inside tight spots in machinery (my hands were about 1/3 the size of my cousin's; I think this was one of his favorite things about having me around, since it sometimes spared him hours of painstaking work by inches). Speaking of machinery; I learned to operate all sorts of equipment that summer, much of which I could not have correctly identified by name or purpose beforehand. I helped fill a silo, and a harvester (and learned the difference in their design and purpose). We made a lot of hay.

I probably laughed more, too, in those few months, than I had for about a year beforehand. My cousin and I quickly discovered we had the same dark, twisted, “gallows” humor; for me, finding those who share this is even better than discovering people who love the same no-name bands I do (though there’s often overlap between those two groups, I’ve found). More than that, we both delighted in what I refer to as “absurdist dry” wit; wherein each party continually attempts to one-up the other in ever-more outlandish statements delivered with apparent sincerity. You could also call it deadpan melodrama, if you can imagine such a thing. You don’t have to play it perfectly straight; a slight smirk is permissible, as it makes it even harder for the other to not laugh; whoever breaks down and laughs outright first could be considered the “loser” at this game, I suppose, but there’s no real losers, or even any real punchline to the running joke. It’s just a never-ending banter, designed equally for pointless diversion, and, for those of us who love it, as a potent form of encouragement, a kind of whistling in the dark that lifts flagging spirits when nothing else can.

There’s an art to this style of humor; it is my favorite, but it’s potentially dangerous. It’s easily misread, consequently there’s great potential for giving offense, if you try it on the wrong people. Perhaps that is a good bit of the explanation for why I tend to bond most deeply and quickly with people who are a little bit dark and absurd, too; they instinctively “get” it. Sinis and I understood one another perfectly this way. It was our default mode of communication even in sincerity; a kind of safety net for talking about subjects too vulnerable to be approached directly. Sometimes touching a wound lightly is best. He could express his most raw feelings this way; one of Sinis’ running “bits” was a recurring declaration that his life was under some kind of curse and that God was torturing him to see just how much he could take. He was in fact perfectly serious in this, as he had experienced great suffering in his life, such as most people never even imagine, and he felt unable to escape it, ever. He felt doomed, fated…damned. He would joke about it in language too flamboyant to be taken seriously; I understood that he was in fact serious, and I tailored my equally melodramatic response to sort of tip him a wink to my genuine compassion, whilst still making him laugh at my absurdity. If you know, you know; this stuff works. We laughed in our sleeves at life together, through many a dark spell, and even through tragedy.

Sinis is technically my cousin, but in my heart, I’ve thought of him as my brother, ever since that summer. Either way of course, we’re kin; bound by blood. He quickly became the living embodiment of the kind of big brother I’d always daydreamed about having; the kind I occasionally came across in books, but that seem so rare in real life. No intention here of throwing shade at my actual two big brothers (who don’t read my Substack anyway, though, so I could probably get away with it if I wanted to). The truth is, I had a kind of unmet big-brother-yearning all of my childhood. I fantasized about an idealized older brother who would take a deep interest in me as a person, be fond enough of me to want me around a good bit of the time, who would tease me with genuine affection rather than meanness. The kind of brother who would be protective if one of his friends took an interest in me (my actual brothers were just mystified that anyone would take an interest in me). The type who would punch someone in the mouth for making a disrespectful remark about his kid sister; but who would also sit me down and give me a stern lecture about the length of my skirt, who would take pains to explain to me How Men Are; I knew, but I liked the idea of a big brother who cared enough to warn me anyway. I know; put it all together, and it starts to sound childish, like I wanted a big brother who’d be my hero.

Sinis came close. It took me awhile to get used to the idea that I didn’t annoy him; that he just liked having me around. “Wanna come with me to…?” was his constant invitation to me that summer. And yes, I always answered, no matter what “it” was. I’ll go with you. That became our little callback routine, which lasted for many years beyond. We prowled about a good deal, on foot and in vehicles, with purpose and without. I can remember the long drives all over the many backroads around home, looking for the clay-tile silos we could find still standing (just because). “Let’s go look for clay silos” was Sinis’ way of saying “let’s go for a drive just to hang out and talk about how the world used to be, and how out of place we feel in it today.” Then there were all the nights we went “road trippin”, which is slang for the unfortunate hobby of getting drunk and driving his Polaris Ranger up in the hills (not literally on the roads, fortunately, but it’s still kind of amazing we didn’t flip ourselves anywhere and die of our folly). Staying up all night talking and taking turns playing our favorite music for each other, even after long days working hard physical labor in the heat (ah, youth).

I’m sure there were times he wanted to pull his hair out because of me. I got his truck stuck in a ditch in a field once, pulling a trailer with several thousand pounds of hay on it. It was quite a pickle; I did not know how we were ever going to get it out, and it was certainly my fault, driving slightly too tentative. I was drawn taut as a drum all over, with the expectation of the explosion over my screwup, when my cousin came over to inspect the damage. After taking a good look at what I’d done…he laughed until he cried, made fun of me just a bit, and then very carefully and kindly talked me through the timing of what I would need to do while he pushed the whole assembly with the skidsteer. That moment has stuck with me all my life; the laughter when I expected cursing.

Then there was my nineteenth birthday. I managed to be some nuisance to him that night too, though to be fair, he contributed to the Bad Decisions portion of the evening. We celebrated the occasion, along with a friend of his (another Adam), by sharing a bottle of whiskey between us, sipped neat from our Grandma Bev’s teacups (sorry, Grandma). Well, Adam and I drank whiskey; Sinis declared himself enough of a man to drink stuff that “actually tastes good” without shame, so he was drinking screwdrivers. I had a few of those too. And no dinner. You can imagine.

At a certain point in the festivities, I discovered that I had, lamentably, lost the use of my legs, and indeed, I appeared to have forfeited most of my control over the entirety of my body. I half-fell against Adam, laughing; he brilliantly deduced that I had, at last, had enough to drink, and though none too sober himself, he gallantly picked me up and carried me towards my bedroom to help me lie down.

Sinis had been practically nodding off at the table by this juncture, but he roused in a hurry then. Scowling, he came over and interceded in the kitchen doorway, insisting on carrying me himself. They actually kind of argued for a minute over my limp form like kids squabbling over a doll, as I recall (meanwhile my mouth still worked, and I was spiritedly informing them both that I did not require assistance from either of them, despite all evidence to the contrary). Sinis scooped me away and settled me in bed on my side, and thoughtfully fetched me a bucket. Shortly thereafter, when I did need to avail myself of that bucket, he sat with me and held my hair back while I emptied myself of my excesses…for hours, it seemed like.

(I feel it’s worth noting for everyone who started reading that bit with a knot in their stomach that I got to know Adam well, and I’m 100% confident he would have done exactly the same thing...and nothing else. But I loved that my cousin would allow no other man, not even his good friend, to be alone with me when I was that vulnerable.)

Maybe my deep hunger for brotherhood makes more sense in light of the fact that for most of my life, I always wanted to be one of the boys, then one of the men. I loved the sort of bonds men had with each other; the comradeship among certain men looked like what I craved from friendship. I loved the way that men pushed each other so hard, often laced with laughter that had a daring edge to it, like they were affirming something about each other through that pushing. I understood that as a non-sappy form of encouragement and responded to it as such, in a way that I couldn’t (in my youth) seem to respond to the softer, more complimentary style of my female friends’ encouragement. Interesting word, encouragement. To help fill another with courage, in a nutshell. To this day, whenever I read Beowulf, I thrill to the line about the Geatish warriors “setting forehead to forehead, drinking deep of one another’s courage”. I craved that sort of bond; to give and receive that.

Strange as it may sound, I credit my cousin with really nudging me towards a deep appreciation for being a woman, among men; he delighted in my tomboyishness but also protected and valued my femininity, to such an extent that I was forced to look at it as something that was, perhaps, valuable and worthy of protection. For me, that nudge didn’t happen via a romantic relationship. It came through a “blood brother”; through being a beloved kid sister. He thought I was brilliant, hilarious; his favorite person to talk to, and he talked to me as often as he could, about everything he could, which rather proved that beyond doubt. He pushed me relentlessly; pushed me to do things I’d never done and was scared to screw up; pushed back on my assumptions, pushed my casual acceptance of things I’d been taught (and he was usually right).

But he also insisted on protecting me, on treating me as a woman, not one of the guys. He just paid me no mind whatsoever when I’d protest that I didn’t need any special treatment. Indeed, I suppose if one of his male friends had been so unwise as to get so inebriated in his presence as I was on my birthday, while having long hair, he probably would have seized the opportunity to cut the long hair off, rather than tenderly holding it back. So I did get special treatment. He warned all his friends away from me and in fact, he did give me all those lectures about men, all that stuff I already knew. I’d later end up marrying the only guy he ever approved of for me, and he was right about that too. When he fixed my truck for me on multiple occasions, he’d let me buy materials, but never accepted a cent for his labor. When I rolled my eyes at his opening doors and even, sometimes, pulling out chairs for me, he just did it more dramatically; leaping out of the truck before it was hardly stopped so that he could dash around to open the truck door for me too, and offering me his arm to assist me in stepping down, like I was some kind of cripple. Some of this actually upset me at times (the door thing was admittedly hilarious); I prided myself greatly on Not Needing No Man, family or otherwise. He just brushed that sort of “feminazi crap” aside.

If it infuriated me at times, I also loved it. Perhaps some of the big brother fantasy is also about an ache to feel protected and precious. Now, that is admittedly feminine, about as feminine as it gets. Guess I’m outing myself as cisgender after all. It’s interesting to me to reflect that I both craved it and accepted it more easily in the genre of brother-love than in other departments; this is not precisely the same longing as the desire to feel cherished by a father or a romantic partner. This brother-longing is its own distinct thing, and I felt it with perhaps even more intensity than either of the others (I didn’t know why, then, though I’m beginning to have my suspicions).

Anyway, I had it, eventually. A blood brother. From that first summer, we were best friends. Sometimes I wonder if Sinis, who had a pretty disappointing big brother, himself, was instinctively trying to set something right, stepping into that role as it is meant to be…what a big brother is meant to be. He nailed it, in what he was for me, and how I mattered to him. Our callback routine really never changed. After that summer, until I moved back, this was mostly via the phone. We got in the habit of calling each other any time either of us had a longish drive. “Wanna go with me to…?” “I’ll go with you.” Another running joke. I was in his ear all over around Wisconsin and Iowa and Illinois, when he was driving to pick up cows. We talked each other half to death. We told each other everything, almost (nobody tells anybody everything). He heard certain stories of mine before anyone else did. Years before, sometimes. We laughed at everyone and everything in the known universe, developing so many inside jokes we couldn’t keep track of them all; whistling in the dark, indeed, and even past the graveyard.

I’ve sat up with him all night without laughter or music, as well. When his wife died, leaving him to raise two little boys alone (one of them only a year old), I came to stay with him awhile, as soon as I could. That night I arrived was the night I met my husband, though it was five years before we’d start dating. I first got to know Justus, a little, by sitting there together in the dark, in silence, one of us on either side of Sinis, our (mutual) heart’s brother, a shattered man; love and grief hanging thick as smoke in the air.

We both loved him; we would have followed him anywhere, into any danger, and we were ready to shred anyone who dared hurt him. In those later years when we got together, Justus and I laughed to realize how much we’d crossed each other’s tracks without knowing it, defending the “brutha” we both adored (those two together got me going on the “brutha” thing; it’s a South Park reference, apparently; I don’t know, I’ve never watched that nonsense). When some of our small town’s smallest and meanest minds started spreading nasty rumors about Sinis, both Justus and I lost our sh*t on the same people on different occasions, unbeknownst to each other. In the metaphorical, verbal sense, I came storming in with a baseball bat and started smashing kneecaps (and the furniture). Considering that they were women, Justus was more restrained than I was, though he didn’t exactly mince words, either. On another occasion, there was a man who said something just awful about Sinis in the shop where Justus worked. Justus wound up physically removing the guy from his presence, shall we say. It didn’t quite come to blows, but it was a near thing; that guy can’t look Justus in the eye to this day. Funny, it’s almost as though back then we were already comrades-in-arms, fighting back to back. Neither one of us tolerated any attacks on Sinis. Anyone wanting to come at him had to come through us.

Some years later, when I had to leave the farm I loved, and felt like the bottom had dropped out of my life, Sinis told me that I always had a home with him, anyway. When the time came to leave, he drove out from WI with a trailer, and he brought help; the man I’d marry soon thereafter (though I still had no premonition of that yet). As Wendell Berry put it in Jayber Crow, “they made of that momentous day and my grief only a practical day of work”. And, of course, laughter. Much laughter. I felt, again, that sense of being safely enfolded in that loyal, deathless brother-love.

So much for that. An even slightly attentive reader will have surely noted the past tense used throughout this essay. I didn’t know it yet, that moving day, of course, but we had less than six months to go before our relationship fractured beyond healing. It turns out that it really only takes a few words to undo what it may take years to forge. Even ties of blood. The whole story of the unraveling could hardly be slipped in real quick near the end of an essay, and much of it is not rightly my business to tell, anyway.

But I can put my finger on a key piece of the puzzle that was my fault. That, surely, is my story by rights. I was no longer nineteen and Sinis wasn’t twenty-four, when I moved back. We weren’t a couple of carefree young adults road trippin’ through the hills at night. He was a widower and a father; I was a woman, finally, with a woman’s instincts, especially for children. His boys did that; they made a mother of me years before God gave me a child of my own. And you know how mothers get. I grew so protective of them that I overstepped at times, my role in the family, because after all, I wasn’t their mother. At the time, I hardly came across like a person who ought to be anybody’s mother, ever.

I pushed Sinis too hard about his kids, particularly in expressing my frustration where I saw him being unwise in his personal life; it finally came to an actual argument one day, where he turned his temper on me, for the first time. I really noticed how big he is then, when he started yelling. He said quite a few nasty things (some of them true enough), and eventually, so did I. I told him, in fact, that he was a f**king fool when it came to women, and I even went so far as to contemptuously tell him of the specific, archetypical fool he brought to mind for me; in the book of Proverbs, “like a dog returning to his vomit”. This was one of the more striking bits of biblical imagery that had stuck with me even fifteen years after I’d last opened a Bible, and at last, I got to use it, wittily. You could say I drew first blood.

I was right, in point of fact; he was being a fool, and his kids were paying, and have paid, an exorbitant price for his folly, over and over again. But a hard truth in this life—one that I’ve learned the hard way— is that it doesn’t matter how right your opinions are, if you express truth without love. I don’t just mean some milquetoast sentiment like what passes for love in some circles, either, where “love” is defined as thoughtless affirmation of even the deadliest choices. Affirmation, and even gentleness, isn’t always possible when speaking love-truths. It goes deeper than that. The truth is, I didn’t speak the way I did right then out of love at all, for him or for his sons, though I did (and do) truly love them all. I voiced those words then because I was furious at being disregarded when I was clearly “right”; I was livid at his insults (especially the accurate ones), and when I’d had enough, I delivered my words like a blow, in retaliation. I said it contemptuously, out of temper, to shut him up and to have the last word. I got that. A few days later, we exchanged our actual last words.

A few lines crossed. A faint arrogance in my heart, tended like a flame. A resentment and wounded pride nursed in his. One brief argument. Another exchange, briefer still, a few days later. And that was it. We haven’t spoken in six years. I can practically hear my Christian brethren yelling at me through the screen “but, forgiveness! you can reach out!”. I do forgive him, but I’m not forgiven. I’ve left parts out, remember. There’s more to the story that would make clear just how decisively he has closed that door. Let’s just say I’ve been informed that I’m not welcome. The same qualities that could make him so loyal, also make him pretty immovable when he has decided someone is an enemy. There was also another person involved who fed him a lot of lies; I don’t think that he would ever have believed them, except I’d already damaged our relationship by making him feel that I didn’t respect him, anymore. No matter the relationship, there are few things harder to walk back with a man, I think, than that.

He wasn’t technically my brother, but when we had our falling-out, I lost the brother I never had. That ache is back, at times. But I think that I’ve come to see something deeper written in that yearning itself, now. I’m beginning to see that we must learn to look past our longings in themselves, to see what they are pointing to out beyond.

Some of the passages of Scripture that move me the most are the ones where Christ is described as a brother to believers (such as Hebrews 2:11-12, or Romans 8:29). I find that I accept (rather more easily than my husband does, lol) the idea that in eternity, we two in the body will be wholly (and only) brother and sister; that marriage is a temporal bond by comparison, a holy thing, certainly, but holy because it is a foreshadowing of the real thing. Real marriage is between us and…well, that’s another essay. Our brotherhood, though, won’t be replaced but perfected. I feel this tiny, tiny inkling of an intuitive understanding that the “something” in our natures that causes the longing of Eros love here under the sun, in our fallen bodies…that will be satisfied wholly in the presence of God, so that it won’t ache anymore. But we will still be bound to one another as brothers, through the blood of the perfect Eldest Brother. Ah, I did sneak in some bloodshed after all. But that shed blood has the power to wash the world clean. The blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. The blood that has set to work at making “everything sad come untrue”.

