On Friendships and Horses - and Marianne

I had news of my old friend the other day, news that brought Marianne back to the forefront of my mind. I have not been able to shake the image of her since.

I moved to Houston when I was 13, leaving behind my first boyfriend and my first pony. It was an awkward time in my life. For health related reasons I couldn’t go to school for the entire year I should have been in 7th grade. I was already different, a Yankee from Connecticut, but to have a weird thing like that hanging over me … well, just imagine how hungry I was for friends.

The first time I saw Marianne she was riding bareback on her horse across our front lawn. Marianne kept her roan gelding at her house at the end of our road. My horse, Lori Lye, was boarded at Mr. Garrison’s stable about a mile away. I don’t remember exactly what was said that first day, but I do have a clear memory of watching her canter away, and the feeling deep in my body that something magnificent was about to happen in my life.

Almost everyday after that Marianne and I rode together. She would show up at my house shortly after school and reach her hand down to help me swing my youthful limbs up behind her on Sandy. And off we would go.

Riding with Marianne wasn’t like riding with my barn friends. We didn’t practice our perfect Western Pleasure lope for horse shows, and we didn’t time ourselves racing around barrels in the arena. We rode bareback, preferring the security of gripping our horses’ bodies with our legs, rather than being burdened by the constraints of a saddle. But what we did do, what we did learn when we rode together, was the art of friendship.

I was so in awe of her. She was spirited and generous; haunted and lovely. I followed her everywhere. We meandered down the dirt paths along the bayou near our homes, under the canopy of oak trees dripping with beards of Spanish moss, not aware of the heat and humidity that plague me now.

We were heroines. We were going to save the planet ~ or at least our tiny corner of it. When builders began the work of clearing the woods where we rode, we galloped along the dusty paths on the far side of the bayou, pulling up wooden construction markers by their brilliant orange ribbons. We truly believed we could keep the new housing development from being built; concrete, bricks and pavement that would take away our favorite riding places. Cantering along, we would reach down, trusting our horses to carry us honorably, as we grabbed the orange ribbons and tossed the stakes into the swirling waters of the bayou as we galloped away.

In the dark of night, the sound of pebbles hitting my window pane told me Marianne was waiting for me outside by the magnolia tree. I’d tip-toe past my parent’s bedroom, climb up behind her on Sandy, and together we rode across the lawns of our neighbors, guided only by the moonlight. In this way we traveled through our adolescence with the blissful ignorance of Peter Pan.

Coming from a family of six I was accustomed to older brothers who hid from me, who didn’t want me interfering with their lives and their friendships. But I learned a good lesson about the strength of family from Marianne in the way she loved her little sister.

Sister had a fat little pony named Ajax with hair as white as her own. Often Marianne and I would be trotting down the road only to hear little hooves galloping behind us, and Sister’s voice calling out, “Wait for me! Wait for me!” as she struggled to catch up. Where my own brothers would have run faster to get away, Marianne always pulled up and waited.

When Sister was with us there were places we wouldn’t go because Marianne thought it might be too dangerous for her. There was an unspoken blanket of protection around her, and I don’t know if Sister knew it, or felt it, but it was there. No one was more important to Marianne.

On weekends we rode our horses to Town and Country Shopping Center and tied them to the bushes outside the stores. We’d ride through the Jack-in-the Box to get our lunch, and once we had our picture on the front page of the Houston Chronicle. There was no where we couldn’t go, nothing we couldn’t do when we rode our horses together.

There was a point in time when Marianne and I took different paths. If I could go back and change it and tell her to follow me, things might have worked out differently. But something tormented her. To this day I don’t know what it was, except that it drove her in the wrong direction toward the wrong people who damaged her life.

By the time I buried my beloved Lori Lye I had lost track of her. The family had moved away from the neighborhood and I only heard bits and pieces of news from time to time. None of it was ever any good, and with each sad story my heart sank a little deeper for my free-spirited friend who was shackled by something intangible, something she couldn’t canter away from anymore.

But I never stopped loving her. She had accepted me, the odd new girl from Connecticut, when others stayed away. It was Marianne who gave me some sense of normalcy in the midst of my very crazy world. Her friendship offered the same approval and unconditional love that I now get from my two beautiful golden retrievers. The kind of love that is rare between humans.

Eventually it became too painful to think of her, to know of her life the way it had turned out. The Marianne I heard about was only a shadow of the girl who offered me friendship and the shotgun seat behind her on Sandy. So I stopped thinking about her. When memories would rise to the surface, I stuffed them away with the idea that I would re-examine them later, at another point in my life. Maybe later I could face the fact that I knew she had turned a corner, had chosen the wrong path, and I hadn’t reached my own hand out to save her. I had turned and walked away. It is not what she would have done for me.

I stopped thinking of her until I heard from her sister. This time, the news was good. Marianne seemed to have found solid footing. Her first boyfriend, the older one who intimidated me, had found her after 30 years and had taken her to live with him. The email from Sister said he loves and cherishes her, treats her well and is making her healthy again. But the best part of her email to me, the part that let me know Marianne really would be okay, was the last line when she wrote, “And he even bought her a horse.”

Since then I have thought of nothing but Marianne. I’ve seen photos of her grown children. I search their faces to see pieces of the girl I knew, and I am happy. I will call Marianne today, and I will ask how her horse is. Then she will know who I am.