"People are always telling you that change is a good thing. But all they're really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all... has happened. My store is closing this week. I own a store, did I ever tell you that? It's a lovely store, and in a week it will be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap. Soon, it'll just be a memory. In fact, someone, some foolish person, will probably think it's a tribute to this city, the way it keeps changing on you, the way you can never count on it, or something. I know because that's the sort of thing I'm always saying. But the truth is... I'm heartbroken. I feel as if a part of me has died, and my mother has died all over again, and no one can ever make it right." ~ You've Got Mail
Leave it to
You've Got Mail to give me the words I need at the moment when I most need them. It's not the
first time this has happened.
The place where I found a second home, a second family, and learned
that Jesus was enough is about to change hands. Wheeler Stables, the place where I cleaned out more stalls than I care to count and took a few tumbles off the backs of a few lesson horses. The place where I gathered a few dreams and watched a few fall apart. The place where I fought a few fears and maybe finally found some comfort in my own skin. The place where I met people who understood my obsession with horses and did weird things like feed their horses mints and scratch their tongues. The place where I learned what it looked like to bust my tail to accomplish something, to work hard for what I wanted. The place where I cried a few tears in frustration, but felt the satisfaction and sweetness of having a twelve hundred pound beast respond just the way I wanted them to.
It will all soon belong to someone else.
I feel a lot like Kathleen Kelly in
You've Got Mail. The stables is in the process of being sold and in a short time it's going to be something really depressing like a Quarter Horse farm. (My apologies to any QH lovers reading this. I'm sure they are lovely creatures, but I will forever be partial to the American Saddlebred and that's all I'll be able to picture in the stalls of this barn.) People say change is a good thing, but what they are really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all...has happened. And soon this farm will be just a memory. And maybe I am a bit heartbroken.
I know, it's just a building. A place built by human hands. Wood, brick, aluminum. Hay, dirt, sawdust. Cobwebs, horseflies, and maybe one too many gnats.
But this is where so much of my
life happened.
And I'm sad. I'm sad to see it soon belong to someone else, to not be able to pull in its driveway whenever I want. The farm was actually officially put on the market over a decade ago. It rocked my world even then to find out my trainers were selling, it just seemed deeply personal, like I was about to lose a part of my very own identity. But years passed and no one came along to buy it. It was just one of those things that I subconsciously thought would always be there, just as I always remembered it, always belonging to Wheelers.
While a small part of me grieves, I will forever be grateful for that little corner of the world, those 84 acres where I learned what it finally meant to like who I was. It was in your aisleways and stalls that I felt at home, at ease. It was on your board fences that I figured out what it looked like to let go of some dreams, and come up wanting better dreams, different dreams. It was on your grassy fields that I learned to hang on for dear life, literally and figuratively. It was in your tack room that I came to love the smell of leather and Murphy's Oil. It was in your arena that I learned to dust myself off and get back on again. And it was through two people, Dave and Eileen Wheeler, that I was forever changed. Apart from my own family, no two other people have had the greatest impact on those years of my life like you two did. You encouraged me, spoiled me, taught me, and loved me like no one else did at that time. Your farm was my outlet and my safe haven from the chaos of my life. You were my retreat when I was so desperate to hide away.
My story, my past doesn't make sense without this place. It's incomplete. Someone once said, "
All the art of living is a fine mingling of letting go and holding on." This is the fine mingling of letting go of a physical place. And holding onto a thousand memories of a place I will forever love.