It’s also the blood that binds us together now, in one family, one body, with the same blood flowing through us. It is changing us into people who can love differently; the sort of love that keeps no account of wrongs suffered, that does not delight in, say, “winning” a fight, but rather rejoices with the truth. And that is an intriguing thought. The love we have for our brothers (and sisters) here on earth now, is laying the foundation for something that will be perfected and continue into eternity.

When I said in the subtitle that this was a little love story, I didn’t mean a romance (I’m not much for writing that stuff). I just meant a story about love. Love “lost” in one chapter…though, while there’s life, there’s hope. And also love found. First, because Love found me, and became my brother. And in so doing, He bound me to a new family with Blood ties that truly are deathless.

With love (for real),

Jesalyn

Postscript:

I mentioned in a note that I actually was prompted to write this by a Twenty-one Pilots song. I’m not generally a huge fan of their music, but I love this particular song, and the music video. I spent more time than I’d care to admit listening to it/watching it on repeat, pregnant and weeping, as I was mourning the loss of my “brutha” in my life. I can still remember sitting on the bed and showing the video to Justus, trying to express something too deep for words; while not portraying a perfectly parallel story, it has striking similarities. I recommend actually watching it when you get the chance.

As a sort of bookend note, I have another song, that I’ve only discovered recently. This video is so thoroughly wholesome it almost makes my ironic bully side want to come out to mock the sap, but the song moves me deeply.

(Metalheads, if you’re feeling disappointed with my selection today, may I recommend this? Less poetically perfect, but still fitting.)

Peace be with you all <3

I originally titled this piece “Girls Lie Too” when I started work on it; that amused me, but then I changed my mind. For one thing, lately my essays have been shape-shifting on me in the writing of them. It didn’t turn out to be about what I thought it was, when I started. For another, I thought that was sort of a clickbait title, and I’m doing my best to deliberately reject that sort of thing (trying).

I have some stories to tell y’all today. Some of them are true, even. A few years ago, I was sitting at the counter in the office of the shop where my husband (then-boyfriend) worked, having come by to eat lunch with him (I know, we’re sickenly adorable). It’s hard to beat a shop for a romantic environment; presided over by the nearly-inevitable girlie pics on the wall, grease and dirt everywhere, an overflowing ashtray on the counter. I liked the guys, though, not even excluding my boyfriend. I was sitting there joking around with the other guys (my boyfriend being temporarily detained with a customer), eating a sandwich and balancing a sparkling water on my pregnant stomach (honestly, that was handy at times), when one of the guys started talking about the News. Not being, as a rule, remotely interested in the world beyond what I can see on the horizon, I was probably just chewing my sandwich, looking at the half-naked girls adorning the walls and thinking about music, when one of the guys said something that succeeded in catching my attention. “Why are they coming forward now? Years later, when there’s no way to prove any of it? Why would they wait so long?” The speaker was one of the older mechanics from the small-engine shop, a man with an air of old-fashioned gentleness about him, particularly around women, almost a gallantry. He was my favorite one there. I listened more attentively for a moment, quickly confirming my guess, that they were talking about the latest news story about some celebrity man who had been accused by first one, then several, women of sexual assault against them. The guys were expressing their disgust over the whole affair. Not over the idea that a powerful man may have preyed on a bunch of women, every opportunity he got; no, they shrugged off that possibility as pretty much far-fetched. Their fatigue and frustration was with the way that this seemed to be almost a growing fashion; women who had grudges against guys in power and came after them with lies that were impossible to prove OR disprove, and in the court of public opinion, the second part tended to win out. That was clearly how they saw it, as fellow men.

I chewed my sandwich and thoughts alike for a minute while I listened without comment. I liked these men. I was sympathetic to their masculine burnout on these stories and their surrounding hype in the press, post MeToo era. I knew they were tired of the suspicion towards men that swirled like dust motes in the air. I was tired too. With that peculiar mixture of vulnerability and ferocity that I think most women feel when pregnant, I wanted the world to be an all-around less nasty place, too. I saw the world with a hyperawareness of what lay in wait, alternately, for a daughter OR a son (we didn’t find out beforehand, #oldschool). I know, we’re all perfectly equal now to the point of interchangeable, except of course when airing grievances, but outside of that little western, modernized fantasy bubble of make-believe, in the real world, I knew our baby would face very different challenges depending on the chromosomes “assigned at birth” (actually before, but biology doesn’t seem to be fashionable anymore).

On this occasion, first of all, I was thinking of my maybe-daughter. I was thinking also of myself and a certain boss I had when I was seventeen, and a story about him that I didn’t tell for years. I thought about the handful of older men I’d liked and trusted as a teen or even as a kid, who had asked me out (or asked for things less classy) after I turned eighteen, or twenty-one (there was a separate round at each milestone, don’t ask me why). Sure, I was an adult, but something inside me crumbled a little, then hardened, every time a man who’d known me as a child revealed himself as having just, apparently, been lying in wait for me to be “legal”. I thought of the guy there who, when I was sixteen, loomed over me while I was cleaning tack and talked to me at length about just how good he was at breaking in young horses “especially fillies”. For those of you who aren’t horsepeople, a filly is a young female horse. He wasn’t talking about horses. I thought of the time when I was eighteen, sitting in my dad’s tack room working on some paperwork after everyone else had left, and this guy we all liked from the other side of the barn came in and chatted with me for a bit, and then with exactly zero warning (or foreplay?), locked the door, drew down the shade over the glass, and started unzipping his pants. He got that far before I fully noticed what he was doing and recovered from a moment of feeling just the teensiest bit shocked, then I said “Let me stop you right there; this is not going to end the way you’re hoping. Get out.” Luckily, he did. I’m not sure what Plan B was, besides absolutely exploding with maximum crazy rage and hoping for that to be enough to make me too exhausting to rape. #lifegoals

With the exception of the filly-connoisseur, every one of those guys was someone that the decent men around me liked, maybe even respected and trusted. They didn’t do this stuff in front of other men, because obviously, actually decent other men would stop them. On most–but not all–occasions in my life, I have proven pretty capable of stopping them myself. I have been informed right here on this Substack that I have a certain Tank Girl kind of energy, I tend to push back hard and usually convince the creepers that I will, like an angry cat, put up a very respectable fight and make you wish you hadn’t touched me. But I think of those memories, and the ones I have of the times that didn’t end with the guy walking off with his tail between his legs. I think of women and girls less comfortable with male-ness, the good and bad, and just how scary some of those scenarios would be for someone younger or less prepared at the time. I had a few that turned out scary for even my psycho a$$. To say nothing of sorrowful.

These mechanics were, to a man, decent men. They Didn’t Get It. Decent men tend not to understand that not all predators are the obviously misogynistic and violent types. Other guys who Seem Normal tend to be assumed to be in the same camp; the ones who don’t want to have sexual pleasure at the expense of a woman’s; they want to have it with a woman who is enjoying herself also. Most of us, men and women, want to be wanted just as much (or more) than we want the act itself. I think men and women want this in slightly different, highly complementary ways, but deep down we both want that. Decent men don’t want to pressure or coerce a woman who doesn’t want them, let alone actually overpower and hurt her. Normal, decent men put up with all sorts of nonsense from women and more or less like them anyway. At its best it’s a thing of beauty to behold. I am personally convinced that in fact, the average, “decent” man is more deeply, vulnerably loving with a woman who has gotten to him, than most women understand. Even when they’re not in love, most men don’t really want to hurt you. Certainly not through rape. Though the glory of the West is fading, it’s given us all the gift of many generations filtering down Christian-shaped thought about men protecting women. But then, we all have a dark side. It comes out in different ways in each of us, that’s all.

I spoke up. I said, “Why is it so easy for you to believe this random man you’ve never met, who obviously, if guilty, has every reason to cover it up, but by extension, you believe these half-dozen women are all lying? What are you basing that on? Either side, I mean. Do you know something I don’t know about the man, or about some of these women? Or is it just that you think women lie about being raped more than men lie about raping women? Do we need men to back up their testimony?”

The guys were, I think, temporarily dumfounded, because I was, you know, a Cool Girl. I could take a lot of coarse masculine humor and give it right back; I was (and am) very obviously fond of men. Upon walking into the shop the first time, I saw one of the guys stiffen awkwardly, his eyes darting for a moment to the topless pic nearest him. I said “dang, nice tits” in passing, to settle him down (and they were, honestly, though I do in fact disapprove of that practice, especially now that I’m entering my Prude Era). Another time I’d walked in behind this eccentric old guy they called Hillbilly, he used to work there and stopped by now and again; Hillbilly didn’t notice I was behind him and he pointed at that same pic and said to Justus, “looks like your girlfriend, young buck!” to which Justus blushed and was starting to get mad, and I laughed and said “thank you!” and then everybody, even the young buck, started laughing. They thought, evidently, that I thought like they did, in general.

When I said my bit, they all got That Look on their face, you know the one I mean, ladies. The “uh-oh, here it comes, she’s getting the vapors” look, which made me more tired than ever. Somewhat more gently (my tone was pretty feisty for that first comment), I pointed out that in my own experience, the most genuinely painful events of my life have often made me clam up and want to hide what happened. Far from finding it automatically less credible that a woman would only pluck up the nerve to speak up years later, I found that perfectly understandable. My own worst experiences are not easy ones for me to tell (though I’m about to share a couple of them, with good reason). I could easily believe that it could take months or years or even decades, and, possibly, the solidarity of other women, for a woman to come forward after genuine mistreatment at a man’s hands, whether living with the shame of something she felt like she half-consented to, or the trauma of having been drugged or violently overtaken (and there can be tangled messes of the two combined that are almost impossible to make sense of, even inside one’s own head.) I told these guys bluntly that, speaking for myself, in the immediate aftermath of either scenario, especially when I was younger, I would literally put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger before I would willingly subject myself to a rape exam, or pursuing “justice” in the courts, discussed and photographed and speculated over all the while. I would have died first.

I led with all that so I might keep the women reading when I pivot to make a couple of points I’m actually aiming at in this piece. Let us now consider the flip side; the other side of the coin that we see with the sisterhood battle cry of “believe women”. By logical extension, just like I tried to demonstrate to those guys in the shop, when you decide to make a sweeping judgement regarding which sex to believe by default, who to think the best of, you declare in contrast that the other sex deserves to be disbelieved on principle. Which is a rather serious thing, with serious implications. Individuals lie, or tell the truth. Individuals also (tricksy beings that we humans are) blend the two in confusing ways. Two stories are told; both can’t be true. Both could, however, be kind of true in bits, distorted for manipulative purposes in other bits, and generally a tangled mess. Even when one person chooses to tell the plain truth, it isn’t always easy to know which one it is. Men prey on women and, for obvious reasons of covering one’s buttocks, they lie about it. Duh. Let me emphasize that a little harder. DUH!!! But you know what else?

Ironically, in that season, having this exchange wherein I spoke up for women making accusations years after the alleged crimes; I was living through the most hellish year of my life, brought on by the combined efforts of a man and a woman. I was closer to the man in question and more emotionally wounded by his part, but psychologically, that woman was the evil mastermind. She was 100% writing the script and running the show; she worked that man like a puppet master, and he was as helpless in her influence as a fly in a spider’s web. She was an expert at her craft, a particularly feminine art, this: reputational destruction. Girls begin learning how this works in or around kindergarten, and with varying degrees of participation (as perpetrator and/or as victim) it dogs our steps ‘til we shuffle off this mortal coil. It’s the truly aggressive woman’s weapon of choice, usually. It certainly should be; you can’t literally knock a man down and rip out his still-beating heart with your hands, for example, but a sharp, determined woman can do just that in the metaphorical sense.

There are people who do not believe that women are as violent as men. I’m not one of those people. I’ll get into that later, just noting it in passing for now. As a society, we’re very happy to talk about the need for men to restrain their potentially worst impulses; their driving sexuality, their capacity for aggression; in some particularly coddled circles, I’ve heard people say, in all seriousness, that there are whole arenas of life (especially regarding the beginning of life, savvy?) where men shouldn’t speak at all, only women.

I mentioned, humorously, in one of my recent notes, that my first “crush” I remember having, my “awakening” moment of kinda thinking, “oh, that boy is…I don’t know what he is, but feel very aware of him in a way that’s kind of nice”, you know, that feeling…anyway, my first guy to give me that feeling was Billy from Hocus Pocus. Yup, the zombie ex-boyfriend with his mouth sewed shut, raised to do his ex-girlfriend’s bidding. The ideal man of fantasy to femininity’s dark side, really; under her spell, no will of his own, with his mouth sewn shut. Actual undead part optional, though Billy sure pulled that look off, bless Doug Jones and brilliant makeup artists. (Incidentally, Doug Jones might look stranger without his monster makeup than he looks with it. Interesting, but not germane here, moving on.)

Women have their dark, twisted, ugly side too (dare I say, sinful? Fallen?). Much of it hinges on control, which looks different when a woman does it, as a rule. In the age of the internet and modern sensibilities in general, there’s probably more men engaging in “feminine” coded aggression than ever before, but they are not on our level, at least, not at the championship level. There’s a spectrum to aggression, we all know that. Most men are not so aggressive as to be unable to function in society. A few are borderline; the guy you watch a little warily out of the corner of your eye at a bar, especially if he has a pool cue in his hand. A very few are psychotic and unbelievably dangerous. Statistically speaking, when it comes to, say, the small portion of people in the world most likely to beat you down and then start biting chunks out of you (rude), they’re almost all men. But when it comes to who is most likely to decide to slowly, torturously destroy your life, aiming most at your mind and your soul; almost certainly it will be a woman. And yes, unfortunately, they do sometimes wait years. You’ve heard the jokes; how is a woman like an archaeologist? We love digging up old sh*t. There’s truth to that. This is the sin that crouches at the door of every woman’s soul, and I do mean every woman, though thankfully, general sanity, healthy relationships at critical life periods (especially inter-generational ones), and most of all, God’s work in our hearts, does drive much of this out. I’m not trying to paint with an overbroad brush here; that’s why I opened how I did. I’m not trying to throw women under the bus, like some in the manosphere circles do, implying we are somehow the worse sex. I don’t think men should open that can of worms; history and the News make it too easy to argue the case that men are decidedly worse. But then, what I am saying is, women’s evil tends to be sneakier. It doesn’t make it into the history books and the News in the same way, but it is there, and it is powerful. I have no doubt it is present in some of those stories, just, behind the scenes.

Enough lecturing, that’s not my forte. I am here on this earth to Delight and Amuse. Story time, to render my illustration.

I know a guy (a relative, actually, I didn’t just hit him up at my local supermax prison just for fun) who murdered his wife twenty years ago. She was nineteen; they had a three-week old baby. Of course, she did stab him a bunch of times first, and wanted to kill the baby. She had a plan, you see; they could exit this admittedly (at times) bleak world and all be together in Heaven. They were both so full of drugs, who knows. Evidently the evidence matched his story. She stabbed him a whole lot, right over the baby’s crib, and then he got the knife away from her and returned the favor, thoroughly. Then he called his parents, so they’d come for his daughter, and he slashed his wrists. When the paramedics got there, they rushed to the crying baby and thought that she was stabbed too, at first; she was so covered in the blood of her parents, her crib was just bathed in it.

You can just sit with that story a minute; I needed to. My mom collapsed when her dad called and told her what had happened. My dad had to carry her into the house. I went for a walk, and later, back at the house, I mimed stabbing my pillow with my clenched fist, just to see how much dedication it took to stab someone thirty-some times. I quit well before I got there, my stomach churning, unable to reconcile the image with the boy on the dirtbike I’d played with as a kid. My grandpa died a couple of months later of a heart attack. Small wonder.

Let’s play a game now, lighten the mood. Wanna pick the villain of this story? Easy, says one person. The man. He murdered her. Full stop. (This is undeniably true.) But he also saved the baby, who has lived and had her being in this world and grown to be a wonderful young woman. Ok, so maybe the wife is the villain. What a sick inversion of mother-love, to want to destroy the life you brought into the world (oops, I almost forgot, women do that all the time, though it’s considered more couth to do it with a pill, these days).

The murdered wife and mother had a J name. I’ll call her Jessica (I’m choosing pseudonyms with care here; I lingered over them like I was naming a new baby. They have meanings that matter.). The murdering relative of mine is not a J name in real life, but I’m renaming him Joshua here. Alright. Let’s look deeper.

A small problem arises with casting Jessica as the villain. I’ve read transcripts of her diaries that were read in a court hearing (not related to her death, related to deciding custody of their orphaned daughter). Let me tell you, that young woman had every reason to believe she might be the one saving her child, by taking her out of this vale of tears. She was born to drug-addled parents too. She was used by grown men throughout much of her childhood; that formative experience alone, I think, might be enough to make a woman think that she is sparing her child–especially a daughter–by choosing death.

