Thank you for understanding my need to take good care of me the past couple of weeks. I had the first of two surgeries on my shoulder Tuesday. Everything went well. Now that my shoulder is not frozen, when I try and move it I can really feel how much damage was done to the muscles and interestingly can feel how big and interconnected those muscles are
Remember the bionic woman? Lol we can rebuild her! She would've felt the weirdness like me of two shoulder that are so different. One goes through the ROM ( range of motion) exercises with no sensation of the muscles at all. The other it's like trying to use rehydrated beef jerky or overdone pot roast to make my joint move. I wonder how they will compare in six more months?
It's nice to think a future exists isn't it? We all kind of live that way. So much of our day socked away for the future. It can maybe a little prevent us from being in the now. Just enough that when because of focusing on tomorrow we let now slip past and not until we realize its gone do we understand its importance when it was NOW.
The two best teachers I have had for developing my sense of Now, we're my dog ( s) and my horse. My first horse's name was Mahkahta. Which is Dakota for the middle or between space. The space between father sky and Mother Earth the Mahkahta is the place where human beings and all other Beings live dance play and work. Because the horse could run like the wind but also touch the earth and carry a rider it was seen as a spirit being the gave humans connection to earth and sky.
Mahkahta and I met on a summer day. She was about 6 or 7 years old I fell in love with her immediately. When we rode together it was like two beings who could read each others minds and hearts. We flowed like a perfect shoulder doing the backstroke.
I loved spending time with her. Riding talking brushing her. She was a jealous girl. If anyone but me touched her or came near while we were getting ready to ride she would bite the crap out of them. She liked our solitude and the only companion she tolerated on the trail was my dog Four Bears. Four Bears was a mix of four different breeds and despite the urban myth that mutts are the strongest, in my experience as a vet they can have just as many defects as any other hand made soul.
Four Bears had a heart defect. A monster murmur that made her exercise intolerant. If we went too fast, too much uphill, or too long she would turn blue and drop over. Mahkahta hated dogs. I'm telling you I think I was the only thing she cared for, well almost.
When I brought Bears out to the farm where I kept Mahkahta, I usually kept her in the truck with the windows cracked while I rode. But one day I forgot something in the truck so I took Mahkahta over and tied her opened the truck to get my water, and Bears jumped out. Her and Mahkahta exchanged greetings and settled in to a companionship that I was not invited to disrupt. It was so funny how that horse just took to that dog and watched out for her like a mamma bear.
If Bears was with us when we were riding Mahkahta would sense when she needed a break and either slow down or just stop, some folks might call it balk, unil Bears was able to o a little more. You know I could've kept Bears home more, or tried to force my horse to keep going. But it was more intriguing to me to see them love each other. Despite what people thought about Mahkahta she was full of love. She just was damn particular about who got it.
Now that I think back on it she really didn't make any bones about deciding who she thought was ok for us to be around and who best not. She actually was a great judge of character. She and I could communicate without words better than I could with anyone I knew. Come to think of it, Grandmother Margaret and I can communicate like that. With body language, twitches of facial muscles, and penetrating eyes that lock like Vulcan mind melds. We are horse people GMa Margaret says. The Arapaho are the horse Nation.
My first given native name was by Jamie Sams author of the animal medicine cards. We were acquaintances between my 28th and31st year before I lost track of her. Jamie is a really sweet woman. I enjoyed learning from her. She took me on a dreamquest one afternoon and it was sort of like talking with an oracle or having your palm read only native style. Jamie called me Medicine Horse Woman. Shunka Pejuta Win. She said I should never be without a horse
The year I decided to go to veterinary school, I had a dream about Mahkahta. Four Bears had crossed over two or three years prior, she had a short but good love filled life, her heart stopped being an asset and that was just it. Any how I had finished my prerequisites for vet school, gotten my letter of acceptance and was all set to go. Vet school with internship and residency was seven years of school. I also had to work to support myself as there definitely was no $ from home.
Out at the farm where I kept her there was a young girl who was I think 11 or12 at the time. She loved Mahkahta. And curiously enough Mahkahta tolerated that girl. She would let her lead her, get her grain or help wash her off. Her mom asked me one day if Mahkahta was for sale. She and her hubby worked as chemists for 3M and they had bucks. They also rode and even ad a nice hobby farm north of the cities. I told her no my horse was not for sale, I asked her why don't you find your own horse and she said her daughter didn't want any other horse but Mahkahta.
I would snort and say Tell your girl to get her own horse this one is mine.
After I got my letter of acceptance to veterinary school, I had a dream that Mahkahta was laying out in the pasture on her side with a big hole in her chest and her life was leaking out of her. Mahkahta was already 14 or 15 by the time I got in vet school. In nine more Years she would be almost twenty four which is pretty much getting on up there for a horse.
she would just be kept like a trinket on a shelf the second best years of her life wasted just waiting on me to do my thing. if I didn't figure out how to help her have her life while I was going to school.
I had to make a choice. Either go to school, or stay with my horse. As my dream told me, if I tried to have both this extraordinary horse's life would leak out like a broken heart while I was gone. So I bugged that little girl, I made her help me with my horse for a, almost a year, all the while telling her to find her own horse. But she didn't want any other horse. She wanted my horse or nothing.
So I called her mom at 3M one Wednesday and asked her if they found a horse yet, and she said no, the only one she wants is Mahkahta, so I asked if they had a trailer, and she said no they were waiting till they bought the horse. so I told her mom, you can't take the girl and her horse to play days or trail rides without a trailer. I told her I'll sell you my trailer for $500.00, you can leave cash with the farm owner,
I'm going to load my horse in my trailer Saturday morning at 7am, and leave it unhitched in the yard at the farm. Then I'm leaving to get coffee. If I either see you or the horse and trailer are still there when I get back at 8 am the deal is off.
So I went out on Friday and washed Mahkahta, rode her one last time, spent the whole day and evening talking to her, and then Saturday morning as the sun came up we rode just once more and I loaded her in the trailer, told her I loved her, hugged her beautiful neck one more time, closed the gate on the trailer and drove away.
At 8 am I was back and picked up the cash or the trailer and my tack and left.
A few weeks later in the dreamtime I found myself with Bears by my side standing at a rail fence watching some kids on their horses at a playday. Mahkahta and her girl were one of those pairs. Mahkahta trotted over to me, out of her body for a minute or two to give me a nicker and let me know she was happy.
This last Monday night in the dreamtime the Spirits took me to an old house/ farm I didn't recognize. No one was there and the lawn looked lush and green, but only infrequently taken care of. I walked around back, and there in the far corner was Mahkahta, she was old now. She was by her self and she still had my halter on her beautiful head, Her hair coat a bit furry for winter was soft as ever, and her head was down like she was waiting for something.
I softly went up to her, put my arm on her neck and said, hey girl, I'm here now, lets go home.
So I took her with me as the dream slipped through time and space back to my bed here at the center of the east and west gate in the house that sits over the water and stone of the blood of our ancestors I brought my Freind home.
As we crossed the barrier back to NOW, she let go of her body and as I lay here and opened my eyes in the dark the blue light of her Sincu. Her soul came into view hovered for a moment near my face then slipped into my heart.
I'm so glad she came home. That she trusted me years ago and I her. I'm so glad that she waited for me to come and get her.
Love is a funny thing. If you give it away and let go of only wanting out of it what you want. It stays with you forever while multiplying in someone else's heart. and sometimes right when you think you are all by yourself just before surgery, it comes home to you ,
I love you old horse
I love you too relatives
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