Today’s question: What is your happiest childhood memory?
I’m back to rifling through my Wordsmith Deck for topics to blog about.
(Recovering from surgery in relative isolation has caused a major disruption in my ability to accrue new blogging materials!)
My happiest childhood memories all revolve around animals. I’ve been an animal lover for as long as I can remember. In fact, most pictures of me as a kid (unless they were posed with relatives) are of me with animals…
Jessie Haire, Kris (me) and Jackie on Sugar Babe and Stormy (left to right)
Me astride Jessie’s horse Fancy wearing my baby blue cowboy outfit and boots.
(How I wish this was colorized!)
(Thanks to Jessie for the above two precious images!)
Me with one of the many cats I adored as a kid. (This was an aunt’s cat, as I recall…)
My happiest childhood memory is of the day “Santa Claus” delivered Sugar Babe and Stormy (the two horses in the first image above).
I’d been wanting horses for as long as I could remember. I had been reading about them and drawing them for what seemed like years. And I had been far from silent about wanting one, too.
But being young and impressionable (and figuring that parents never lie — oh no, never — because they impressed upon me that I should never lie or I’d be in even worse trouble for that than for whatever transgression had preceded the lie), it never occurred to me when Dad asked us kids to help him built a “calf barn” behind our Spanaway home that what he really had in mind was to buy and deliver two horses for Christmas that year.
Oh, I’m sure I probably hinted (more than broadly) that maybe someday we could get horses, too, but he seemed seriously settled on calves, and that was okay with me, too. I love all animals and any new creature floated my boat, so calves were entirely cool, too!
So, I eagerly helped him erect a “calf barn.”
And I remained clueless until the last possible moment, despite opening a treasure trove of under-the-tree Christmas gifts that included a baby blue cowboy outfit, cowboy boots, and other horsey stuff. (Cattlemen dressed like horse wranglers, too, you know!)
Finally, after the presents under the tree were opened, and we were all satisfied and happy, Dad walked to the sliding glass door (whose curtains had been closed the entire time) and opened the curtains.
And there they were. OMG!!!! Our first horses, Sugar Babe and Stormy.
I’m sure I screamed.
I know for a fact that I tried to climb onto Sugar Babe before the saddle was tightened, because mom caught that (soundlessly) on 8mm film. I just couldn’t wait for Larry Kirkwood to tighten the danged saddle. I wanted on that horse NOW! (No! SOONER than NOW!!!) I kept trying to launch myself into the saddle as he manfully tried his best to cinch the saddle tight enough so I wouldn’t pull it down Sugar Babe’s side as I ascended. (Larry didn’t know the precise moment when the curtains would be opened, so he hadn’t tightened the saddles yet, for the comfort of the horses.)
From that moment on, I rarely walked anywhere. I rode. I rode to Enchanted Island across the bridge in Spanaway Lake, I rode to Jessie’s just this side of Enchanted Island, I rode onto the military reservation, I rode wherever we were allowed to ride.
Sugar Babe was a great horse. (So was Stormy, but Sugar Babe was “mine.”) She had been a pack horse so whenever we’d travel as a family into the Olympic Mountains on horseback, Sugar Babe always carried Jackie because she (the horse) knew to watch her sides so the load she was carrying wouldn’t get caught between trees. Jackie’s knees were saved from many a scrape by Sugar Babe’s care and concern for the “pack” on her back.
By the time we were traipsing the Olympics, Dad and Mom had bought two more horses, Charlie Horse and Lady Bird , two pintos (black and white) and were riding them while we kids rode Sugar Babe and Stormy. In fact, before long we had a lot of horses on our place in Spanaway — more horses than people. And some cattle.
I was in 7th heaven.
Animals have been a part of the happiest moments for my entire life
Animals, when you treat them well, give back so much more than you ever give to them.
As an animal lover, I sought out experiences with as many of them as I could, everywhere I went…
Shirley and Laverne, my first two goats (with Jamie McNiven)
I call this one “Cat Got Your Tongue?”
with Rajah or Rahni
with Darwin (aka Doc) of Battlestar Galactica fame
with Rajah and Rahni…
with Rajah or Rahni at Wild Animal Affection Training School, Colton, CA (Ralph Helfer’s outfit)
atop Debby (who was scared spitless of chickens)!
with Major (Ralph Helfer’s lion)
with Natasha at Shambala, Tippi Hedren’s wildlife preserve in Acton, CA
I could continue with more pictures, but you get the idea…
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
―
Animals (and, of course, a heaping handful of human friends, who are “the families we choose for ourselves”) have made my life wonderful.
If you’ve gotten this far, please share your happiest childhood memory on my Facebook page where this blog post link appears!)’or by leaving me a comment here at my website. Thanks!!!