Right, so it’s men. We’re back to men. They’re the villains here, collectively. But wait, there’s more! How, you might ask, does a young girl get raped by a conga line of grown men, anyway? Like, how does this opportunity even present itself? When I was that young, decent grownups, mainly my parents of course, kept me safely away from those kinds of situations. The opportunity was never there for such evil to befall me. Which is as it should be. Well, Jessica’s mom was desperate for drugs, you see. She wanted to feel good, to escape, you know, the way sometimes only drugs can provide. She didn’t have enough money to pay for them, but she did have something else with a very high market value. A little girl. So anyway, I assume she shot up or smoked or popped pills or whatever and had a nice little trip and eased her pain while her daughter was getting raped in the next room, or maybe she went out on the stoop, where the sounds wouldn’t harsh her buzz.

Jessica’s diaries revealed her excitement when her mom started sharing drugs with her. She wrote that she was hoping “this is something we can do together.” Well. At least her mom gave her something for the pain. The kid certainly earned her share of the respite. Wouldn’t you agree?

My hand shakes writing this story. I’ve absolutely loved the escapist bliss of a substance or two myself; I’ve sunk into it like a warm bath, too many times to count. See though, this is why I Lecture and Pontificate about letting our feelings run all amok and run us. The far, far end of that road looks like getting so hooked on the good feelings and so avoidant of the bad ones that we’d sell our kid’s bodies for a high. We do these things.

“We?” I can hear you protest (as do I). Admittedly, I have not done that. But let’s stick a pin in that thought. Right, so, Grandma was pretty bad. But still, you know, the women in this story are tragic as well as villainous. Like Medusa or something (another one of my tattoos). They were so broken. What excuse did all the men have?

Excuse? I offer no excuse for child rapists, or the murder of a girl who was barely more than a child (a girl who never really got to be a child). But, I know the murderer’s mother, too. As a matter of fact, she’s the woman I referenced earlier in this essay, the one who set out to destroy my reputation and my relationships, telling horrific lies about me. She’s the most sadistic person I have ever met. I’ve never been “broken” by a man like I was by her. She succeeded in breaking something in me, in my psyche and my soul, that took a very long time to even begin to heal. And that was his mother; that was who formed him. She told her lies about me, telling other people (including my own mother) that I was “dangerous” and “evil” after she had raised a man who stabbed his bride more than thirty times. Bit rude of her. Bit rich, really. Classic Mean Girl, writ large.

I know another guy whose wife jumped out of the car during an argument and died, underestimating just how fast thirty miles an hour really is to the human frame (especially the smaller, more breakable female frame). Having gone down a few times off of galloping horses, I would never jump out of a car at that speed, but most people live lives too buffered from the physicality of, well, physics, to know any better. She didn’t know, she just wanted out of the argument that she didn’t want to submit to being in, in the first place. You see, she’d been beating their little boy (aged five), she just couldn't seem to control her temper. She beat her husband, too. They were arguing about this unfortunate habit of hers, of beating anyone who defied her; and she was so enraged at being held accountable that she jumped out. That was meant as a “screw you”, I think. She used the tools she had at her disposal, to scare him to death and regain the upper hand. I don’t believe for a moment it was an impulsive suicide; I don’t think she had any notion of dying when she pushed open that door and threw herself out. I think it was a temper tantrum; I think it was meant to get her man back under her thumb, where he belonged. A classic sew-his-mouth-shut move, ya know. I know more than one woman who has pulled that same trick and survived, maybe even done it more than once. But it’s a gamble; like I said, I don’t recommend it. Then again, I don’t recommend trying to control men at all, for any reason. It just doesn’t seem to work out well for anyone in the long run.

I get it though. I’m a woman. It is so infuriating when men won’t submit to you; when they won’t follow the script in your head, when they keep making you feel dissed and humiliated and hurt. Those are horrible feelings. They can eat you alive. I’ve been there. Maybe some women reading this are stunned at what I’m saying and can’t relate. Good for you, you’re obviously a better woman than me. I understand the women in these stories, a little. I see glimmers, at least, of myself in them; like catching a glimpse of your reflection out of the corner of your eye, and it’s both like and unlike you. You might say, at least, that I see a family resemblance, though I’m technically related only to the men in these stories. Unless we go far back enough, of course.

Let’s play another game-within-the-game, kind of a variation on Choose the Villain. This one has two parts. I’m going to tell you two versions of a story. One of the stories is true. First, I want you to decide which one you think makes me sound worse; I mean in whichever way disgusts you more; because I sound more despicable, or more pathetic, or hateful; whichever. Then, and then only, try to decide which you think is the true one. Ready? Let’s do this. My testimony, of a sort. A very partial account of just what sort of person Jesus can save and transform into the delight you know and love today. Also, you’ll see the tie-in to the opening, and why I almost named this essay “Girls Lie Too”. Alright, I’ll quit stalling and get on with it.

Side A) When I was seventeen, I was living on my own and had an older, alcoholic boss who gradually got rather obsessed with me, not right away, but after we had worked together very well for a couple of months, with an established–I thought–friendly working relationship. I considered him a friend. I’d always been “tough” and prided myself on it; I’d had no trouble fending off men as of yet, not even that creepy guy talking to me about fillies (I told him I was too much horse for him and would cripple him. He didn’t exactly leave me alone altogether after that, but I don’t think I fit his mental image of sixteen-year-old girls in my response, either, so he wasn’t as eager to corner me.) But, I’d never had to deal with fending off a man I considered a friend, not on this level, not yet. I froze like a fawn. I tried every “soft no” in the book. He didn’t see it. Maybe he didn’t want to see it (it didn’t help that he was a bit of a drunk). Eventually, a day came when I was at home, pretty badly hurt from a spill off a horse earlier that day. I had a seriously messed up ankle and, I suspect, looking back, a mild concussion. He showed up at my apartment to “help” me, and wouldn’t stop trying to kiss me when I sat on the couch, running his hands over me. I was so tired, and in so much pain, I just gave up. I let him carry me to the bedroom and do what he wanted, and then I washed my blood out of the sheets and took a very, very long shower, staying in there long after the water ran cold. I threw away the sheets even after washing them. I shut the door to that bedroom (fortunately, it was a two-bedroom apartment and he’d chosen the one with the bigger bed, naturally, which was not my bedroom). I shut the door and never opened it again while I lived there, which was for several months. I still worked with him every day for that time. He continued to pursue me, though I got locks for my door (it was just an apartment over a barn that didn’t even have a lock, very casual), and I never let him in. Sometimes he got me alone in the barn and felt me up in a stall or whatever while I just froze and let my spirit leave me, you know. Just waited for it to be over, like I did when he was taking his pleasure with my body in that bed. He was so delusional, he even bought me flowers and chocolates for Valentine’s Day, which I think explains a lot about my long-running dislike of being bought things, especially flowers, and my hatred of that holiday to boot. (My husband, and werewolf movies, have since salvaged the holiday for me. I also quickly forgave chocolate, though I still can’t stand hothouse flowers, roadside roses excepted. They make me feel seventeen again, and I’d rather not.)

I felt such shame about it that I didn’t speak of it for years.

Anyway, Schrodinger’s rapist. Did he or didn’t he? Is there a better word for it, like “coerce”? Rape feels a bit too strong of a word, an insult to the people who have been violated with savagery. People have been raped to death. Ever read Judges, especially near the end? It gets rough out there when people do what is right in their own eyes. And what about me? Did I “consent”? It’s been twenty years, and I still don’t quite know how to answer. Good moment to flip the record.

Side B) Most of the story is the same. One big difference is that I fought back, like a wildcat. Like a “Final Girl”. But, ladies…if you’ve never actually tried to fight off a man for real, and just watched a lot of girl-power movies, I’m here to tell you…best of luck. He busted me up pretty bad (of course, I was already hurt), and then he still carried me to bed and took what he wanted. From there the story is just the same, re me limping around cleaning up after him, and all the other stuff about working together and him groping me when he could and buying me chocolate and flowers for Valentine’s Day, etc, all the same.

In both stories (one of which is true, remember) I cracked, eventually. My ankle never really recovered. It turns out that riding a bunch of racehorses and young horses every day might not be the best strategy for letting an injured joint heal; it stayed so swollen for months, I could barely force my boot over it every morning, and wrestling it off in the evening was no easier. It was agonizing when I was galloping a “tough” horse who would pull on me during training; a small-framed woman like me depends a lot on leg strength for “holding” a racehorse. A few times, my ankle gave out altogether and I got run off with a bit, and mocked by my boss for it. I took a spill off a bucking youngster once too, for the same reason, when my ankle basically collapsed, and I sustained a bad concussion that time. I gritted my teeth and persevered, longing for the day when my “real” boss in MD who’d sent me, would tell me it was time to come back. But he kept extending my time down there by another month, then another.

A day came when I came home from work, locked the door behind me (of course) and collapsed back against the wall and slid down to the floor, hyperventilating, thinking that I simply could not limp into that barn one morning more and face that man. I could not endure his hunger for me one more day, or his uninvited touch on my body a single time more. I called my dad, my voice shaking, and said that I wanted to quit, today, no notice given or anything, and come home, right now.

My parents are old school. I was brought up with a stern disdain for quitting, especially for quitting in an unprofessional manner; like half-assing a job for a long time before actually quitting, or quitting without notice, or making a scene about it. I was terribly afraid he’d tell me I had to grit it out at least long enough to give a reasonable notice and honor it, and I honestly didn’t know that I could. Once the dam broke, it broke. I broke. My mom, who was in on the conversation, did expect me to grit it out, to be professional. She was mystified and, I think, disappointed in me that I would even bring up such an idea, especially with no more explanation than “I just need to come home”. Don’t be too hard on her in your minds, readers; she was usually right about These Things, when she wanted to push me or hold me accountable. Many of my finer qualities (such as they are) can be credited to her hardassery.

My dad, though, heard something in my voice, and attended to it. I’ve mentioned here before my deep and abiding appreciation for men in possession of strong spines; fortunately for me that day, my dad is one such man. He overruled my mom’s objections and told me firmly to start packing, and that my mom was going to start driving down within the hour to help me pack everything up and come home (he had to stay to take care of horses). My mom told me later that when they got off the phone with me, he told her in no uncertain terms that it was not up for discussion and she needed to quit arguing and get ready to go get me, now. I’m grateful. I’m honestly not sure what I might have done that night, if I’d thought my parents wouldn’t welcome me home.

Now a little epilogue to each “side” of the story, a sort of choose-your-own-adventure for the ending.

Side A) I was so ashamed of my own compliance, I couldn’t get over it. I was a bit of a trainwreck in my life the next few years; I blamed what happened in that bed that night. One day, I ached to tell, so badly, that I told someone. Without really planning it, I found myself describing it in a light that made me sound better…a story where I fought back, and was a gallant loser; the incredibly Tough Chick who gave it her best shot and then gritted it out working with that man for months afterwards. I lied, in other words, years after the fact, about being violently raped. To hide my own shame, mainly. But frankly? Even though I didn’t pursue it in any sort of public way (I was still not of the mind where I wanted attention like that), I would have to say it was a kind of revenge. I was so ashamed of myself for going along with it that I hated his guts. I wanted to make him sound worse, so that I would sound better.

Side B) I took years to tell the truth of what had happened. I waited until I’d heard that he’d died, in fact. In the meanwhile, every winter, like migratory birds, some young woman (none of them as young as I’d been, but young) was sent down to SC to work with that same man, and I never said a word. I hid the truth away deep inside me, locked the door, and threw away the key. I would have let a thousand other women get raped before I would have stood up to be counted and risked being disbelieved and humiliated, accused of lying. I protected myself. It ate me up inside, and I was a bit of a trainwreck for years.

One of these stories is true. I’m not actually going to reveal which it is, for a good reason. I wrote this essay for a purpose beyond talking about men, and women, and lies, though I’ll say just a bit more about all of that. I also wrote it, in a way, to declare my loyalties, you could say. I want you, dear reader, to consider which story makes me worse in your eyes: the one where I lied about what a man did to me, and made him sound far worse than he was, and used it to garner sympathy, used it for praise (people thought I was so brave, you know). Or maybe you think it’s the one where I was a coward, and let other young women go unwarned to be exposed to a truly dangerous man, and I said nothing, to protect myself; maybe you think that story is worse. Whichever one you think makes me worse, pick that one. Consider that story true. I am the villain (game over), or one of them anyway. I was lost, and fragile, and Not Okay. I invite you to go ahead and believe the worst of me. It’s true enough. I could go on; I have dozens of stories from later years that would show just how pathetic I was at times, how murderously black my heart was at others (as I got older, my conscience hardened when it came to protecting myself).

The thing about the stories is that one is literally true, and the other is perfectly possible. I am capable of either. I am not cut from a different, special cloth than the girls who get scared and give in and don’t fight. Nor am I better, more honest, or less spiteful than the women who make up lies about ex-boyfriends or old bosses and say that they assaulted them when it isn’t true, or at least, wildly exaggerate what happened. I’m not superior to the people who look away when others are hurt; I’ve done it myself. I’ve done a lot of weak, evil things myself. I’ve been spiteful as hell. I’ve certainly felt in my heart the desire to pin a man down and rip out his still-beating heart with my claws, because he hurt my pride, basically. I’ve wanted to sew some mouths shut. I’ve craved control. I’ve screwed married men I knew perfectly well were married. I’ve been falling-down-drunk many times. I’ve told more lies than I can count, a few of them vindictive. I used to lie easily, for getting the reaction that I wanted out of people. Know that Cake song, “Satan is my motor”? My internal engines pretty much ran full-throttle on rage and lust, and a love of power. I was a daughter of the Devil himself. In certain lighting, at certain angles, certain moods…the family resemblance was striking. Not always obvious. But always there.

That’s why I’m leaving it there. An unusual approach, maybe, but I don’t want to be pigeonholed into being seen as a certain kind of sinner, one that some people find more sympathetic, and others find worse. I’m just a sinner. My nearest and dearest know the truth, or I’d tell them if they asked (the one or two who don’t already know). It doesn’t matter what the wider world thinks of me, one way or the other. To paraphrase Spurgeon, they cannot accuse me of anything worse than what I know to be true of myself. The only thing I’ve contributed towards my own salvation is my black, lost heart desperately in need of it. I brought the need, and the evil. Jesus covered the rest of the story. My people, the ones I’d sit down with in the cafeteria, you know, are the liars, the criminals, the junkies, the whores and the shameless sluts, the drunks, the losers who couldn’t keep their lives together. The guttersnipes. My people are the ones whose mistakes have cost themselves and others greatly; the people who don’t name them mistakes but sin. My family, you know. Not the ones who preen themselves and thank God publicly that they are not like these others. I would be counted amongst the ones who cannot lift their eyes, but ask with trembling lips for mercy. Count me in with them. That’s the table I belong at. For one thing, that’s where Jesus always sits.

That table doesn’t only include the visible screwups and edgy types. It’s not a subculture, a work of human preference grouping. It includes people God drew in a different way, I suspect in part to help us screwups and junkies and criminals. It includes people who have walked with God all their lives, or most of them, in trusting obedience, without the dramatic stories that sound exciting (they weren’t always exciting so much as miserable to actually live through). These people; they may barely remember (or not remember at all) a time when they didn’t believe; but they still see themselves as having been born into new life. They don’t have a story to top anyone’s, as far as dramatic sins. But to me, the fact that they can have lived such “clean” lives and yet, know how deeply they need God, know that it is all to God’s credit, to His glory, not theirs...that is beautiful, and their presence is steadying. They are the strengtheners and encouragers, so often, of the faith of others. They are not proud of their lives, like a personal accomplishment. Those people are in too deep with God for that. They’ve known him all their lives; they practically seem to breathe out grace. They invite confidence in the promises of God, because you can look at those living epistles and see what he does, faithfully, over time. Those people teach us how to pray. Those people seem to be inviting us into a depth of conversation with the God who is there; it can be hard for those who have been wandering, sometimes, not to freak out when we don’t hear His voice as clearly as we need. Cuz we’re kind of a super needy bunch, ya know. We’re kind of fragile. We have Trust Issues. The deeper the old life led us into the dark, the harder it pulls at us, I think, the rest of our lives. I have my moments where a terrible, dark anger still rises in me, and I remember the awful joy that I used to take in indulging it. Ditto my other vices. The black-hearted flesh wars with my new life with a grim intensity at times.

Don’t forget the people in the middle either, the ones who lived a long time living a reasonably respectable life “without God” (lol, where’d the air in your lungs come from, friend?). The ones who convert, much to their own surprise, later in life, out of no apparent, obviously desperate need (not like me), yet, in fact, though their lives looked pretty good, they discovered that their hearts were restless, longing for something they could not name. Called by something…or in fact, Someone. The One our hearts are made to find rest in. Nothing else will satisfy.

Jesus was born to an honorable woman, raised by an honorable man. He has always had some followers who have been faithful for life (think of Simon and Ana) and those middling types, coasting by on their own sense of self-righteousness and doing fine, they think, until they meet him (Nicodemus, anyone?). And he’s always sat at the table with the sinners and publicans. The misfits, you know. The screwups and rejects and the untouchables of every stripe. And then he brings all these people together and makes them a family.

This story is true. Amen.

