When I was 5 or 6 I had this Shetland-Pony-From-Hell (are there any other types?) named Tango. He was stubborn and ornery, and didn’t like anyone or anything except green grass. Sadly for him he was of the short roly-poly sort and his grass consumption was kept to a bare minimum – making him even more cranky and ornery and unpleasant. I didn’t know any better. I loved him. Had he not been starving to death he may have even loved me a little bit. If he did, he hid it well.
Pony Club was held at my uncle and aunt’s place and they had the best D-Rally and the best Cross Country course around (in our minds anyway). They were out in the middle of the Foothills with a wonderful rolling view of pasture land towards the Rocky Mountains. At age 5 or 6 I competed in my first D-Rally with my little treasure of a pony Tango. I don’t remember anything about the day except the Cross Country course. All of the little kids went at the beginning, so when it was our turn Tango and I shot out of the gate at a pace that would have given a snail whiplash. I was focused on the jumps and where we were going. Tango was entranced by the miles and miles of grass, grass that went up past his withers – and aware that the only thing that was stopping him from the gorge of a lifetime was this little peanut on his back and some flimsy grass reins made of binder twine (binder twine is like duct tape – it fixes everything).
Going up to the first jump I had lots of ambition and lots of energy. I kicked and yelled and willed him over that jump. We landed, he walked a couple of steps and then he just stood there blissfuly eating grass. I kicked, I yelled, I did everything I could think of. Nothing. Finally I got off and yanked-led him to the next jump. I walked him up to it, climbed on and kicked him over it. Naturally the same thing happened on the other side. Little bugger stood there in grass heaven while I kicked, yelled, and eventually got off and led him to the next jump.
This went on and on. I walked that damn pony all around the course. I don’t know how long it took me – but I was an E and the D1’s, the D2’s and the D3’s all went while I walked that course. This was way before cell phones, no one was tracking me although the judges at the jumps cheered me on and knew I was alive – there was no contact back to the main event. No one came out looking for me to make sure I was ok, although I did hear that my uncle would ask kids to see if they noticed me out there when he gave them their countdown to go.
It wasn’t until I was an adult and retelling the story that for the first time I thought “I wonder why I didn’t just turn around and go back. I knew I was getting eliminated. I knew I wasn’t going to place – what made me keep going?”
Well, that day was almost 40 years ago (gasp), and I can still remember the feeling I had out there on that course. I can tell you exactly why I didn’t turn around and quit. I was so mad at that freaking pony. There was no way he was going to win. It was a battle of wills and I was going to win it no matter what the cost.
I made it all the way around that course and I was happy. He ate his heart out for a few hours whilst having the inconvenience of having a little peanut on his back whacking away at him – I’m sure he was happy too.
What is the point of this?
My bedtime read these days is a book called 4 Acts of Personal Power. It was given to me by a friend in Quebec years ago and lately it’s been calling me to read it. The first act is knowing your family roots. Knowing that you are a part of a group, a chain, a process – not thinking and feeling like you’re floating alone in the world. We all come from somewhere, we all have roots of some type.
Every family has it’s own traits, characteristics, values. Some of them are good, positive ones that help the group and the individual. Some of them are either negative ones that cause harm, or outdated ones that no longer hold the virtue they once did. It’s about tracing back through your family and seeing what sorts of traits you want to pass on to future generations and which ones you want to halt in their tracks at your generation.
For me, this is a good one to be working on because I’m really feeling the ungroundedness of having spent too much time away from my clan. We have been floating about, a little isolated unit, for 10 years now and it has taken a huge toll on us. It is sometimes easy to forget that we are part of a whole, part of a larger unit, part of a group where we belong.
And much as I love my family, and am so thankful for the large unit of love and support I have, as with any family, there are traits I want to pass on and ones I want to halt in my generation.
