NORMAN ROCKWELL LIVES!

6:30am Orchard Hill Equestrian Center...  All for me!

Handwalking a horse confined to stall rest can be a rewarding experience.  Your Beauty is thrilled for the attention and is immediately grateful for the release into the open world.  She nickers enthusiastically as you enter the barn and your loving pooches dance by your side.

It's 6:00 am, the air is cool and you can feel the Fall creeping in... the sun has barely risen above the hill and the dew lies thick and glistening on the ragweed flowers.  Life can not get better than this...  A cool family walk out on the cross country course of your favorite City Barn....   Ahhh.... the perfect family moment... captured completely and totally in my imagination.

My dad was an awesome guy.  If you ever asked me to summarize his persona, I would tell you he was a Yellow Lab...  Happy, exhuberant, thrilled when people came over - the more the merrier and a very hard worker.  He believed in dreams and in the ultimate perfect story.   He taught me well!

Autumn creeps in...

And one of his dreams was having the perfect, family moment - the Family Tradition.  God, how he tried to orchestrate the Norman Rockwell Christmas.  Remember that family sitting around the table, fresh faces and smiling, the turkey beautifully cooked and everyone was full of family bliss?  That was his dream...

Well, we were eight, rambunctious kids with parents who worked odd uncoordinated hours assuring that that one of them was home with us at all times.  So, shift work killed the "traditions".  For how could you wake up every Christmas to a wonderfully cooked breakfast when schedules would change and a parent went missing?  What actually became a tradition was the lack of tradition and the attempts to make magic happen

My morning's "Perfect Family Moment" was as messy as our "traditional" Christmas...  Da Boy's ran wild and Mr Floppy refused to come when called and Sugar was most ungrateful as she displayed amazing athleticism in her attempts to return to the barn.  The cover of my serenity was blown as I spoke harshly to the dancing white horse, yelled at the matching hound and expressed a bit of salty language towards the Convict thus preventing his attempt to eat a boarder's coveted treats.

My Pop

Then it occured to me... that  one of my Pop's gifts is my own search for Norman Rockwell... that perfect moment, the dream come true...  rainbows and unicorns...

The perfect moment is often unexpected but the search for that moment really does bring rainbows and unicorns...  And, this morning in all it's glorious beauty and messiness really was that perfect...  It brought the memory of my dad back to me and that is good. 

Ironically, the last Christmas we had together was the Norman Rockwell Christmas of his dreams... All of us kids and his grandchildren stopped by Christmas Eve and laughed and loved like no other orchestrated moment.   God is good...