Love,

St Jesalyn

Postscript:

I was on a roll with Christian metal working on this one, so here’s a banger for y’all who are still here with me, saints (well, that song may just be for the metalheads)

A song I’d like to especially dedicate to “the young buck”, who IS GOING TO BE NAGGED INTO READING MY WRITING FOR A CHANGE FOR THIS ONE… but also, to all of you, as a tongue-in-cheek expression of how I feel about all of you, if this makes sense. (It probably doesn’t, but focus on the lyrics of the chorus, and I suspect you’ll get the joke, although it ain’t Christian, we are, so, we can filter it). Obviously Petty’s original is always worth your time, but I swooned with delight the first time I heard Steve Earl cover this (he was another early crush of mine, lol)

Last but best…the song I want to sign off with, is about the One I really wrote this for. Also, never fails to make me look forward to being gathered and glorified with all of you one day in the New Zion. Amen, again.

Narrator’s note for new and/or overly credulous readers: the above bit about astrological stuff is facetious. Though it is in fact the Year of the Horse. According to some. I dunno that I’ve ever known any other kind of year.

As promised, time for a trip down memory lane, this one riddled with hoofprints. Not my memories this time, in the main, but my dad’s. Fortunately, I can read his handwriting. I mean, of course I have direct access to the source, but it makes me feel way more like a paleographic historian type to attempt to work from deciphering his notes.

First, just a bit of background. My grandfather was a doctor, as was his father before him. My great-grandpa grew up on a farm, pictured below, and the family used to joke that growing up on a rather subsistent, rugged holding like that was what made Great-Grandpa Doc determined to be a doctor, so he’d have a very different sort of career from what he grew up doing.

I don’t have any pictures of my great-grandpa handy (though I do love that picture of the farm), but my dad can remember seeing pictures of him with the horse-drawn buggy that he used for house calls in the earlier days. When staying with my aunt and uncle a few years ago, I was rather fascinated to look over one of his logbooks recording the payments he received from patients and their families: a pair of chickens, jars of preserves, etc. It was impossible to read his records without being struck by how personal and convivial medicine used to be. There are entries that are just blank for payment; people that Great-Grandpa Doc knew couldn’t pay, and he simply didn’t charge. There was a neighborly sort of charity in medicine still in those days.

My dad’s dad, known to us kids in his turn as Grandpa Doc also, lived to see what he called the beginning of the end, with the ever-more-regulated reach of insurance. “Health insurance will be the end of good medicine” my dad remembers his dad predicting matter-of-factly. While in some respects that may look like an overstatement, I think many of us would be forced to admit that Grandpa Doc had considerable foresight.

I’ll permit myself a couple of paragraphs here of personal reminisces (this is my Substack, after all). My grandpa was a handsome man with twinkling brown eyes and a smile that was wry and mischievous all at once; I’ve heard on good authority that he could be quite intense, and I believe it, but I never saw that side of him. We grandkids mainly saw the twinkle and the smile.

He and I were especial cronies when I was a tot. Grandpa Doc loved fish, the stronger and “fishier” the better, and my parents both still laugh to remember how he seemed about to burst with pride when my two-year-old self joined him in enthusiastically gobbling down smoked chubs at the bar in his garage. I have surprisingly vivid memories with him, considering how little I was, most of them featuring that bar; especially of him ceremoniously serving me sherbert ice cream there, in delicate glass bowls no less; it was like I was the lone diner in a sophisticated restaurant and he was my attentive maître d'. I know for certain that he was responsible for inculcating my lifelong affection for bars. A bar is a wondrously engrossing, grotto-like place to a small child, at least when it’s in your grandpa’s garage and you’re allowed to play there and get in all the nooks and crannies on the bartender’s side, under all those mysterious glinting bottles. I’m not even much of a drinker, and I’d rather sip whiskey from a tin cup while I sit by a fire, if I am going to drink; still, I’ve always loved eating at a bar, and working behind one. Perhaps when my chick has flown the nest, I’ll take up a late-life career as a bartender. Not being a hot young thing anymore, I can work at some local biker dive and be a tough old thing instead; maybe I’ll be able to pull off calling everyone “honey” by that point in life. Or “hon”, Baltimore girl that I am. But I digress.

What’s all this have to do with horses. Well, in addition to fish and martinis, Grandpa Doc also loved horses, and, being a doctor (paid in more than chickens), he could afford them. When my dad was still a little boy, his family moved to a farm just outside of town. It had been a pretty typical homesteading+ farm of that era, where the farmer grew tobacco and milked cows, but my grandpa’s aim was to breed Quarter Horses. Racehorses, eventually.

In a truly gracious act of Providence, his youngest son (that would be my dad) was born to train horses. I’m sure he was born for other things too (like, hello, siring me, and aren’t you all glad?) but innate horsemanship was definitely a key part of the design schematic when God made my dad. To paraphrase Kvothe from The Name of the Wind, my dad is “the best horseman you will ever meet or see at a distance”, and y’all know I’m too old and tough for that to be some kind of daddy-daughter hero worship sentiment. I was, at one point, a fairly decent hand with a horse myself, so take that sentiment in the spirit it is meant; a (lapsed) professional hat tip from one who knows of what she speaks, acknowledging my superior.

Of course (and here’s where it gets fun), once upon a time, he was just a kid first learning to ride, and like many of us horsey kids, the lucky ones anyway, he started out on an old gray mare, Pet, who took care of him. Imagine an equine version of Nana from Peter Pan, and you’ve basically got the picture. In his notes he compiled for me, my dad said “she would walk me out to the oak tree by the barn and back to Louie’s house”. My own favorite story about Pet, which I got from my aunt, is more dramatic. When my dad was very small, probably still just a toddler (he doesn’t remember this incident), he was sitting on Pet bareback in the paddock, having scrambled on via the fence, I suppose. Another mare came charging over and went to drive Pet away, wheeling round and “double-barreling” her with repeated kicks from both hind legs. My dad tumbled off and was lying right underneath Pet, who stood stock-still, absorbing multiple fierce kicks without moving, til my grandad had dashed over and pulled my dad to safety. The moment the little boy was clear, Pet bolted out of harm’s way.

Horses like that don’t come along every day, or even necessarily every lifetime. I’ve probably worked, for real, with thousands of horses by now, certainly a thousand+, and I’ve only known two of that stripe, myself. Both also gray Quarter Horse mares, interestingly. (They will make appearances later!)

Another well-known rite of passage for most horse kids is having at least one horse (or pony) in one’s youth who is...less saintly. A creature who is absolute master of the situation; well aware of the limitations of the small fry attempting to command it; hopefully not in a dangerous way, but nevertheless subject to no will but their own. I had one such pony, and my dad had a “hammer-headed” mare named Lizza, barn sour (meaning she showed a distinct preference at all times for turning her head for home, so to speak, over and against whatever the young boy on her back might have in mind). She was my dad’s mount at his very first horse show; whereupon the pair of them distinguished themselves to the judges by going straight through the snow fence bordering the arena, owing to their failure to see eye-to-eye on their course.

Mostly I remember him telling stories about adventures with Cindy, a palomino mare, the horse of his more independent, roaming boyhood years, more than any other. She did far better at the horse shows than Lizza, winning many western pleasure classes on their local circuit. But I think my dad remembers her most fondly because she was the horse he would ride for hours out through the woods and fields, exploring at random and rounding up stray cows for the neighbor (what ten-year-old boy doesn’t delight in the chance to play cowboy?).

Fittingly enough, I wrote most of the draft to this sitting at my dad’s desk. The photographs of my great-grandpa’s and grandpa’s farms were on the wall behind me, and my grandpa’s microscope was sitting on the desk before me (along with my dad’s pipe collection. I would pick one up just to sniff at now and then. Pipes are great for channeling Real Writer vibes.) I’m easing into things; the next installment is going to get into the racing years (plus some equine genealogy trivia, doesn’t that sound fun?).

I thought the most fitting song here would be this. My dad was riding a Wisconsin mare, not a Tennessee stud, but, still. It’s the right decade and the right vibe for a little boy playing cowboy, and my dad loves Doc Watson. Also, the race may not be on yet this chapter, but it will be next time, so there’s another fitting 60’s song to wrap up.

Next bit in the series will be featuring Dire Straights! (And probably more)

Well, bye now!

I may have been the only freelance rider I knew who preferred riding on the “old” side; there were also barns on the opposite side of the track, the “new” side. I’m not sure what year that side was built; it was plenty older’n me anyway, but the “new” side it would remain, in relation to the original, the old, forever and ever, amen. Most freelance exercise riders (those who got paid per “head”) preferred the new side, because the barns were nestled right up against the track itself. A rider could make a better hustle over there, getting on more horses in a short amount of time.

I, however, was, and am, thoroughly my father’s daughter, particularly when it comes to Opinions about horses, and I have generally been willing in my life to make less money in exchange for greater job satisfaction, if I have to choose. Anyway, I wasn’t freelancing to hustle, just to avoid having an official “boss”. I liked the free part of freelancing; if a trainer got too lippy with me (as horse trainers are apt to do at times), I could just tell him or her to get bent and pick up more work for someone else. I never once actually did that, sweet young lass that that I was, but the knowledge that I could do it at any time was very comforting to my authority-averse soul.

Anyway, the horse path. Opinions. I liked the path because it was more fitted to what a horse is; a creature, not a machine. That stretch of dirt was a kind of liminal zone, for before and after the actual “training” (though with horses, as with children; if you’re interacting at all, it’s best to remember that in a sense you are always training, whether you’re mindful of what you are teaching or not). In theory, at least, there was a rule that the path was just for walking (a rule we all bent from time to time when trying to squeeze in one last set before the harrow break, just kinda casually trotting the last little stretch, no big thing). Still, as a rule, thems the rules. That longish walk was an opportunity to make the acquaintance of a new horse, or to feel out the mood and physical state of an old friend for a bit, before we officially got underway.

The leisurely saunter back was even more important, in my view. I didn’t like the assembly-line energy, the rapid handoffs of the new side; like me and the horse just swept onto the track, trained, and then hurtled back straight into the hands of their groom or hotwalker, while I jumped off and basically, turned around and got an immediate leg-up onto another horse. I liked a little time to just hang out with my coursers, thanks; giving them a little slack in the reins and encouraging them to relax, while we ambled back…admittedly, most racehorses are none too amble-y, but they can steadily grow more relaxed even as they are strutting and bouncing a bit on the way home. They’ll drop their heads, gently mouthing their bits, and their stride will get bigger and looser, and you can feel their back relaxing and swinging more freely under the saddle. Eventually, perhaps they’ll take a lovely deep breath that comes out like a contented sigh or snort, a sound that always made me smile with satisfaction. There’s not much better than hopping off in the barn and seeing that happy, relaxed look in a horse’s eye; the look of a horse who is enjoying their life and our working relationship.

There it is in a nutshell, I suppose; for me, that long path made the difference between a horse as a “head” for $15 and a horse as a kind of working buddy. It gave me all the more time to strike up a rapport and relate to them more like a trainer; thoughtfully, patiently, with an eye toward their good, both then and there at the track, and, thinking ahead, for their possibility of a second career later. It was obviously beneficial for them to learn how to relax and just take a stroll with a rider. Racehorses are very fit, and generally, they are positively crackling with energy, like at any moment they may start sending off sparks. Getting them to relax required some intentionality; it went against the grain, you could say.

Sometimes, there were literal sparks flying. I mentioned that the path was just overlaying blacktop; there was a big parking lot on one side, and sometimes, when horses got squirrely, they would wind up departing the path and skittering across the tarmac, which was less than ideal for many reasons. For one thing, horses are absolute sillies, and a horse who is already overreacting to something (possibly just the voices in its head), doesn’t tend to calm down when suddenly every step is loudly clattering and sending sparks flying from their shoes. They also tend to slip and fall when doing acrobatics upon a paved surface. To make it even more fun, if there were other horses anywhere near on the path at the time, the racket tended to alarm them and set off a chain reaction, which, of course, just propelled the original trouble maker into further ever-escalating hysterics. And so on. Oh, and remember, this was a parking lot, so, there were of course cars. Thus there was the added challenge of trying not to careen straight into one of those. And yes, a thoroughly freaking-out horse absolutely will run straight into things. Or sideways into things. Or backwards.

Come to think of it, maybe I can sympathize a bit after all, with why some riders didn’t care for that path and would just as soon shorten the time they spent navigating over and around the blacktop and cars. It was admittedly dicey at times, with certain horses.

I liked it, though. And most of those dicey times worked out just fine. 9 outta 10 of us were (at least) pretty good riders, and usually the very silliest of horses were being ridden (thankfully) by people who were considerably better than pretty good. Those were the guys who would often be laughing and singing in the very midst of the wildest near misses, and while I personally was not one for belting out songs before other people, I would laconically mutter “whoops-a-daisy!” or somesuch in the midst of a rodeo, which works just as well and is an attitude I learned at the racetrack. Watching the insanely good riders out of the corner of my eye taught me a lot. That particular demographic was pretty much all men anywhere from ten to thirty years older than me, and they tended to whoop and yell encouragement at us younger riders (especially the girls, needless to say) when we were the ones having some excitement. Some of the newer girls disliked that; I didn’t, it was all in good fun and there’s nothing quite like the camaraderie of an older man yelling “ride ‘em, cowgirl! yee-haw!” at you when you genuinely have your hands full, making you laugh, even while his horse is erupting in the other direction. I suppose if you’re disinclined to laughter, it may have been less helpful, but thankfully, a disinclination to laugh has never been among my (many) personal flaws.

There’s a paradoxical trick to controlling a panicking or near-panicking, explosive horse, especially in a delicate situation like that with hazards abounding and other people to consider; you have to gracefully accept a certain lack of control, or you will lose all control. Very similar to the way you don’t fight for control of a car that’s skidding on ice, you could say. If a horse, for example, starts leaping around and plunging sideways and you’re headed right for a car, frantically attempting to wrench them off course will just make them go faster and harder, in a flight mode reaction to you now as much as whatever set them off in the first place. Best case, they slip and fall down in the struggle on the blacktop before they get the opportunity to body-slam a car or a building, though you’ll probably both get hurt in that scenario, too.

This is why singing and laughing helps; or at least a general nonchalance, allowing you to employ a casual course correction, executed more like friendly authoritative advice than genuine concern, with a manner that implies nothing that is underway is actually a big deal. Horses are very much like children in this respect; they need you to be unflappable. You need to pay close attention, but relaxed, like. Utter insouciance is the ideal to aim at; think Tom Bombadil with the hobbitcidal Old Man Willow or the barrow-wight. That’s the correct energy to bring to riding racehorses.

As to the how of that, well, I dunno, you just kinda look more towards where you want to go and not too hard or directly at the stuff you’re about to smash into if you can’t get this horse under control, and you guide them as strongly as you can before reaching the tipping point of counter-resistance, which you just have to feel out. So you roll with it, and it’ll be fine, 9 3/4% guaranteed. Occasionally, it’s not fine, but what good has worrying ever done any one? Usually, it’s the worriers and control freaks who get in trouble here, fighting their horses instead of doing this other thing.

Sheesh, this is starting to sound almost…Zen. I am not Zen. That’s not my point at all, but I’d go so far as to say, that the deemphasizing of one’s emotional state is genuinely wise. Which brings me to my actual train of thought here, in writing about the horse path and all the fun and excitement of dodging cars.

We live in a bit of a strange time for the management of feelings, it seems to me. On the one hand, we’ve never talked about feelings more (I, for one, would like that to stop). There is a lot of encouragement to dwell upon, examine, and even “trust” or “follow” our feelings, whether it’s actively nursing our grievances, or literally building an identity out of our desires or how we “feel” about our bodies. At the very same time, we’re encouraged to cauterize so much of what was once, aptly, called “proper” feeling; like, say, bonding with someone with whom one is enjoying amorous congress. Etc.

Since my teens, with all those times on the horse path, learning how to steer confidently but with a light hand, I’ve thought that this is really a rather helpful analogy for controlling my own…((shudder))…feelings. That initial surge of emotions that rush in when life happens, they are no more perfectly under my control than a combustible horse, but in both cases, I do have the obligation and (happily!) the ability to respond skillfully, appropriately, to steer away from danger and keep my eyes on where I want to be. Horses and feelings both tend to sort themselves out after a bit with a confident rider who doesn’t ignore them but doesn’t pay them too much mind, either. And in both cases, singing, laughing, joking around with others, and graciously accepting a bit of well-meant grief from your elders can help.

Look at me, writing a reasonable length essay. Thank you, gentle readers, for indulging my whimsy. I hope that one or two of you may actually find this imagery oddly helpful, as I do! In any event, I needed to dust off my quill and write, so, this is what y’all got today off the cuff.

For once, I wasn’t directly inspired by a song for this piece, but here’s what I was listening to as I was wrapping up, current mood. Along with this. And one more.

…one more. Ok bye now.

