Figure It Out

My horse's name was Ginger. She was red.
My grandfather bought her for me - probably for all of us. But he took me to see her.
I remember the day. We drove his Lincoln up the winding dirt road that lead past all the trailer homes and cabins that bordered the lake out into the shallow meadow where the turtle pond sat and up the hill to the right. At the top of the hill, the road joined the tractor road that ran east along the McLaughlin's pasture and the more formal Neguanee Lake Road that led west - out to the highway. Tall Maples had grown up along and through the barbed wire that fenced the pasture so that the south side of the washboard road was tunneled in green dusty leaves.

My horse was waiting there in the pasture right where the road turned toward the highway. There was another car there and a gentleman who probably "had a business meeting" with my grandfather. I knew better than to interrupt their conversation, but it was clear that this was my horse.
She was so tall and I was so - not. I've always been small, but at seven, I probably could have passed for five. I climbed the rusty barbed wire fence to get nearer to her - to touch her nose. Everything about her was deliberate. Her puffing breaths, her stomping hoofs, her flashing tail and her shivering skin. She was the coolest creature ever and I was going to be able to ride her someday - but I had to learn how first.

It was at this point that a pattern began in my life that I woudn't recognize until I was much older. I don't remember ever having been able to ride her. There was little talk of her after that day. I never saw her again. The next spring when I demanded answers as to where my horse was, how come I never got to see her and why it was taking so long to find time to ride her my Mother told me that she had been sold. The reason I was given was told, "You were too afraid of her."

Well, if I hadn't been, I was then. How could the absence of some beast that you only met once crush you like that? But more important, when had I said I was afraid? What had I done that my parents took her from me? They hadn't told me. I knew I was supposed to 'figure it out.' God - how I hated those words with a passion. I was seven, how sophisticated a consequence dialog could I possible attain?!

Eventually, I did figure it out - with no help from my parents. Ginger was too expensive. It wasn't that I was afraid; my parents and grandparents were afraid. They were afraid to tell me they had made a mistake.
I would have liked to have heard that just once.