Saturday, March 13, 2010

A Day with Bruzer

Welcome early Spring! I have returned for the fourth time to Sierra Rose Farms (http://srfhealingheartswithhorses.org/) where it is, in a word, MUDDY. The miniature horses are practically up to their knees in mud.


I had a task this week that at first seemed childish. But as I have thought more about it the last several days, I discovered sometimes the things we learned as children are the very things we need as adults. Little fairy tales you haven't thought about for years come back to life to show you old lessons, learned for new times.

My teacher, LeeAnn, handed me a pile of wood sticks and a marker, and asked me to write a word on each -- something that is important in my life. While I wrote things like "joy" and "warmth" and "laughter," Bruzer the horse was brought into the barn. That's his picture -- all 141 pounds of him! I'm the one with pants.

LeeAnn took my sticks along with a pile of other sticks-with-words and she dropped them around the barn in various spots. She presented me with a broom handle and looped a flimsy plastic bucket on each end. "This is your life." Well, okay..... and then she placed Bruzer's lead in my other hand. "Your task is to pick up all the sticks, put them in the buckets and keep your life in balance!" said LeeAnn. This twinkly-eyed redhead is a reincarnated leprechaun, I swear.

So I'm trying to balance my "life" in my left hand with these teetering, toppling, lightweight plastic sand pails on either end, and I've got a horse in my right hand. I cleverly remembered from last time that I need to show the horse I'M in charge, so I made that clear to Bruzer by holding him close on the lead. We walked to the first pile of sticks and I was challenged, to say the least. I squatted down, lowered my "life stick," and the buckets toppled immediately on contact with the sandy floor. I righted the buckets, grabbed sticks from the pile, tried to place them in buckets AND hold on to Bruzer, who sensed SOMEHOW he was losing my total and complete attention and decided to take off in another direction. At this point I feel like I'm on some sort of "Survivor - Comedy Edition" as I am trying to get Bruzer back, get a hold of my life, get the sticks in the buckets and get the buckets on the stick. (At this point in the writing the author is certain a video would surely be more a more effective tool but the reader's imagination will suffice.) I still only have two hands! Feeling that LeeAnn and Christine are having much more fun watching me than I am having trying to accomplish this task, it doesn't take too many tries before I say, I have to let go of this horse. I like Bruzer a lot, he is a do-gooder in the EAL world and a sweetheart to boot, but he's impeding my progress.

Once I let go of the horse, the task becomes much easier (AHA! moment) -- I pick up the sticks from the various spots in the barn, place them evenly in the buckets and voila! Balance! LeeAnn gathers a pile of sticks I had overlooked from a far corner of the building, and brings them to me. "Which of these do you want to keep? And which to throw away?" Many of the sticks had words describing feelings on them: Hope. Acceptance. Anger. Approval. I chose the sticks I wanted and then my task was to walk with my buckets balanced on my life stick around four beach balls placed in various locations in the barn. I walked to the first ball and completely circled it, like a planet in orbit, with Bruzer following me voluntarily. (Darn that horse? Who is in control here??)We repeated this three times, Bruzer following all the way. As you can see, I literally interpreted "around" -- for LeeAnn commented that I had ellipsed each ball instead of making a huge circle that would include all four balls. No, I don't know what it means except for my usual rule-following pattern (or being in orbit), but the way I understand it is that I need to learn to think outside the balls...er, the box. I need to open my mind to a wider view... a panorama instead of merely a picture window?


As the days followed, I spent a lot of time thinking about the balance in my new life following the transplant. For in many ways, it is a new life, especially if I use this opportunity to make it a new life -- and why not? There was a lot of imbalance in my pre-transplant life. I had a long break from the routine I had created... why not rebuild using ONLY the materials I need to keep me strong and healthy, and let go of any unneccessary or damaged pieces?

And do you need a transplant or another life-altering experience to choose to rebuild/rebalance/remodel your life? I think not -- just makes it more obvious. The panoramic view!

So let's go back to those childhood tales I mentioned early on. Remember those Three Little Pigs? They each had various building materials for their homes but they all had the same Big Bad Wolf who could huff and puff... and, well, you know. The pig with the bricks won the building competition and went on to become a sought-after construction engineer, taught his two brothers WHILE saving their little hams from the BBW AND charged them rent. I think that's how it went, anyway. Maybe he wasn't such an opportunist but there's many years between me and the last telling of such a story. Pearls were thrown. Ears were turned into fine Coach accessories.

And new lives, like the new bird's nests for spring, popped up everywhere!