My story about Tango showcases many of those traits:
Stubbornness can be a good thing. It made me dig in and keep going even though odds weren’t in my favour. It was something I wanted to do so I just did it. My ancestors had to be stubborn in order to ensure survival. They had to get up every day and feed cows whether it was nice out or not (and not happens a lot in Alberta). They had to keep working until the work was done so that they could eat, have a roof over their heads, provide for their family. It can be a bad thing as well. Refusing to see things from other people’s perspectives, not caring about other’s opinions, refusing to admit when you are wrong.
Courage I had to summon all my courage as a little thing out there, going through huge fields by myself. I had set my intention on something I wanted done and I did it. My great grandfather came to Canada from Ireland in the 1880s. He eventually started ranching in the Calgary area with his two brothers. But they left behind their home, the rest of their family and their friends to start a new life in an unknown wild land. That took an insane amount of courage that has benefited our family for generations to come. On the downside, sometimes you can be brave in situations that it’s not necessary for you to participate in, or challenge yourself in ways that aren’t safe or smart – just to prove that you can.
Manipulation – not sure there’s an upside to this one. It’s just something I’d like to bury in my generation and not pass on.
Strength – It took a lot of both physical and mental strength for me to fight that pony around the course. Physical and mental strength has served my family well over the years. It took strength to build a house, barn, ranch in an unknown land. Strength to raise a family in a new place. Ive drawn on this one a lot in the years that we’ve been gone. I think of my great-grandmother and my grandmother raising kids out in the country without neighbours close by, without phones, without running water. The strength it took my mom to carry and deliver us even though with her polio issues they weren’t sure how that was going to go. The strength it took her (physical and mental) to take my sister and I all over the place to all our activities. It helps give me strength to start over and over again in the moves we’ve done. Making sure the strength does not turn into bullying is something for me to be mindful of.
Competitiveness – I was in a competition and damn-it I was going to finish. Quitters never win. The good thing is, if you win something in my family you know you’ve won because you were the absolute best (one of the highlights of my riding career came at a family reunion when I beat out my uncles at a steak race on my little English pony – not Tango – in my little English saddle). The downside is that family game night can be a little challenging to say the least.
These are all traits I see in myself. My challenge now is to focus on the positive aspects of all of them and make sure those are the ones that I pass down to my children. I mean, I know the kids will still get together in years to come and say “omg, mom’s coming over I hope she doesn’t do __________, when she ________ it drives me insane.”I hope to soon find out what _______ is that drives them insane so I can fine-tune it to pull out when needed hehe.
But seriously, I hope that we can keep passing down the best parts of ourselves to the next generation. I hope that we can continue to look back at past generations and learn from them. They contain a lot of wisdom that I feel we discount in our society. This is why I’m such a firm believer in the fact that kids need to have a strong relationship with grandparents. Kids will listen to the wisdom from their grandparents. They don’t want to hear it from parents, and those parents in turn don’t want to hear it from their parents (the kids’ grandparents). But with the generations mixing at least there’s more stories, more values, more love being shared up and down the line.
Jenna brought home an assignment from school where they had to trace back their family’s roots in this area. They were supposed to count back how many generations of their family have lived here and find out what it was like when they first moved here. As you can tell, this is not a very transient town. Jenna was like ‘what do I do with this?’ I told her that since we were just rolling through she wouldn’t have the answers to a lot of the questions for this place specifically. But, I sure want to make sure that she knows where she comes from, knows where her roots are, knows that she’s part of a larger whole.
My happiness moment came unexpectedly today. I thought it was just going to be about enjoying a quiet walk in the rain with the dog this morning, and how I was surprised at how many of the regular walkers were out and how happy they all were. But, then I read this article (warning: he drops the F*bomb a lot) and it has become my new favourite thing about the day. Aside from the fact that I really needed to read this because I do give a F about too many things, I found it hilarious. I laughed and laughed and it was exactly what I needed. I’ve printed it off and I’ll have to read it a few more times. But it was exactly what I needed to hear. I get too wound up giving F’s where they aren’t needed.
Angry Ella face waiting for supper