According to my parents, I had an intense bout of depression around the time I was starting fifth grade, so severe that it reduced me to a bit of a zombie, and they even allowed me to miss a couple days of school, which, if you knew my parents, would tell you I was seriously scaring them. I have to take their word for it; I have no memory of that whatever. In fact, I can reliably map out the worst periods of depression in my life by the “gaps”; the seasons that are strangely cloudy or blank in my memory. I have, in the main, only a few vague memories of the first year or so we lived in Maryland. No recollection at all of those bad few weeks in fifth grade, and my memories of adolescence pretty much skip straight from when I was twelve to the summer I turned fifteen, which was like coming out of a dark tunnel for the first time in years. That summer stands out vividly in my mind because I was all there; I felt so wide awake and alive, compared to the previous three years. Eighteen is mostly a blank; ditto for years twenty-three to twenty-seven. Twenty-seven was another full-on Renaissance; I was probably the happiest I’d ever been in my adult life (up to that point) for awhile there. When I’m up, I’m very, very up; I feel as though I could carry the whole aching world in my arms and tease a smile out of it. While the high lasts, anyway.

It always comes back, though. Hello darkness, my old friend. There were a few other significant “waves” over the next few years, but they were, at least, almost entirely situational (let’s just say that bad decisions were involved). Of course it’s depressing to be in self-inflicted misery; perhaps I’m inclined by temperament to crash and burn especially, spectacularly hard when I screw up my own life (yes), but that’s not the same darkness, really, as this other thing I’m talking about. Some of the most brutal times inside my own head, have coincided with periods when my life was objectively good…and yet, I just didn’t want to live it. There’s something particularly hopeless and oppressive about the experience of drowning in despair and listlessness when there’s nothing external to blame. That bone-deep sense of bleakness makes it difficult to see a way out; it seemed to me, at times, like a verdict had been handed in that my life would be a burden to me no matter if all my dreams came true. It meant there was nothing to escape or fix, except myself. And I was, apparently, as my fellow horsemen would put it, “too much horse” for myself to handle.

So many people, many of them far better writers than me, have attempted to pin this thing down in words. I think the metaphorical imagery often comes closest; as with the Slough of Despond or the Swamp of Sadness (fight the sadness, Artax!!). In both cases, the allusion of being mired, and slowly sucked down; seemingly pulled in all the harder and more hopelessly the more you struggle…well, it’s apt, as anyone who knows, knows. I know some of you on here know. You don’t have to be depressed to be a writer/creative, but it seems like most depressed people are often creative types as well. Or worse, thwarted creatives. Creatives who quit creating are probably some of the most depressed people in the world (actually, there’s a lightbulb moment for me deciphering most of my past right there…).

For myself, though, when trying to describe what it’s like inside my head at those times (I’ve practiced this explanation on my comparatively dauntless mother many times), I reach for a slightly different analogy. I find it strikingly similar in some ways to what I see happening to friends with Alzheimer’s, almost like a foreshadowing of that; it darkens and clouds my mind, making me feel as though there’s a kind of veil drawn between me and the rest of the world. I mentioned “losing” periods of time where my memories are unclear; it did not surprise me at all to learn, some years ago, that there is noted correlation between significant lifelong depression and later, increased odds of Alzheimer’s and dementia. This is not, however, a healthy line of thought for people who are already depressed to linger over. Let us remember always that correlation does not equal causation and endeavor to carry on with courage and good cheer, such as within us lies.

During a truly bad spell, my mind dims. I am not generally what you’d call a simpleton, but during these times, the best parts of my mind seem locked away beyond my reach. I may read a sentence over and over again, only to set the book down and be forced to acknowledge, bleakly, that I can barely recall or understand what I just read. I lose the thread of conversations. I can sort of remember times when I was still riding at the racetrack, where I’d be coming off the track with a horse and feel a flicker of anxiety as I realized I had no memory whatever of the entire gallop. Maybe I did what the trainer said to do. Maybe I didn’t. What did I do? It was like being in a fugue state at times; like drugs, but unfortunately without any of the fun. I’ve been driving and experienced a disconcerting flicker of uncertainty about where I am, or how I got there, like someone removed all the waymarkers. I always reoriented after just a moment, but that instant of utter lostness was terrifying, or would have been, if my feelings were in proper working order. Usually during these times, they aren’t. Even my physical senses grow dull; food turns to ash in my mouth. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Some of us fall hard, and find it incredibly difficult to get back up. I don’t know why. If life is a pilgrimage, then these “slumps”, as I call them; they’re the stretches of road where I’m crawling, not walking.

I said my senses and feelings would dull during these times, but then, that is not always true. Sometimes it is as simple as that; an all-consuming dullness permeating everything my mind touches. At other times, however, I actually find one—just one—of my perceptions considerably heightened. Pain. Not just mine; the world’s, and everything in it. The sight of a squirrel lying dead in the road will usher in a headlong rush of grief for all of groaning creation. All at once, I can’t bear (or stave off) the thought of all the merciless metal contraptions speeding across all the roads snaking round the developed world, flattening the frightened and confused animals under their wheels. The lucky ones die right away, but we all know that’s not all of them. My mind fills with visions of combines chewing up and spitting out the bodies of fawns who were lying quietly, trustingly, in obedience to their nature, waiting for their mother, who will wander about and bleat for them a bit upon her return, her udder growing painfully full for the babe she’ll never nurse again. The merciless reel in my head flips the script to remind me of the other way round; the does struck by cars and never returning to their young, left now to die in fear and mother-longing. I’m flooded with thoughts of wolves and bears, big cats (and little cats), ants and wasps, eating their prey while the hapless creatures yet live, their struggles gradually failing. On and on and on, at warp speed, my mind fills with visions of suffering and death.

It’s almost like having a portal to all the wretchedness and lamentation in the world simply open up in me, against my wishes, inundating me with more sorrow than I can bear. When I’m in the shadowy places where I feel next to nothing, I think that must be the worst. Then the other kind breaks in and I remember that it might be the worst. It’s too much. I haven’t even touched on human suffering yet here, nor will I, in any detail, lest we all have nightmares. We all know, even the things we turn away from, every day. O human child, this world is more full of weeping than you, or I, can understand. Or as the Psalmist tells us, “…the haunts of violence fill the dark places of the land.” People do unspeakable things to one another. I won’t, in fact, speak of them plainly here, but we know. In the very, very worst of my dark times, I can think of almost nothing else. I can remember instances, during one of my “slumps”; I’d be changing my baby daughter’s diaper and weeping, because I could not unsee the horrors in my imagination, knowing what I know about what some people do to these precious little bodies, these tiny embodied souls. Sometimes, my mind itself has been a dark place filled with the haunts of violence. And despair. I could emphasize fully with Job in these times; better to have never been born, better “a miscarriage hidden away, as infants that never saw light.”

I wrote in my last piece about what I called my “first” prayer, but I realize, or remember, rather, in writing this, that I did indeed pray in those times, years ago, if prayer is what you want to call it. It was, I suppose, a beginning. Not a pretty one. I was often suicidal, but there was a catch. I was certainly no Christian, myself, but I was brought up by one (a real one, a resounding one), and I found it difficult to shake my “superstition”, as I called it, of hell. There was a desperate hope within me that death meant annihilation, but I did not really believe it. Deep down, I believed that if I tried to escape through the door of death, I would wake to the fully realized, eternal version of the torment I knew in my soul here. There was no such thing as escape. My despair at times was desperate. In those darkest hours, I did pray, in bitterness of spirit, to the God whom I hated and would not worship; less of a plea than a demand, unmake me! Just wipe me away, blot me out, so I’d be as one never born. As for my eternal soul; cancel that order, please. If you’re so sovereign, oh my Maker (spoken through gritted teeth), you can do that. In the language of my generation, “I didn’t consent to this.”

Careful what you ask for, incidentally. God did unmake me, eventually, though not in the way I attempted to dictate to him. God does not work against his own nature, it turns out (I could not provoke him into a fight), nor does he defile his good name. Yes, I did say his good name. My position has changed, to put it mildly.

Years ago, Stephen Fry (I think it was him) made a statement that I wholeheartedly agreed with at the time, about God, or perhaps it was more about the people who put such faith in him. Discussing how people point to the goodness of God through the beauty of creation and the many real delights of life, he said, “yes, but you also have to account for bone cancer in children.” Indeed, and for even worse things that happen, even to children. I am not, as I suspect this essay makes clear, a rose-colored glasses kind of girl (though when I’m up, especially, I can be moved to tears of joy by watching trees sway in the wind, it’s true). Nevertheless I think I have made plain that I understand what it is to look at life and see only purgatory.

I wanted, more than anything, for God to give an account of himself to me, and frankly, I didn’t care if he did give the horse his strength and clothe his neck with a flowing mane. Not in those moods. This is what “irreverence” looks like when it’s deadly serious; I reacted to my idea of God in much the same way as I did to a man who dared attempt to seriously intimidate me: with withering disdain, so I could hit him where it hurt. I rage cold, not hot. Go ahead, answer me from a whirlwind. Kill me, crush me, whatever. You can’t make me yield willingly. To subdue and dominate someone is not the same as winning their freely offered respect (or in this case, worship) and we all know it. I remember I had no illusions whatever that hell, if it was real, would break me. That yes, even I, proud soul, would crawl and beg for mercy, for relief, from such suffering. I didn’t find it difficult to imagine at all that there was such a thing as suffering I could not endure, suffering that could, and would, bring me to the point that I would kiss God’s feet if it meant it would stop. But I certainly wouldn’t worship him in my heart (expletives were involved in my head at this point, but I won’t repeat them). As far as I was concerned, God couldn’t break me of my contempt. And he still had to account for bone cancer in children.

There’s a famous inscription carved into the wall of one of the cells in Block 20, Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. An unknown inmate gauged the words, “If there is a god, he will have to beg for my forgiveness.” Amen to that, I said in my heart. Let us put God in the dock.

There’s something paradoxical about our Maker, that is marvelous beyond our comprehension. He is the Almighty; he could have snapped my rebellion like a twig, or returned me to dust with a glance. But you know, the twist in this story (it’s older than me) is that he did come down into the dock. He came down and entered into groaning creation; into fellowship with broken humanity itself. He opened sightless eyes and cast out demons by his authority, which is incomparably greater than all the forces of darkness combined. He knelt and washed the feet of his confused, squabbling, prideful disciples. He washed the feet of Judas.

In my darkest times, I’ve tasted a mere sip of the bitter cup of wrath humanity has mixed. And it breaks me. I barely wet my lips, and it is unbearable. Jesus drained it to the dregs. “Give us Barrabas!” cried the crowd, many of the same people who called “Hosanna” a few days earlier, laying palm fronds before him. He knew then, of course. He had “set his face like flint” already to the hard obedience before him. “Crucify him!”

In the old days, I used to point out that, brutal as it was, many, many people have died deaths as horrific and even worse than Jesus did. Physically, that is. I’ve come to apprehend (though I cannot claim to comprehend) that he did not just die a painful death in the body. He bore our sins. What I cannot bear at times, thinking a little too much about the weight of the world, and of history, and the future; he took that all upon himself, and he bore it. He carried the full weight of the evil of man. He was crushed beneath it, for us, the very ones whose dark and proud hearts opened the portal to evil, through our hatred of submission. We nailed him there.

Beg for our forgiveness, indeed. But I was writing about depression, not theology. I’m no theologian, though one or two of my friends are.

My favorite composer is Beethoven. Yes, I do know Bach is best, you’ll get no argument from me. But Beethoven composed his Fifth Symphony (along with the Appasionata piano sonata, the Violin Concerto, the Fourth Symphony, the…ok, we’ll leave it at “among others”) while he was going deaf. He answered personal despair and deep loss with one of the most iconic, triumphant symphonies ever written. Truly, the Fifth is one of the finest witnesses to the glory of the human spirit that I know of. The way that man poured himself out for us, wrestling for years to perfect a piece he would never hear properly (he was nearly completely deaf by the time he was satisfied with it). For himself, the notes were drowned out by the sound of silence, but he wove us marvelous, revolutionary music out of that encroaching silence. He continued to compose some of his most fascinating music after losing his hearing completely. But even people with no love for classical music know the Fifth. Arguably, those four notes might be the most famous in music history. I chose them for my first tattoo. I had, and have, an especial affinity for themes of endurance through despair, and bringing forth new beauty from it.

Writing about his (gloriously jubilant) finale in C major, Beethoven once remarked, “Joy follows sorrow, sunshine—rain.” Or, as David tells us in the Psalms once again, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

As for me, I still get depressed. Sometimes it’s still pretty epic. But it is different now. I have my eyes fixed upon a light in the darkness, the light, the One who endured more suffering than any of us could ever imagine, the One who broke the powers of darkness. To live is Christ, to die is gain. I used to want to die, because I didn’t want to live, but I was afraid, too, of what might be waiting for me. These days, I do see death as gain, but I also see it as not remotely in my hands. Life does not cause me to shrink in despair anymore, even when the floods of horrible images come. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…I know who has walked before me, and walks with me, and will receive me at the end.

He didn’t have to answer me out of a whirlwind. He won my heart with the truth of his holy, just, and utterly astounding love. He broke my contempt, shattered it into a million pieces, in fact. There have been times, in thinking about the gospel, when in my fury at being called a “sinner”, I would have joined the crowd in spitting upon him. Now, I want to pour out my perfume on his feet. I get it now. He--he himself-is my strength, my favorite song, and he has become my salvation.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Of course I have songs. Many of them. I went down so many rabbit trails with this one. First up, not a song, but very much inspiring to me as I was chewing over this notion for an essay: this note (which is both hauntingly beautiful and written by an actual theologian). I was originally inspired to write this piece while I was thinking about, naturally, The Sound of Silence, but especially this version by Disturbed. Absolutely no shade meant towards Simon and Garfunkel, whom I love (how can you not love anybody called Garfunkel, c’mon), but I am a metalhead still, and Disturbed’s cover makes me cry and get goosebumps. I was driving the first time I heard it, and I had to pull over. That memory is sparkling clear. I listened to it three times today writing this.

With all the reflection on Beethoven, now, to be honest, I may need to write an entire piece, or several, all about him. The man is one of my heroes. I listened to the Vienna Philharmonic performing the Fifth twice today, and, naturally, the rock-infused TSO's twice as well. (Possibly thrice) This is of course also undeniably fun, even if wigs were totally yesterday by Beethoven’s time.

I would highly recommend TSO’s (that’s the Trans-siberian Orchestra if you’re unfamiliar) whole album Beethoven’s Last Night. I prefer the version without all the spoken parts, cuz I think they get a tad florid, but the music is incredible and I was a bit inspired today in writing about depression, by another song from that album, The Dark (sung by Mephistopheles, if you’re into that. I very much am. Jeff Scott Soto is unbelievable, or maybe I should say, frighteningly believable, as Mephistopheles. Though this song showcases that more fully) I also listened to this one, which has always, for me, captured something of what it feels like to be tormented by the voices in your head (or possibly, those voices could be other things…I’m not agnostic anymore, after all, I admit these possibilities). You know what, just listen to the whole album. On repeat, preferably. That’s what I’ll be doing the next couple days.

Lastly, if anyone reading this knows exactly what I was talking about, the dark times…keep fighting the sadness, Artax. (Sometime I may have to write a post all about The Neverending Story). I’ll be praying for you.

Having a dad who was managing broodmares, off and on, was a good way to gain an education regarding certain facts of life rather early; I can remember accompanying him with mares to be “covered” by stud horses when I was very small, and…well, learning a lot, quickly. I was around sometimes when the mares gave birth, too, particularly when we moved to our own farm and foaled a few mares there. I would often sleep out in the barn in anticipation of being close at hand to see the babies arrive. I have always loved broodmares, particularly the older ones. Some of those old dams have a certain calm, knowing look in their eyes, especially when their time is getting close, that I found (and still find) fascinating. Each spring, watching the mothers sally forth in the fields with their new foals scampering alongside; it has never lost its charm for me.

I found out that I was pregnant with my own daughter in a barn. The bathroom of a broodmare barn, fittingly enough. Huddled up in my coveralls against the chill of the spring night, I watched for the twin lines on that stick to appear with a knot in my stomach. I was on “foal watch”; that job is pretty much what it sounds like, being on the watch for the arrival of foals. On my medical forms that I had to fill out during early pregnancy, I listed my occupation as “horse midwife”, for lack of a better descriptor.

Horses, for all their size and strength, are remarkably delicate creatures. They are, as I heard a curmudgeonly old cowman put it once, “easy kilt”. In the wild, mare and foal alike have a high mortality rate; among breeds like Thoroughbreds, who tend to have largish foals, they do not foal smoothly, without help, as often as one might assume. And there are other considerations beyond the foaling itself. The umbilical stump of a foal is a vulnerable site for the transmission of dangerous bacteria if not promptly treated with iodine (more than once, preferably); not all foals are robust enough to stand and nurse unassisted. Every hour counts in those first few fragile days; a foal that is not nursing, quickly becomes a foal that is dying. (They also sometimes need help on the other end, if you catch my drift. We keep enemas and plenty of latex gloves in the foaling kits.) I say all this to briefly forestall the question I have frequently been asked, “Can’t they just do that on their own?” Well, statistically, not with great success, no. Hence the job of “foal watching” exists.

Most deliveries happen at night. It’s interesting, how consistently across diurnal species one finds this instinct, for giving birth in the dark and the quiet, during the hours typically allocated for rest. Despite their frequent need for assistance, many mares seem to naturally seek a kind of, dare I say it? privacy, for this time. Foal watching is thus a solitary third shift, whiling away the overnight hours on lookout.

