The new foal

The fact is I think I have been sleeping for a long while. It happens like this, the horse has her foal and then suddenly I wake up again. It is as though for all that time I have been in a state of hibernation, but I think I would call it a state of deep anxiety. Every time my horse foals I swear that I will never put her through this again, but who is going through this anxiety ... not her.

The foal is born. This time I was there minutes after and found the foal with its amazingly worryingly uneven hooves not even bothering to get up. Her head was up, she looked around with such an intense curiosity that I was amazed that such a new being could be so interested in her surroundings.

It was raining, my mare had selected a nice muddy patch of the paddock to foal, she was not even inside the shelter with the deep pile of softness under hoof.

Later the foal attempts to get up, we stand and watch from a distance, we cheer for her when she finally makes it, then we hold our breath until she finds her mother's udder. Then we hold our breath again because we have to watch for the first pooh to fall. All of this has to be reported to the veterinarian.

It is only a day later when the veterinarian comes to give the foal her first tetanus shot. I hold the foal around her chest and the vet holds up her tail, it is amazingly easy and the foal stands still after I have learned the correct way to block her. She had bounced twice, an automatic response and then she was still, I stroked her shoulder as she stood there like a horse that had been held a thousand times before. But it is her mother who is snuffling and mumbling at her nose to nose and the foal is quiet in my arms.

"Did she suckle?" asks the vet. I pull out my notes. Everything is written down in the order it happened, time of birth, first time on four legs, first meal, first pooh. The vet stays to watch while the little foal suckles.

Now we have the problem of the name. I had first remarked about how joyful this little creature was, and so we decided to call her gioiosa, because I am living in Italy. Everyone starts to call her by this name, but they do not know me and naming. She is now called Paprika, much to the surprise of all those who are now calling her gioiosa, and this is only to content the people who are desperate for a name. I used to be like them.

I know in my heart that I will not have a good name for the foal until she herself  'tells' me. She grows up, I watch her, I try different names and then one day she walks towards me when I have called the name I think she must like the best. At least this is how it was with the other foal, Nutmeg. There is of course the chance that, with all the name calling, the young animal discovers that the best way to shut me up is to walk towards me.

I watch my mare as she walks around her foal, protecting her from the leaned over tree, from the electric fencing. It is time for my mare to eat and I am bring her a bucket full of feed. I lead them both across the paddock to the large, airy open box with the manger full of hay and the feed bucket. The foal does not want to enter. She only just came out into the light and now she is to go back into the dark. She makes her high-pitched tiny whinny in protest. Mother horse goes out and brings her in circling her and huffing and snuffing at her.

As an Appaloosa the foal will need a name for her registration papers. There are six spaces, first choice and five others and then if the horse club does not like any of those names they will select one for you. I now have three of the names I need to fill the boxes, combining the name of the dam and the sire.

It may be that this foal will end up with the stable name Paprika. I chose it because of her reddish coat color, but the vet has already told me she will turn white. I also chose the name because of the wonderful two-day ride I went on with two now departed friends and their horses, one was called Paprika. It brings to mind the landscape, the rivers, the litres of coffee we drank, their sweet, amused friendship. I rode in a state of total wonder, but that is how it always is when I am in the saddle.

I will need to wait to see what color this foal decides to be. After all Nutmeg was a bay and then at three or four she decided it was time to lighten her mane and tail and put on a spattering of snowflakes over her copper colored hide.

The name I suppose will have to wait, there is still time.

Friends in passing, Tramonti di Sotto, 21 February 2014

I don’t know when it occurred to me that I might always have been moving from county-to-country, from town-to-town so that I would never get to know anyone well enough to have to go to their funeral. 

Now i live in a small town and I have already been to two funerals. One was for Nonna who was our neighbor and was 94 when she died a couple of weeks after her birthday party. Today was the funeral of a neighbor’s mother, who I had never met.

I realize, in the end, we go to a funeral for ourselves, for memories, for love, for friendship, and for the people who remain standing around the grave. I was reminded of my father’s funeral, the soldier playing the last post on his trumpet, the golden light. Uncle Eddie standing behind us and telling us to leave before our father’s coffin was covered. “It is too final,” he said. Then the wake at our house after the funeral when all the people came. “Come like a wedding,” said the butcher man.

They had looked all over Jamaica for a Union Jack to drape over our father’s coffin. In the end they draped a Jamaican flag. A soldier was there who told me that our father was the best commander that he had ever had. It reverberated to think that someone knew Daddy before I was born and, seeing his name in the paper, had come to pay his respects. I only wish that I had listened better when he told me his name and shook my hand.

Where I live now, there are about 420 residents. The small church is full. Maybe half of us are here. The rest still at work somewhere in the valley. A small boy looks up at me from an upside down position. He hangs by one arm from the back of a pew. Candles have been lit, I think of lighting candles for friends who have recently died in Jamaica. In the church, the pale pink and white flowers remind me of weddings and spring time. Small bunches of flowers are thrown into the grave. Again I think of weddings and spring time, not funerals and death.

The mountains surround the cemetery where we stand. I love these rugged, silent sentinels, the cloud mothers. I see their summits are blanketed. Where we stand it is sunny and warm after all the rain. I know that in the morning, when the clouds have lifted from the peaks, there will be a fresh layer of snow. 

Leaving the cemetery we pass Nonna’s tomb. The Bear touches her image briefly and crosses himself. I look at her and remember how she always invited me to come and talk to her, even without the Bear, and how I had always felt too shy to go. She spoke Friulano. The Bear says she spoke the old way, and that even he had difficulty following what she said. He would go to talk to her to learn, to practice this old language. As I look at the photo I am aware of a spark of pure joy? My spirit lifts, as though I have received a message from across time. 

“This is not the end,” I hear, “only the beginning of yet another journey.”