stef

Stef by Sally Bryson

Twice a week I take horseback riding lessons. I pull my car up the steep driveway to the horse barn, sending a cloud of dust behind me. I am in a charged state of mind from trying to understand whatever crises the morning brought to my home. I climb up onto my horse, and suddenly I don’t understand anything at all about what I’m supposed to be doing.

Let me tell you about the horse. First, he isn’t actually my horse, I just like to pretend that he is. His name is Stefano, Stef we call him. He is reddish brown, like cherry wood. His mane is thick and black and strong. I grip that mane when I’m sliding off. He is some kind of German breed I should probably know the name of and he weighs maybe a thousand pounds.

Stef’s gaze contains patience. His gait contains dignity. His feet are huge like dinner plates and contain stability. His legs are long and knobby. They have all the power, like writing pencils. When he comes to a trot, it feels like riding in a boat that is hydroplaning out of the water. One of us in that moment is graceful and free.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a beginner. Stef knows it. No point in posturing as anything else. I’ve never been very flexible, and this sport is murder on my inner thighs. “Ten minutes a day of yoga is all you need,” the horse trainer Emma tells me. “I’m not really a yoga person,” I say, clenching my jaw. My teeth are gritted because I so want to get this right. There is so much to remember: my seat, my balance through the core, weight in the lower leg, heels down, shoulders back, hands in front, hands low, lower, reins taut… it goes on.

Photo by Julie Patton

Photo by Julie Patton

I’m concentrating. My jaw is clenched again, and Emma notices. “You’re not seeing the bigger picture,” Emma calls. She points out that I’m trying so hard to get the nuts and bolts right that I’m forgetting to sit back and yes, enjoy the ride.

Is this how I do my life? Turn every relationship into a project?

“Look around you,” Emma says. I’m ten feet off the ground. Stef is holding me up. The sky is pale blue, the late summer air, dusty. A kettle of vultures soars in slow motion in the shape of a crown that tops the morning. The horse barn sleeps lazily against a hillside that leans away from me covered in ten thousand pines huddled in green forest silence. Save for the wind. It moves against the branches whispering secrets. And I’m simply a woman on a horse.

I have taken horseback riding lessons twice before as an adult. Both times I quit. Quitting had something to do with being overwhelmed by how much there is to know. Riding seemed like a project I could never master within the allotted timeline I had unconsciously set for myself. So what was the point?

But there came a moment when I had exhausted my old commentary. I became weary of the stories I told myself. And in any case, I love being on a horse. I tried a different way.

With Stef I don’t run out and buy fancy riding breeches and boots. I don’t read ten thousand how-to books. In fact, I don’t even think much about riding between lessons. I stop pinning so much on riding, which means that when I go to see Stef, I don’t bring an agenda, I bring only myself.

I plunk down off Stef at the end of the riding lesson. My knees are wobbly as I lead him back to the pasture. Sometimes the lesson has been tough, frustrating. Stef leans forward over the fence to be stroked. I reach up to feel his neck and pet his soft nose. I stand back and look at him and think, really? I rode him? He is a giant and a mystery and I rode him? I am in awe, of him and of me.  

Sally Bryson is a freelance writer who specializes in writing short films for non-profits. She lives on Bainbridge Island, WA with her husband and two boys. Connect with Sally at 299hudson@earthlink.net


Photograph by Julie Patton. Visit her at juliepattonphotography.com and on Instagram @juliepatton

 



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cosmos in his eyes

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July 14, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor

Outside the maple leaves are rustling with the sort of lush, green, thick sound that brings to mind youth. Vibrance. Health. Abundance. It is a time of year one might be tempted to dwell in forever.

But we are mortal and so we are aging. What I really want to write is that my dad could have died over the Fourth of July. I went home that Saturday and saw the cosmos in his eyes. They were deep, dark blue, and they shone. I could not see the surface, nor the bottom. It felt as though he saw through me, too. In those moments, I felt fear and peace at once.

I am recovering, now. Quiet, in my living room. As if things could be normal ever again. He is recovering, too, as he always does. Tough, determined, stubborn and strong. Life is different now that he is on dialysis. Normal is new, new is normal.