In my (extremely opinionated) opinion, there’s a right and a wrong way to do this job. Part of doing it right lies in respecting the fact that this is the time for all of these heavily pregnant mares (and later, the young foals, too) to rest. The barn should be relatively dark and quiet until it’s absolutely necessary to step in to assist a mare with the lights on; it’s not a time for catching up on projects, unless they can be done quite unobtrusively, and without distracting you from your main job, which is to be attentive to signs that a mare may be going into labor. It’s a lot of waiting, interspersed with periods of frenetic activity when a mare does go into labor, particularly if it proves a difficult delivery.

Foaling itself is, preferably, a two-person job; in this season, I was back, briefly, working for and with my dad, who was (and is) the manager of a large farm once again. When I suspected a mare was getting close to her time, I would call, waking him up; as the manager, it was his job from then on to take point, and mine to assist. For a person on night watch for months, the trick here is to develop the knack for calling the broodmare manager before the mare’s water breaks, ideally, because things tend to move along rapidly from there, and problems in presentation are easier to correct earlier than later. But it’s best not to call long before that point, because some mares can put on a pretty convincing show of going into labor, only to settle down; a passing discomfort apparently alleviated. Unlike the night person, the manager (in my dad’s case, anyway) will have to work during the following day, so it’s best to try to avoid false alarms or unnecessarily early wake-ups, but there will be hell to pay if you call too late and a situation goes south. Not to brag or anything (I’m not applying for a job here, after all), but I was good at this balance.

After calling, I would then get us set up for the foaling; wrapping the mare’s tail, picking out the stall so it was as clean as possible beforehand, setting up the iodine dip for the umbilicus and a bucket of water for our washing up. Then there was the laying out of clean towels at the ready, as well as the oxygen tank, and a few other odds and ends. My dad would arrive somewhere in the midst of that, with a thermos of coffee, and then we’d wait, if her water hadn’t broken by this time. When it did, my dad would soap up his arms and do a quick check on the positioning of the foal and usually have me do the same, to see if any adjustment was needed. My dad is an inveterate teacher by temperament; he can’t have someone just help him as a sort of go-fer. If you’re assisting him, he’s going to show you what is going on and explain to you what he’s doing, and probably make you get your hands in there to feel for yourself what he’s talking about, or to do the adjustment of a malpresentation. Fortunately, there are methods for correcting many less-than ideal positionings, to better orient the foal for a smooth passage through the birth canal.

Sometimes, at the next stage of labor, it may be necessary to help “pull” a foal; not as in trying to pull it out of the mare (which would be gruesome), but helping things along, when she is pushing, by pulling in alignment with her, helping her gain a little more ground with each push, grasping the foal by the ankles (or using straps) and leaning one’s weight back, making sure to pull slightly down, so that you’re not pulling out of line with the thrust of her contraction. When she pauses in pushing, you pause. You’re working with her, not against or over her. With a big foal, especially, this can make things a little easier on the mare, helping her get the foal out before she’s exhausted. Ideally, both mare and foal will lie quiet a minute at this point (meanwhile we humans are making sure the foal’s nostrils are clear of amniotic fluid and may be giving them oxygen), waiting for the umbilical cord to stop pumping blood to the foal. When all goes well, it breaks off naturally a minute or so later when the lively foal starts thrashing about in apparent protest, contra the whole shocking new experience of life outside the womb. The stump is promptly dipped in iodine, and the foal is toweled off a bit, especially on the colder nights (though we have heat lamps to help with the chill, too).

We’d sit back and watch awhile then, drinking coffee, and my dad smoking his pipe. The job is only half done at this point, but this isn’t a how-to manual, just setting a scene. As I said before, the vast majority of this season, for the night shift, consists of waiting. I read a lot. I made my quiet, prowling rounds of the barn checking on everybody. I sat in the little office and gazed into the middle distance, all the while keeping my ears open for the noise of a mare moving restlessly nearby. Spending all night every night in the barn, you get to know your charges more intimately. You know who snores, what time they each like to lie down, who likes to leave some of their grain from dinner and nibble at it in stages throughout the night. Mostly it’s peaceful; lots of contented crunching of hay, the groans and sighs of mares lying down ponderously with their heavy bellies.

By the end of the season, though, one tends to be a little burnt out. It’s hard to be on night shift once spring has sprung. I’d done a lot of foal watching in previous years, but never as my full-time job, just a night a week maybe (those years of camping out in the barn as a kid don’t count…kids don’t function the same, as we all know). After a couple of months, it was beginning to be a grind. Foaling season begins in January; because Thoroughbreds are officially one year older every January 1st, regardless of their date of birth, there is a strong preference within the industry for foals to be born as early as possible in the season. When yearlings or two-year-olds go to the sales, or when the two-year-olds go to the races, a three or four month difference in development tends to show.

As a result, breeding sheds open around Valentine’s Day (very romantic), and close around the end of June. Gestational length for a horse is about 340-345 days, or a little over 11 months. So a typical foaling season may run from early January to as late as, possibly, the end of May. That’s a long run for the night shift and a job that consists mostly of patient, attentive observation. By the end of the season, most people in that role are longing to resume a waking life under the sun, and a work rhythm with more doing and less waiting. One finds oneself muttering at the last holdout mare (who always goes overdue) to just “get on with it”.

Nevertheless, foaling season has a kind of magic about it. The delightfully musical sound of a mare whickering her throaty, lilting mother-talk to her foal for the first time, and the foal’s shrill answering whinny in response; that conversation never gets old. There’s a kind of amusement and anxiety tangled together in watching a foal’s first fumbling attempts to get to its feet and nurse; a relief and delight that’s new every time you see the mare’s expression soften as the milk lets down, and the foal’s tail rapidly flicks in satisfaction. One of my particular favorite tasks was helping foals who were struggling to nurse; perhaps I should have listed my occupation as “equine lactation consultant” on all those forms instead.

All things considered, it was a fitting environment to find out that I was going to be a mother. That I was a mother already, in fact. You could have, however, knocked me over with the proverbial feather. Although I certainly understood the facts of life, I was nevertheless stunned that I was pregnant. I’d had some health issues that had led me to believe I was unlikely to get pregnant even if I was trying, at least without considerable “help”. I’d had my moments sometimes of feeling a pang over that, especially after growing deeply attached to my little cousins in Wisconsin and realizing, much to my surprise, that I loved being with children. Still, all things considered, there was relief in that as well. I was not all that sure I wanted to have children; I rather liked my self-centered lifestyle the way it was. Certainly, I was vain enough to imagine that it would be a terrible thing if my body didn’t look exactly the same after having a baby. I didn’t really fancy the idea of having to worry about the so-called “work/life balance” all of a sudden; I’d read those articles. It sounded like a real drag. Besides, I liked being completely alone for days at a time. I liked spending too much money on tattoos, drinking my coffee in peaceful solitude, and usually smoking a joint after work. Oh, and swearing. I didn’t strike myself as mother material.

But aye, there’s the rub. Ready or not, “mother material” or not; I was a mom now, and my baby’s father (now my husband) was a dad. We talked over this stunning turn of events for a few hours, there in the barn, in between rounds of checking on the mares (they were graciously quiet that night, allowing us our conversation time). Finally he left to go to bed, being employed in a normal-person daytime job, and I was on my own at last, to think.

I can still remember…almost inhabit that moment like it was yesterday; standing there in the little office/lookout room in the barn, feeling relief at being left alone with my thoughts. And then, the very first thought that came was this: I wasn’t, in fact, alone with my thoughts. I wasn’t the only person in the room. I wasn’t even the only person in my skin. I got goosebumps, standing there, just feeling the enormity of that. I felt the full force of my baby’s presence, months before I’d ever see a bump or feel a kick. I put my hand over my abdomen and felt awe. I was still overwhelmed and afraid, but in that moment, I felt a spark of pure joy, too. And love.

“Hello, little one” I said softly, a little self-consciously, but sincerely. “Welcome.” I thought of what Justus had said to me a couple of hours earlier. “We’re gonna be ok. We’ll figure it out.” I prowled around, pacing. It occurred to me that I needed music. This felt momentous. What would be the very first song I played at this moment? I knew I’d remember it forever (barring, of course, dementia). It was a given that whatever song I chose, for the rest of my life, it would always take me straight back to this night, in this room. Rolling the question around in my mind a minute, I had it. I chose an artist who, for me, will always make me think of my own mother. There was a specific song of hers that seemed to me fitting for introducing myself to my baby, and well suited to the spirit of the occasion. From there, I played a few more songs that were part of the soundtrack me and Justus had been building together; “our” songs. I explained to Baby the stories, the road trips and inside jokes, behind each song. I was getting excited at the thought of all the music there was to share with this little person. He or she was going to be steeped in music, drowning in books, and never short of art supplies. Also, usually outside. Or in a barn.

When I was ready for quiet again, my thoughts kept returning to one of my favorite passages from Jayber Crow, possibly my favorite Wendell Berry book. Jayber, the titular character, mirrored many of my own doubts about, specifically, the Christian faith of my mother, her friends, and the church I was brought up in. From my late teens, I’d been openly agnostic; opposed on principle to any claims of certainty. I just didn’t like to think about it too much. Like most people, I felt sickened and angry reading many parts of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. I thought that parts of it didn’t hang together. So of course I thought of it as manmade, a reflection of, in the main, a bunch of patriarchal pricks making a god in their own image.

Nevertheless, I found myself, like Jayber, reflecting often on Jesus’s prayer in the garden, when ultimately, he says, “Thy will be done”. In many ways, other than perhaps, please and thank you, “Thy will be done” struck me then as possibly the only really necessary or appropriate prayer to offer up to God, if he was in fact real, and sovereign, and listening.

When I’d been sitting there in the bathroom, alone (so I thought), watching those darkening lines on my pregnancy test, before I walked back to tell my boyfriend; I’d felt only the fear and the sense of being fettered. There’s no time to get into it here, but there were, legitimately, circumstances in our lives at the time that were weighing on me with regards to the baby. It wasn’t what people would call “good timing”, by human standards.

Strangely enough, in that moment, what came to mind was Jayber Crow’s thoughts on prayer. “I prayed the terrible prayer, ‘Thy will be done.’ Having so prayed, I prayed for strength.” I did the same. That was my first real prayer, ever. For the first time in my life, I really was approaching God as God; recognizing, a little, the reality of our respective positions: myself as the creature and God as the Creator. I still wasn’t all that clear—I was years away from faith at that point—but I was praying, just a little, from Scripture (yes, even if mediated through Wendell Berry), thinking about Jesus, thinking about submission(!!!) to God’s will. And every bit of that was certainly a first for me. Every part of that would have been unthinkable to me only a few months before.

These days, I think there’s more to “the hidden life” of prayer than what I thought then, but in many ways, my first prayer wasn’t far off base. When Jesus’s disciples came to him and asked him to teach them how to pray, “Thy will be done” is among the foundational principles of that model for prayer he taught them (and us). A self-willed prayer does not rise very high. A self-willed heart will experience little true communion with God. And I think there was a reason why Jesus’s disciples weren’t asking him to teach them how to preach like him, or how to cast out demons or perform miracles like him. The mystery they sought to understand was how they could have the kind of communion with the Father that he had.

My own life of prayer began in the wee hours of the morning in a barn, with “Thy will be done”; with saying yes to new life, not yet visible. Fittingly, my first foray back to church was also in a barn (our local church met in a barn for a couple of years). That morning, too, was a work of God sparking new life, yet hidden, within me. I could hear the call-and-response of ewes and lambs just outside in the background; the husky chuckling baas of the mothers and the higher-pitched answers of the little ones. My pastor and I sometimes like to joke about that first visit; my daughter was just learning to walk, and he was just re-learning to do the same, after a stroke. He actually had the stroke right there in that barn a few months earlier, just as he had finished a sermon, which I’ve since listened to on a recording. The last words he preached before he collapsed were, “God works all things in our lives to his glory.”

Well, amen to that.

****

A postscript of sorts: Our unexpected baby, Jeralyn Scout, is four and a half now (nearly four and three-quarters, if we’re being precise). She has indeed so far had a life steeped in music, in books, and no shortage of art supplies. She is not quite so immersed in the horse world as I was (which is both sad and ok; a longish story in itself), but she spends a lot of time following my dad around in barns, too. The farm he manages now has a big training barn, as well as the broodmare barn where I played her music and talked to her for the first time. She’s gotten to ride in the tractor with him while he harrows or floats the racetrack, and she’s helped me roll bandages. She loves watching the horses train on the track. She’s been present for several foals being born, and gotten to touch them still damp from the womb. She’s seen kittens born, as well as helped to bury a couple of them that didn’t make it. No trips to the stud farms just yet, but like farm kids everywhere, she’s certainly grasped quite a few facts of life already.

(She’s even acquiring a taste for Wendell Berry these days, thanks in large part to Tol Proudfoot short stories.) She’s been a very good surprise, the best.

Songs: Eine kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) by Mozart, was, of course, a frequent listening choice for me when staying up all night. This was the song I chose to formally introduce myself to my daughter, that night in the barn. Between listening to that song and reading Jayber Crow, you could probably come to understand thirty-one year old me without needing any more information.

A clarification is in order here. I suspect for most of you, when you read the word “hill”, you are picturing something very different from what I mean in this case. I’ve tramped about a good bit of the country by now, and I’m familiar with those rolling bumps you are probably seeing in your mind. There are hills that have been formed in relation to mountains, near or distant; the foothills leading up to them, like a crescendo in a symphony. Go far enough out into the plains, and the hills that remain, such as they are, they almost seem to have forgotten mountains; if we’re sticking with musical terms, these are more like the allargando, perhaps, mellowing out and broadening.

The Driftless hills are different. Many of them are bluffs, technically; and all of them are a bit stark and wild, “them thar hills”; they have an otherness about them, jutting up abruptly out of the edges of the flat river valleys. They look as though they ought to be in the first row of a mountain range, but it’s just them. No larger mountains looming behind, not much for gentle rolling slopes between. Lots of flat, and then the very steep hills. It’s a striking landscape, unlike anywhere else I’ve been.

The hills have something of the sternness of a mountain range (family stories of logging up there never failed to impress this upon me), yet comparatively, they’re approachable. In some places, you can walk to a ridgetop in about twenty minutes, or maybe an hour if you’re with a five-year-old cousin and stopping to examine a lot of insect activity along the way. Long ago, many farmers (including my great-grandfather) cleared fields at the tops, which are relatively flat. No matter how many times I’ve done it, I’ve never failed to experience a flicker of delighted surprise every time I have climbed (or driven) the rocky, rutted track through the dense trees, to emerge all at once into the open and the light. It’s like discovering a secret meadow. Sometimes it’s a cow pasture, for a season here, sometimes a hay field for another.

I haven’t been able to make that climb for a few years, due to a family estrangement that has cut me off from place as well as people. That land feels as much a part of me as my family heritage itself on that side; the two are indissolubly linked together in my mind, heart, and my childish sense of “home”. This is fitting, really, as that side of the family values land as much as blood, or perhaps, more. I was cut from that same cloth, myself.

It strikes me as poignant, in a way, this part of the country being called Driftless. It’s named for the geological term, but I often ponder the second meaning. “Drift” usually means to be carried along effortlessly, without control (if we’re not talking about drift racing, I guess), so, intuitively, one might think of driftless, being its antonym, as a deep-set rootedness, a fixed position. Still, “driftless” in actuality has a subtler meaning, “being without aim or purpose”. To drift, even if aimless on the part of the drifter, nevertheless requires some form of a driving agent to propel or compel the movement. A leaf drifts upon a current of wind, or along one of water. A snowflake drifts because gravity exerts its pull upon it. If you are drifting, you are therefore being carried somewhere; there’s a destination, though you’re not consciously aiming at it yourself, you are being aimed at it. Whether a drift in a current, or a drift to the conversation, or a culture, or a genetic drift; things are happening. To be driftless isn’t to be firmly fixed, like I assumed as a kid; it’s more like being in stasis.

(Also, now I’m wondering if we ought to change the word “drifter” to “driftee”.)

All that semantic musing is not to imply that the people who live there are driftless; at least, neither more nor less than people are anywhere else, I’d say. Midwestern farming communities and port towns do have a bit of a forgotten feeling about them, though, that kind of fits with the word. You don’t hear about it quite as much in the national conversation as the Rust Belt or Appalachia, but there’s been a similar story unfolding over the past near century all over many, many pockets of America, including where I’m from. There is a driftlessness. The communities aren’t what they once were, and yet, they’re not quite entirely estranged from what they were, either. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that it’s no longer a farming community, exactly. It’s just no longer a thriving farming community; there are fewer and bigger farmers, in more debt; fewer entrepreneurs and more employees (also far more outright unemployed); more dependence on government dollars (in many different forms), and there’s less community and coherence, but the old identity isn’t exactly gone. It’s a bit like looking at the tattoo sleeves of an eighty-year-old; the image is very worn down and distorted, but it’s still there, still recognizable if you look closely. Perhaps it helps to know what you’re looking for, in both cases.

