I saw that the movie Secretariat was instant at Netflix. I found a night, after the kids were in bed, to sit and watch it by myself. I grew up hearing about this legendary Thoroughbred who won the triple crown. The huge chestnut draped in roses. As I watched this movie, I felt elated and a tickle in that part of my brain that is sectioned off for memory, nostalgia, that itch of I've done those things. I know that. It seems so very long ago. Was that actually me?
For a time, and I can't tell you how many years now or exactly when, we lived on a farm that breed, raised and trained Thoroughbred horses. My father was the manager at one point or another. We moved to its orginal incarnation (white siding with green trim) called Jaybell farm, the January of my first year in second grade (yes, was held back in this school district). This farm went under and was bought up (the green siding gone red) and renamed Garrett Farm. We lived there until the summer before I started fifth grade. So, after all this figuring--about three and a half years. (I guess I could tell you after all)
In many ways, those years were idealistic. Most little girls go through a horse phase and I was no exception--only I had the horses, a pony or two of my own, and at one point or another a plethora of cats, dogs, chickens and ducks. We also had free run of all that open land. A river at the back behind our modest trailer, miles of black fences, barns upon barns, hay bales that could be piled into forts, even a real true race track with a starting gate.
While watching this movie, I remember leading my tubby, mean-tempered Shetland pony into that starting gate with my brother. It wasn't electrified, so we had to push open the doors when he was ready to race. He probably ran a few steps, at a lazy trot, before giving it up despite my commands.
Now all the farm memories, ignited by this movie, include my brother. We were often, always together. We would race our bikes in and out of the barns in time so that we never intercepted--forming big loops over and over past the stalls of the young horses being trained. We saw horses bred and born. I watched my father deliver those babies with his hands. I popped my fingers in the mouths of toothless foals and felt them suck. I heard the noise the mare makes when she first greets her baby--muzzle to muzzle, ears cocked forward. It's a sound I never heard them make again.
The smells of hay, straw and horse manure always ignite those memories in the same way the movie did. I feel a heaviness in my chest--grief, time, and rotten memories strew in with the good (like the lingering trace of a nightmare. A fearful niggling.) Those years left a stamp on me--formed a foundation for who I am.
The movie stayed with me when I went to bed. I recreated the farm in my head--the placement of each barn, the feel of the fences under my hands (they left a grey smudge of grime), the wood grains inside the barn, the iron clasps for each stall, and the horses.
The blow of their breaths from inquisitive nostrils, the soft tickle of lips on my palm, the wide, stronge cheek, the twitch of shoulder or rump to remove a fly, the lazy flick of tail.
Three and a half years--like a dream laced with nightmares. I knew.
So I opened an old trunk my father made me. Locked with a old locker room lock I shared with Christine in--middle school was it? I still knew the combination as if it was writ on my brain. (and it is, indeed)
I found my only true diary (the lock gone, the key longer gone still) from 1993. I only kept the diary up through mother's day of that year. In it my horrid spelling and horrid handwriting. And peppered throughout things like "Sometimes my Daddy gets drunk" and "My daddy said, You walked all the way here, you walk back."
Flipping through, I found a final lone entry surronded by white pages dated May 25.
I wrote,
"My brother din't whant to go to summer school so hes been crying for two hours. My dad hit him with a belt. And Bryan said I love y I hate you I with you were Dead I with I hade a good Dad. Now I'm crying. Your friend, Autumn"
When I read it out loud to Jason we were both horrified--as adults looking back. As parents. The sore spot in my chest, my middle, my brain that's recorded it all and knows it somewhere still (in all its layers and details and parts) never truly forgot. There is a reason I don't really love horses anymore when I once thought it was ripping out my heart to leave that life.
That reason is my father.
He didn't make my brother speed down the road on a frigid January morning. It wasn't his calloused hands on the wheel. It wasn't his eyes cutting through the fog.
It wasn't him that died beside the river.
(In that exact way he threatened he would so many times)
But in so many ways, my father (our father) shaped my brother with his drinking, his anger, his unreliability, his threats of suicide. In so many ways his hands molded that boy into that man. That man who thought the best way to deal with his depression was a needle.
Just another sad story of a boy who grew up to be too much like his good 'ol Dad.