He called me "honey" when I telephoned the other day. There was a sweetness in his voice, it sounded like gratitude. Watching the way he and my mother love and care for one another through this, my heart grows and my eyes water. I can feel the expansion in my chest, that familiar and always altogether new sensation of tight, exquisite pangs. It is as if the muscle fibers are drawing away from one another, leaving hundreds of microscopic wounds, the way we do when we grow. The tearing comes first, then we heal. Stronger.

Laying next to my boyfriend on a blanket by the lake last night, I watched the moon rise into a sky of stars. He was telling me something, so I turned my head and met his gaze. My peripheral vision noticed his masculine body silhouetted in the moonlight--youthful, healthy, vibrant--but I saw his eyes through the lens of time, as though he were already 83, like my dad. In that moment, the way I love him deepened. The way I love everything did.

I am beginning to learn how to love what is here, now, before me. It is much different than loving a potential, possible future. It is different than loving a dream. It is more tender, more vulnerable to do it this way. It is also more satisfying. It is real. Like the cosmos in his eyes.

xo
laura 

Laura Lowery is the founder, editor and publisher of Lucia. She does her best to lead a creative life. Whether triumphant or stumbling, Laura shares daily notes (that are often weekly) here on luciajournal, including stories, behind-the-scenes happenings, little doses of inspiration, and large quantities of curiosity and heart. She is pleased to meet you.

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a small tribe

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Cicely's daughter and the orange dress.

Cicely's daughter and the orange dress.

July 19, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor

“A small tribe is a meaningful treasure.”

A group of female farmers in Rwanda grew my coffee this morning. While the barista poured rich brown liquid into my charcoal gray mug, I read the Starbucks card explaining it. They are known as Hingakawa, a mantra meaning, "Let's grow coffee."

I paused to imagine them and in my mind's eye saw a small tribe of women who support one another in a myriad of ways. It involves a lot more than growing coffee, I bet.

I realized Lucia is like that, too. My weekend was woven with a glistening thread of connection. It touched nearly every woman in my tiny tribe, the muses and heroines who make up this magazine.

There was the Friday morning creative meeting at the kitchen table of our online editor, Sarah, while her daughter corralled the "fat cat" behind couch pillows, drew Olympic mountains on a sketchpad, showed me her solar system, and tapped away at her pink plastic laptop in the window.

There was the tall glass of cold cucumber water in the late afternoon at Cicely's house, one of our contributing writers. We decompressed and discussed aging parents, children, lovers and life while her daughter plucked purple lavender buds which, in contrast to her orange sunflower dress, quietly shouted July.

Saturday came with an early wake up to go walk the "Power Promenade" with Amanda, our editorial advisor. We ventured into the wilds of a hidden urban forest and then, she held the sweetest party at her studio, The Institute of Moves, Muscles and Eternal Optimism. Champagne and laughter sparkled, a story was shared, and her clients gathered to celebrate what she has created. 

Mid-day, Karly, our design advisor, called me from somewhere between Colorado and Utah just to say she is skipping Wyoming in favor of returning home early. We spent ten minutes catching up on each other's emotional status before the signal dropped. We promised each other we would schedule a real call, soon. 

Then I hopped the busy afternoon ferry to Southworth to spend the night and celebrate my mother's birthday on Sunday with waffles for breakfast. We walked the woods with my sisters and niece. I helped care for my Dad as he continues the slow and steady crawl toward recovery.

If I am to share the truth about the creative process that underlies Lucia, it must be said that it has everything to do with a small tribe of women and weekends like this. We did not all sit down together around a conference table. We did not wear hipster hats. We did not shout out ideas in great gusts of inspired enthusiasm. We did not force ourselves onto social media just to have something to post today.

We held each other. We shared found things. There was reverence, awe, laughter, play. We scribbled in coloring books with the children. We moved and walked together. We celebrated one another's accomplishments. We helped. We called just to say, "I'm heading home." We grew the proverbial coffee. We loved, we created, we lived.

Hingakawa. A small tribe is a meaningful treasure.

xo
laura

Laura Lowery is the founder, editor and publisher of Lucia. She does her best to lead a creative life. Whether triumphant or stumbling, Laura shares daily notes (that are often weekly) here on luciajournal, including stories, behind-the-scenes happenings, little doses of inspiration, and large quantities of curiosity and heart. She is pleased to meet you.