In any case, when I get homesick, I miss Midwesterners. People always stereotype them/us (honestly, I’m not sure which designation to use) as polite, helpful, somehow akin in essence to Canadians, etc; all true, but I wonder why you don’t hear more stereotypes about how blunt Midwesterners tend to be. Not much nonsense, unless it’s time to say goodbye, in person or on the phone. Then all bets are off. From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and the dreaded Midwestern goodbye, good Lord, deliver us. “Well, I suppose I better let you go”, “Yep, I guess I gotta get going”…then comes the resuming of leisurely conversation for another twenty minutes or so, after which the ritual of preparing to say goodbye is repeated; if no one has anything scheduled, the whole cycle may go on for several more rounds.

My dad’s family, the Randalls, are a wonderful exception in this regard. When they say a thing they tend to mean it, with decision, including “well, bye now”. They are, collectively, to a man (or woman), my favorite people to call on the telephone. There is no dread, no need to gear myself up. We are all on the same page about what we are here to do; we are going to exchange the specific, pertinent information that necessitated the call, and then we are going to say “love you” and hang up and get back to our respective books. Although I have finally made up my mind to take my husband’s name (maybe by the time I’m fifty, considering my track record with red tape), I’ll keep the Randall forever, I think, at least for writing, because there’s no denying that I am a Randall, through and through. Truth be told, I’d adore them even if they weren’t my family. If we got to choose our family, like we used to pick teams at recess, I’d pick them. They’re just my kind of people, not only because of the phone thing; they’re the exact kind of people I gravitate to as friends. Very bright and well-read, a little scary, fun at parties but even more fun to hole up with in a corner (with some cheese), forgetting about the party, getting deep into conversation about history, music, ice-fishing, the law, death…you know, the good stuff.

I have an aunt and uncle on that side who have been particularly good to me; they gave me a place to stay when I was rather adrift in my own life, a few years back. They have a home nestled up to those hills I love, with woods on one side and a valley on the other, with the hills just beyond. The view from their guest room might be my favorite in the world, equally beautiful at dusk and dawn. I always feel truly, safely at home at that moment when I walk in from the road and set my bags down in that room. Their house is my Rivendell. I’ve healed from deep heartache there, and basked in new joys there, too. They’re the kind of hosts who invite both. Although I’ve never actually collapsed weeping into the arms of my aunt or my uncle, I always instinctively felt that I could have done so, and that was enough.

Equally, I feel that we (my husband and I) could have dropped in on them after we’d eloped and had an impromptu celebration. If we’d lived in WI at the time, we probably would have. They would have put on the perfect music, my uncle and I would have toasted the occasion with some whiskey, and we would have just rejoiced together. I know that’s how it would have gone, just as surely as if we’d actually been there to do it.

The beauty of their location and the unique charm of their house (it’s a really cool house); their taste in filling the place with books and music and art…it’s all so fitting, but rather beside the point. The loveliness is a perfect outward expression of the heart of the matter, but it isn’t the heart of the matter; they are. It’s really my aunt and uncle who remind me of “home”, who feel like a safe harbor (or as my daughter calls it when we visit, “base camp”). They have the gift of sanctuary.

Thirty-two years ago, just on the other side of those hills that I can see from that guest room, I can remember standing in the yard of what had been our home, crying, as we were loading up the van to move. Or maybe I wasn’t crying, I can’t remember that well, but I remember feeling like I needed to. I didn’t want to move; this was home. I was five. I can remember the way I felt like a wandering ghost of myself, sad and anxious, at the first two farms where we lived in Maryland. Cringing under the sense of scrutiny from the farm owners my dad worked for. I missed my cousins and my grandpas, my aunts and uncles, that easy feel of belonging I had taken for granted. I missed the hills, cows, and the giant rock in our front yard at the cabin. Maryland did not look or feel remotely like home to me.

Eventually, though, there was a farm that did make me welcome. The house was infested with rats; I look back and my heart bleeds for my poor mother, but to a seven-year-old, the rats were incidental. I had room to roam where I wasn’t under the eye of my dad’s boss; I could finally relax. It was the first place in MD that felt like home. I cried to leave that place too. But the next farm turned out to be the one where my parents stayed for the rest of my growing up (and longer), and there was no boss at all anymore, as my dad had his own business. I still vaguely dreaded the boogeyman-ish idea of our landlady; there again, I suppose, it was a developing pattern in my life; my distaste for a person with power over us, a person who could just decide one day that we weren’t allowed to call this place home anymore. Putting my self-psychoanalysis aside; in a complicated, cautious way, Maryland (that farm, anyway) finally became one of my homes.

Yawn-worthily unoriginal, romanticized wanderlust set in later pretty much right on schedule; from about ages fifteen to twenty-five, I rejected the very concept of “home”, preferring (first in imagination, later in reality) to own very little and, well, drift. I declined to put down roots, emotionally at least. I read a lot of Hunter Thompson.

But home-longing came back; I am an incurable farmer at heart. I love land; I love to love a particular piece of land, to walk it every day and examine its skin. I love to care for land, and work it; I love to do what I can to heal its hurts and restore it to health where it may be found wanting. From preschool on, I have a history of bonding far more easily and deeply with a field or a stretch of creek than I do with people. My gypsyish years were, I think, just an unconscious suppression of that deep longing in my heart; rather like a girl who doth protest too much that she doesn’t need or want a man, and never wants children. Me and that sort of girl both tended to get very, very depressed if we drank. I was usually very depressed anyway. I resumed reading Wendell Berry.

Eventually it hit me, I did want a home. Home, to me, was synonymous with “farm”. Every home I’d loved, every place that had actually felt like home, had been a farm. I’d never lived anywhere else but on some farm or other until I was, I think twenty-two or twenty-three, and that deviation was a mercifully short season of life before I was back, on my own (rented) farm. I’m just a dyed-in-the-wool farm girl. I knew what I wanted most in life was land of my own, that no one was abruptly going to uproot me from. Then I’d nest, but instead of buying furniture, I wanted horses and cows and sheep. I wanted to save an old house, an old barn, maybe some old outbuildings from falling down from neglect. I wanted to be part of preserving the good, loving work that was done there in generations past; I wanted to save it from just falling apart and fading away, being replaced with something modern and ugly and indifferent. I wanted to make hay every summer for the rest of my life, on my own land (I love making hay. It’s insanely hot and itchy and even heavily calloused hands might blister and bleed from the sheer intensity of the work for a few days, but it’s my favorite smell in the world, and it smells even better when I’ve earned it. Worth every blister). I wanted all of that. I wanted.

I clung to that desire for years, with ferocious tenacity. It could, apparently, absorb and assimilate all my other loves into itself. When I fell in love with my husband, it quieted a little, because he has a way of bringing a sense of home just with his presence; I’m often reminded of that Edward Sharpe song, “home is wherever I’m with you”. Pretty soon, though, the old longing just insinuated itself into that new love; now I dreamed of a farm for us. I envisioned our own sort of Rivendell; I daydreamed about the family drama magically resolving and that happy fantasy concluding with us buying the piece of my great-grandfather’s farm that was my particular favorite. When our daughter was born, the dream farm in my head became the setting for her ideal childhood, and her future inheritance. It was also the safety net for our family; we’d be able to give shelter to any of our aging parents or struggling friends or relatives we wanted, anytime; c’mon, it was a good dream! Even when I was quickened into faith and love in God, I didn’t miss a beat. I could instantly pivot to all kinds of newly Christianized goals, of stewardship and hospitality (same goals, new justification). I wanted it so badly. “For the glory of God”, of course.

Back to semantics for a moment. Nowadays I think it’s easy to forget, from how casually we use the word, that want can be synonymous with need, with lack, with being generally destitute. If you’ve read A Christmas Carol, you may remember that Want was personified as one of the pitiful children shown to Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Present, with “shriveled hands”, and “pinched and twisted features”. Conversely, we know that to “want for nothing” is wealth indeed, the priceless jewel of contentment. It is a state of the heart, quite unrelated to possessions.

This most recent Christmas past, it really hit me what an idol my land-longing has been in my heart. I clung to it like salvation, the dream of a “real” home that sustained me. If my heart was shown to me personified as it really is, I fear that I too, would have “pinched and twisted features”. I prayed that God would release me from the relentless homesickness that has haunted me all my life. That prayer basically went like: “I don’t want to want this so badly anymore. I want to want you the way I have wanted this. Please show me how, please change my heart.”

Sometimes we ask, and seek, and knock, for a long time, wondering if and when our prayers will ever be answered. Sometimes the answer seems to come almost in the same breath as the prayer. God did change my heart, though, I’m more homesick than ever. I’m just homesick for my real home, the only one that actually won’t be taken away from me. I don’t care if we ever have a farm on this earth. I’d like it fine. If God saw fit to give us that, I would, of course, give thanks from the bottom of my heart and delight in caring for it. I don’t want it. I never pray for it, and except when I started scheming for writing ideas and came up with this, I hadn’t even thought about it for months. I don’t ache for it anymore. I want for nothing.

I am, for the first time in my life, content. I have other things to think about; I have work to do before I go home. And I’ve always liked work, even painfully hard work, so despite my homesickness, most days, I find joy in the work. I know the Sabbath is coming, unearned, but I suspect that the more wholeheartedly I work now, the deeper my delight will be in the rest when it comes. What could ever be better than the words “well done, good and faithful servant” from Him?

I don’t go in much for excessive speculation on what it will be like. I am contentedly certain it will be indescribably wonderful. The One who made my heart is not going to leave one bit of it wanting. I know that I will not be driftless, adrift, or afraid to put down roots. I know it’s going to be paradise and all, but I believe that, like I said about my aunt and uncle’s home, it will be the host who really gives our hearts rest, not the setting. The setting will just be wonderfully appropriate, perfectly aligned with the joy in the hearts of the redeemed. It will be better than Rivendell. Evil things will not come into that valley. As beautiful as this earth is, in its fallen state, I have no fear that the new earth will disappoint. Anyway, as I said to an ornery commenter once, I’d take a drainage ditch with Him for eternity. With the church, too. Imagine what it will be like to be together without sin. No wonder I’m homesick. If home is where the heart is, then this world is not my home.

Here is a relevant song suggestion. I stole that last line from him, in fact.

Anyway, if you made it through reading that and wondered, like, fifty times if I was wrapping it up anytime soon, now you have gotten a taste of the Midwestern goodbye.

Well, bye now.

Yet there’s no sickness, no toil, nor danger, in that bright land, to which I go

I’m going there to see my Father, I’m going there no more to roam

I’m only a-goin’ over Jordan, I’m only going over home

There’s many versions of this American folk/gospel song dating from the 19th century. #3339 in the Roud Folk Song Index, it’s been known variously as “The Wayfaring Stranger”, “Poor Wayfaring Stranger”, “Pilgrim’s Song”, and other names.

During the Civil War, a dying Union soldier gouged the lyrics onto the walls of his cell in Libby Prison, a notorious Confederate stockade in Richmond, Virginia. Libby was distinguished by brutal living conditions and an appalling death rate. Roud 3339 became popularly known as “Libby Prison Hymn” for some time after this story became known. Perhaps that soldier was thinking of Paul and Silas singing hymns of praise to God in prison. Or perhaps he was just longing to escape hell on earth. To go over home.

Like most folk songs, the original author is unknown. Even the cultural backdrop is uncertain. The language of “crossing over Jordan” is common to African-American spiritual anthems of the time; coded language referring to crossing the Ohio River to escape to freedom. Lyrically, it bears notable resemblance to the German hymn “Ich bin ein gast auf Erden” (“A Pilgrim Here I wander”, or, more literally, and I love this, “I am a guest on earth”), and yet, it also borrows traditional musical elements from Scottish border ballads.

Personally, I have always enjoyed the mystery and murk common to folk song origins. Though they usually have their own distinct cultural flair, nevertheless much of folk music (from any country) deals with themes that belong so deeply to all of us. They form a musical tapestry of shared humanity across borders, oceans and centuries. Whoever originally conceived the earliest version of Roud 3339, I’m fairly certain of one thing. He or she had their eyes fixed upon “that bright land” beyond. The writer was a person who recognized the truth of being a sojourner on this earth, a tenant, a mere passing shadow. A guest. The pilgrim’s song gave birth to the prison hymn. The two things are not so unalike, after all.

One of my favorite passages of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress comes just before the imprisonment of Christian and Hopeful in the dungeons of Giant Despair. There is a brief chapter, almost an interlude to the main story, in which C and H encounter a monument to Lot’s wife, and it “stimulated them unto discourse”, naturally. Wherein they earnestly strove to take notice of what could be profitably learned for help in the future. Here’s an excerpt:

Hopeful: … “this woman merely looked behind her, we do not read that she stepped so much as one step out of the way, and yet she was turned into a pillar of salt. And the judgement which overtook her remains an example…” they yammer back and forth for a page in here, then, Hopeful again: “But what a mercy it is that neither you, and especially I, are not ourselves to be made as to be examples as was this woman. Therefore this occasion gives us an opportunity to thank God, to fear Him, and always to remember Lot’s wife.”

Fine words. But, as the Victorians (and Anne Kennedy) would counsel us, fine words doth butter no parsnips. You know what happens when you turn the page, a few paragraphs into the next chapter? “The souls of the pilgrims became increasingly discouraged on account of the harshness of the way.” They find a path running parallel to theirs (that doesn’t count as a step out of the way, surely?) with easier going, and after very little debate, they choose the way that is easier on their feet, following in the steps of another pilgrim named Vain-Confidence (always wise).

Needless to say, woe befalls them. Read it if you haven’t. But this little vignette seems to me a nicely layered warning for those of us who are walking by faith, seeking the Celestial City. It is very easy and pleasant to talk about walking in the way of the Lord, but it is easier still, even in the very midst of stimulating discourse thereon, to wander off the path in a way that seems like no departure at all.

One of the things that interests me most about this part of the story is that our heroes (so to speak) grow discouraged and wander astray just after having spent several days of ease and refreshment on the banks of the River of Life. Instead of rejoicing as strong men to run a race in renewed vitality, they were instantly disgruntled when the path began to press on back into some difficulty, and then, verily…"they continued to wish for an easier way”.

The road upon which a Christian walks is not a slow and peaceful one. It is beset by many dangers, toils and snares. There are false signposts leading to dangerous detours; a deadly enemy prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. There are smiling false shepherds that are inwardly as ravening wolves. Perhaps most deadly of all, we take an enemy along with us, while we still draw breath.

“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)

I talked in my last essay about newness of life, and about the hope of that bright land beyond, but the earthly pilgrimage through this land below must be walked first. And in the inimitable words of Deitrich Bonhoeffer, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him to come and die.”

Later in that same section of his book The Cost of Discipleship, he says “only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ…Jesus Christ and his call are necessarily our death as well as our life. The call to discipleship, the baptism in the name of Jesus Christ means both death and life.”

I was baptized just this Sunday, along with my husband, so this theme is especially on my mind. A baptism is a public renunciation of my own rights to my life, you might say. I’ve belonged to Christ for a little while now, but baptism is a step of obedience, another symbolic union with Christ in death and in new life.

Bonhoeffer himself did come and die, to the end. Before his hanging by the Gestapo, his last recorded words were: “This is the end, for me the beginning of life.” He certainly understood he was ein gast auf Erden. He spent his final days ministering to his fellow prisoners, writing cheerful letters, poems of praise to the Lord, and prayers. Many of these have since been set to music, which I think is fitting, as Bonhoeffer deeply loved music and was known for interweaving it into almost every part of his community’s life of fellowship and worship. More prison hymns for the generations to follow him, inevitably, into other prisons. Christianity in much of the West has enjoyed a brief waiving of the traditionally high cost of discipleship. It is misleading. For much of history, in much of the world, following Christ has cost people dearly. We too easily forget that for Christians in many places today, it can mean imprisonment, torture, or death; and nowhere in Scripture are we promised to be spared that if we happen to live in the West. The day will come here, too, when it costs us much, maybe everything on earth. Maybe soon, maybe in the time of our great-great-grandchildren. I tend to think I may live to see it. Either way, in the day to day, I am called to come and die. He must increase, but I must decrease.

If this sounds painful, sometimes it is. And yet it’s freeing too. Sometimes I am reminded of the creatures who had been turned to stone in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Aslan breathed on them and they became flesh once more. It didn’t happen all at once, though there was no stopping it once it began. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove your heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My judgements.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27) What He has begun, He will bring to completion.

I know dark clouds will gather o’er me

I know my path is rough and steep

Yet beauteous fields lie just before me

Where God’s redeemed their vigils keep

We are crucified with Christ, yet we must walk on in the flesh, facing temptation and putting our selves to death again and again, day by day. The life of a tree is certainly cut off and destroyed when it is cut down, but it is a lingering death. A tree’s roots can survive for months or even years, drawing on the carbohydrate reserves acquired in life, though its doom is sealed. Our sin natures are much like that, with a “reserve” of sin in our cells that will linger until we are wholly released from sin at last and perfected upon our physical death. That will be the end of the dying, and the beginning of real life, when we join the triumphant church.

