I was born in the Year of the Horse. A little wild. Tameable only by a tough, experienced cowboy. Curious, roaming. I like the wind in my hair. Horses are dumb, and I won’t claim that, but I’ll claim all the rest. I’m a horse with a human brain.
When I started dating again, I knew it would be painful. I was starting, after two divorces, at square one. It was painful — the emotional equivalent of physical rehabilitation. I told myself what I had always told my kids, when they refused the medicine, “It hurts to get well.”
The deeper I went, the more painful it got. An M.I.T. scientist who had been married 60 years said in a tv interview that his secret was that every day he thought about what would make his wife happy that day. Not flowers. Not a walk on the beach. Maybe a phone call, a Big Mac, a fire in the fireplace, a chat. He has remained mutating, sensitive to her. That sounded like heaven, and I dreamt of finding such a man.
Such a man has come into my life, and still I yearn for the open plains. I cannot shake my desire to snort and paw, to run with the pack, to turn my head on a winter’s day and size up the stallions roaming the edges of my territory.
Am I self-destructive, self-defeating, deluded, insane, or am I a true mustang?
Horses, too, can have patience. The answer will come.