In the meantime, we pick up our crosses and follow Him. Let us take every opportunity to thank God, to fear Him, and to remember not only Lot’s wife, but our own tendency to linger, look back, and stray. Let us remember our own tendency to forsake what is right for what is easy, and to follow in the footsteps of vain confidence. Watch your step today, and let us walk as He walked.

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)

Thanks for reading!

1)I swear, I thought I got this tree concept from another book, not my own head, but for the life of me, I cannot find it. I even broke down and asked the Internet. I found no quotes to this effect. I actually had been thinking it was Bonhoeffer who said something like this, which was how I got going with all those other quotes by him, but, apparently it was not him. Perhaps it is my own idea after all. In which case I’m rather less confident in it, but, hopefully the analogy can bear its own weight.

2) There are so many versions of the Wayfaring Stranger song, with slight variations on the lyrics. I chose to use “Father”, as in God the Father, in writing the opening lines. When singing it myself, I usually choose to sing of my Savior coming to meet me when I come, rather than “my mother”, which is the commonest version. In my case, fortunately, I do know I will meet my mother there; however this is one weak point of a lot of bluegrass gospel music, I think…there is sometimes rather more emphasis on the joyous human reunions in heaven than there is in at last coming face to face with Christ. Obviously, I take a lot of value from the song nevertheless, and I certainly look forward with joy to the reunions that will be taking place after death, and especially at the end of time! Still, I think that slight softening and human-centering of the gospel in much “gospel” music may explain in part why many of these tunes prove so popular even among people utterly without belief. They can enjoy them aesthetically and even take a kind of vague comfort from the thought that everything will work out in the end for “good people”, i.e, myself and everyone I love, surely, regardless of what exactly we did with Jesus Christ in our life. Which is ultimately, the only thing that matters.

On that note, song suggestions! I suggest “The Only Thing That Matters” by Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver. Also, needless to say, I do love Wayfaring Stranger, in its many iterations. There are so many good versions out there, but I especially would recommend checking out: Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Burl Ives, Paul Robeson (he titled it ‘Poor Wayfaring Stranger’, coupled with ‘Hammer Song’ on his gorgeous album ‘The Power and the Glory’. While you’re listening to Robeson anyway, check out his ‘Amazing Grace’. Gives me chills). Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra also does a hauntingly beautiful version of Wayfaring Stranger. Honestly there are many more excellent covers, but perhaps this will get you started down a delightful rabbit hole for yourself!

Also, check out this sermon by John MacArthur for a much more rich take on this subject.

The day I realized my childhood was over, I was fourteen. Like many young women, this revelation came to me in the form of an inappropriate remark from a man old enough to be my father. My experience was perhaps a bit unusual in the specifics; the man was wearing bright blue eyeshadow, enormous fake eyelashes, and he directed his comment, or I should say query, not to me, but to my father, who was kneeling down in the straw wrapping a bandage around a racehorse’s leg, while I was at the horse’s head. The guy stared at me, then asked my dad, “how much would I have to pay you to borrow your help for an hour?”

For a minute there I was still thoroughly childish, because I didn’t even get it. I thought he was a trainer whose help didn’t show up that day, that he needed someone to muck a few stalls or walk some hots (walking with horses hot from training while they slowly cool down). Or that there was a giant load of hay he needed help unloading. Something normal. I was still slow-wittedly trying to figure out why he’d offered to pay my dad to “borrow” me, when my dad, who had ceased not to wrap but had gone very quiet for a moment, answered.

“Billy”, he said, his tone conversational, “this is Jes, my fourteen-year-old daughter. You know I’d have to kill you if you say another thing like that.”

See, my dad understood the question. Then I got it. And grew up in a hurry.

The only other thing that’s important to understand about this story is this: that was the end of it. I saw Billy around all the time in later years, both in and out of the company of my dad, and apart from some nervous stuttering on Billy’s part it was all very friendly and never brought up again. Because that’s just how it was at the racetrack. HR existed directly between people, not as a managerial position.

The horse racing world is a world of sorts unto itself, or at least, akin to a small country, with its own customs and language. In those days, anyway. Like most things nowadays, it’s increasingly becoming more like anywhere else, though it’s going more slowly and proving more recalcitrant than many industries.

When I was a child, as I recall, it seemed to be a country peopled mainly by old men. They were the fixtures to me, anyway; their work as grooms and hotwalkers tied them to the barns, unlike the (mostly) younger men and women who were the exercise riders and the jockeys; they were different, dipping in and out of the barns quickly to hand off one horse and be given a leg up onto the next; at the end of the morning they were briefly a part of the life of the barn as they stood cleaning all the bridles, yokes, and girths hanging from bridle hooks by the barn doorways, and then they were gone.

But the old men, the backbone of the place, they were in the barns all morning, working with more care than speed. Many of them lived right there on the track, in the rooms above the barns, or in the nearby neighborhoods, within walking distance (I knew few, if any, grooms with cars). This was Pimlico racetrack in Baltimore, in the 90’s and early 2000’s; a rough place to walk at 2 or 3am, which was when these gentlemen came to work. A guy I knew got attacked by a couple of kids who jumped the fence to get inside the racetrack, stabbed him 17 times, then took off. Miraculously, he survived, though it was touch and go for awhile.

There was a man who worked with my dad for decades; everyone called him Bones. Bones was in his seventies when I met him; he still walked to work every morning through a neighborhood that was mainly drug dealers. He got jumped, too, and beaten so badly that the retina was detached from his eye and had to be surgically re-attached, though he never regained his sight on that side. He still walked to work, declining offers of a ride.

Bones told me stories of jumping on trains when he was a kid, and of first coming to the racetrack as a teenager, never looking back. He told me about his wife and him losing a baby many decades before, when they’d been turned away from the nearest hospital because they were black. He told me the story without bitterness or rancor, his grief not faded but softened with time, merely sharing history with me. He didn’t even blame the racist hospital staff for the death of his baby; he didn’t claim to know that the baby would have survived if they had gotten prompt care. I couldn’t believe he could even say that. I burned with the injustice, absolutely certain in my bones that surely, it was the fault of those evil people. Even if it wasn’t, technically, it might as well be. In my mind, at least, the verdict was in and they were found guilty of murder.

I used to help Bones and a couple of other grooms to mix up poultices and slather them on the legs of the horses. Nowadays, people mostly buy their poultices pre-mixed in a bucket, but back then folks made their own, from big bags of dried “bowie mud” mixed with water and whatever additives they chose. They’d have two buckets mixed up; one for legs, one for packing hooves. The hoof mixture would have less water in it, so the slightly dried “mud” would adhere like putty to the bottom of the horse’s hoof, with a neat little square of paper (cut from a feed bag) slapped on top of it after the hoof was packed. The mixture for legs was a little more wet and slippery, so it had a perfectly smooth glide as you spread it over a horse’s leg from knee to fetlocks. Too wet, and it would be sloppy and ooze out of place; too dry and it would stick in clumps to the hair on the legs. People nowadays tend to wear disposable gloves to do this, but we just got messy then, and took considerable time rinsing it off. Every bandage was smudged with muddy fingerprints.

(To this day, I’d rather feel the poultice on my skin. I haven’t done this in a few years, but whenever I did, I’d flash right back to “doing up” horses with Bones, Bernie, Monroe, and my dad.)

They had their own poultice recipes in those days, jealously guarded. Each of the true old-timer grooms had his own blend of lineaments and herbs and such that he added as he saw fit to his poultices; sometimes different combinations for different horses or different needs they saw in their legs. These old men all had tricks up their sleeves; recipes they swore by and shared with nobody. Though two of them, Bones and Monroe, did furtively allow me to join them in mixing up their craft concoctions. Little kid privilege.

After putting mud on the legs, the poulticed portion was wrapped in either feed-bag paper cut to size (for a dry poultice), or sheet cotton (for keeping it slightly moist), or, cotton covered with a layer of saran plastic wrap (really moist, and warm). Then an actual bandage, called a standing bandage (for standing around in a stall, get it?) was wrapped overtop to hold it all in place and to apply just the right level of compression to those hardworking legs, and to wrap it up (so to speak), two large diaper pins, interlocked, pinning it in place.

There was the odd horse who might like to mess with and chew upon their bandages, which could be dangerous if they pulled them out of place and caused too much unevenly distributed pressure on their tendons. We would mix up a paste with a little cayenne pepper and water, then carefully paint it with a brush on the outside of the bandages. The horse inevitably left them alone after that, but I tended to sneeze when removing the treated bandages. People buy a spray for this now.

My dad was a small-time trainer, meaning, he usually had just a few horses and did a good deal of his own grunt work. He rode all his own horses for the morning training when I was a kid (when my brother and I got old enough, we gradually took that over). He also still did a great deal of freelance riding for other people then; he had a reputation for being able to “get along with” virtually any horse, even the truly rough ones that other people flatly refused to ride. He was also good at “holding a tough horse”, meaning, specifically, a horse that pulls really hard and tends to run off with people. Needless to say, no human is as strong as a near half-ton of racehorse, so “holding” one is not entirely a matter of strength (though stamina is crucial); it’s a matter of finesse that is difficult to describe and more difficult to do, but it is deeply satisfying to do well on a horse that makes it arduous. Though, occasionally, a really tough one may make it so gut-wrenchingly exhausting that you are just glad to have gotten through another morning gallop without them getting away from you, with every muscle like rubber, praying to a God you rarely consider real that the next horse will go easy on you.

Also, occasionally you do get run off with, at least a little bit. It comes with the territory.

When I was little, I would occasionally stray from the barn, shyly accompanying one of the other trainers out to the grandstand to watch my dad ride. Or every now and then, my dad had a jockey breezing one of his horses (a breeze, or “work” is basically a controlled sprint for a specific distance, rarely more than 5/8 of a mile). I’d accompany him up to the clocker’s stand in these instances; to watch the work, and usually, I got to run the stopwatch. I’ve forgotten the clocker’s names; but I remember them as jovial, kindly, ever-so-slightly unscrupulous characters, always teasing me and calling me “Boss”. I got that a lot as a kid; apparently even at seven, my face tended to assume the same intensity of focus as my father’s. We have a picture of the two of us together, in the saddling paddock before a race on a rainy day; both of us looking like drowned rats, me holding the horse’s head and my dad instructing the jockey, our expressions identical. I remember that day, I was fifteen. That horse ran a heart-pounding, breath-takingly close second and just missed by a nose at the wire.

It seemed that people were drawn to the racetrack for one of three reasons, or some combination thereof. There were those who loved horses so much they couldn’t have borne not spending their lives with them; they just lived and breathed horses, they loved them with a fanatical, idolatrous sort of love. Then, with considerable overlap, there were those who loved horse racing; they loved its strange blend of seediness and old-money glamour; its juxtaposition of gritty, almost military discipline with a twist of traveling carnival bohemia. For both sorts, there was the allure of the splendid animals themselves, some of them anyway; the incomparable thrill of standing by the rail (or riding one of them) when down the stretch they came, the way the earth shakes as they flash by.

Those folks leaning towards the thrill-seeking second category also tended to love all the gambling, and perhaps the general licentiousness that was rampant.

Last but not least, the racetrack of my childhood seemed to function like a kind of Island of Misfit Toys, an environment so bizarre anyway that any sort of eccentric person was welcome to join its membership. If you were good at your work with horses (and when I was a kid, at least, the people who tended to stick around usually were quite good), no one really cared if you were a cross-dresser or a paranoid schizophrenic.

Billy, for example, was a very good rider. And kind of a sweetheart in his way. He was honestly pretty horrified to realize that he had solicited a fourteen-year-old; we could argue that was not quite the whole of his offence, but we got along fine once my dad cleared that up. And one of the best hands with a horse that I knew was a guy who was in fact a paranoid schizophrenic; it seems counterintuitive, but he had a real knack for getting horses to relax. He hid around corners from women, couldn’t tie his shoes, and was strangely obsessed with Michael Jackson, but he was good with a horse and we all liked him. I was honored to be one of the few women he could comfortably speak with.

As I’m reminiscing, I keep coming across this theme: mixing. There was just more mixing things back then. Like the poultice, horse feeds have been increasingly made as pre-mixed, “balanced” for you so you don’t have the trouble of carefully considering and balancing the individual nutritional needs of the horses in your care; you don’t have to plan anything but purchasing and measuring. I can’t remember the last time I saw a bin of plain oats, but as a kid I used to scoop up handfuls of them, breathing in their scent, and slowly spreading my fingers so they went trickling, then cascading, plunk-plunk-plunk shhhhhhhh, back to the bin. I played with (and tasted) all the different grains, but I remember the oats best. They satisfied something in me.

It was a great place to be a little girl, though, sometimes, a rough place to be a young woman. Sometimes. I’m not complaining. When I turned sixteen and could be licensed to ride, it was a transfigured world for awhile; no longer confined to the view with my feet on the ground, in the barn or the grandstand. Spending most of my mornings on the track itself, faster paced (very fast indeed when breezing), physically taxing and thrilling at times.

There are moments of that I’ll probably remember like yesterday even if I live to be ninety; certain horses that moved under you like they had panther blood in them somewhere; days when the track was “fast” and galloping over it, my horse felt as if he or she were floating beneath me, with the sun just rising and burning away a light morning mist. Certain kinds of mornings can make me ache for that.

Or there was a mare I rode in the mornings down at a training center in Camden, SC. She was known for “fireworks” when stepping onto the track or off of it, sometimes quite severe and getting other people in trouble with their horses, but I’d discovered that if I let her just stand and watch the other horses training for awhile first, she relaxed and was (usually) an angel for me the rest of the ride. My dad used to sometimes let horses do that, the older, smarter ones especially, and I’d noted how relaxed and happy they always appeared to be, just watching. So I tried it. Did the trick. I can still picture it in my head, the acres of pines surrounding the track, with her pert, slightly curved, dark gray ears in the frame, pointed forward, but relaxed. Happily interested ears, not fixed-staring-about-to-explode-ears. Sometimes she’d rest a hind foot awhile. If I’d offered her a cigarette it could hardly have made the picture more complete.

When she was ready, she’d glance back at me with one big dark eye for a flash (really), then briskly trot off, ready for work, the moment my weight shifted in response. We got along great. I like remembering that view, with those ears in it. That was twenty years ago, so I’ve no idea where that mare is now or if she’s still alive; I hear that training center is a housing development now.

Recently, I was meditating upon 1 John 2:17, “and the world is passing away, with all its desires, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.” Sometimes I feel as though I can almost see the passing away happening before my very eyes; that the world is not “merely” changing but winding down, passing away bit by bit, quick as the rail whizzing by on a breezing horse. That odd little world of my childhood is gone, along with much of its excellence and its eccentricity, and my dad is one of the old men now, of whom there are few. It’s no country for old men anymore; it’s merely slick and fast and uniform everywhere. There are no more secret recipes.

I could get very sad thinking about this. I’m a nostalgic person by temperament; I love old things, old people, old ways. I love old houses and farm buildings, old city neighborhoods, old small towns, ancient cities, ancient languages, and I love difference. I love misfits who aren’t trendy. I love secret recipes for poultice, or red velvet cake. I love history, old books, and saving things that are important or just lovely (which is a kind of importance) from being lost.

But of course, in the end I can’t do that. All things and all lives under the sun are impermanent, even the things that are most important, most lasting…they will not last. America will not last. The best-stewarded, multigenerational farm will not last. My marriage will not last “forever”, but only til death. My child will hopefully long outlive me and perhaps have children of her own, but she, too, will die, and so will her children.

The pines that are gone are gone for good, but one day, God has promised, He is going to make a new heaven and a new earth. He is going to make all things new. Personally, I hope that means there will be horses. And very tall pines, and any number of other things I have loved and mourned here. I long for the true Narnia (if you’ve read and loved The Last Battle, you get me). But that bit doesn’t really matter. The strange paradox of loving Christ is that He will change your heart so that you appreciate everything more, but need it less. I’m storing up my treasures in heaven; and I can’t contemplate a treasure equal to Him. I don’t care that much about what the new earth will be like, in itself, as much as what it will be like to be with Him, and to be done with sinning or seeing others sin. To have run the race.

Coming to Christ means that eventually, you will love other people more than you did before, but love no one as much as you love Him. Yet that love for Him infuses your love for other people til it grows exponentially. Most of all, that love means that I want other people to know Him. I want them to know this love too. I want them joined in the body with me, attached to the vine, on that joyous day when Christ claims His Bride.

Shakespeare said that the past is prologue, but that’s only the half of it. The present and the future here on earth are prologue, too. The real story, the true one, the eternal one, starts for us on the other side.

Too many of the old men and the misfits that I loved lived and died without, to my knowledge, ever hearing the gospel. If my writing here has a goal, it is to reach as many old men and misfits (others welcome too) as I can with the best of news, to point to something that will last. More coming soon. It won’t all be about poultice and oats all the time, I promise.

I am nearly always inspired to write by listening to music. This particular piece borrowed the title from a song I will not share, lol (Lana Del Rey’s “Off to the Races”)

However, I do have the perfect, classic tune to accompany my intro here: the inimitable Beetlebaum

(You may also find yourself in the mood for some reason to listen to The Kinks “Lola” or Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady”, I know I am after doing my voiceover and laughing over old times…)