The Top Ten . . . 

Winter Memories

Diane Sismour

10. Childhood snowball fights— In the late 1960’s, our family farm set between two neighborhoods in Somerville, New Jersey, which made snowball fights a real battle. Each side would build a barricade to escape the onslaught of snowballs. If you were hit, you were out, and the snowballs wouldn’t stop until there was a last kid standing.

9. A romantic horse drawn carriage ride with the Hubby in Montreal—We sat beneath a heavy quilt as the snow fell in large flakes and the horse clip-clopped along the cobblestone road in the historic district.

8. Snowmobiling after a blizzard— One storm in the 1970’s, Mother Nature dumped several feet of snow on Eastern Pennsylvania. My Dad and I snowmobiled for miles in Kempton. The deep drifts popped us up like surfboards in waves on an ocean. One time the sled catapulted me through the air headfirst into a deep drift.

7. Selecting a Christmas tree—Each year we would ride into the woods on our farm, fell a pine tree, and pull it home on horseback. By the time we bounced the tree over fifty-two acres, most of the critters were knocked off along with half the needles.

6. Drinking mulled wine and sitting near a fireplace after skiing—Hawn Mountain ski area didn’t have the longest ski trails in the area, but that’s where all my friends went for good slopes and fun.

5. Building snowmen with the kiddos was a must with every worthy snowfall. —We dressed them in hats, scarves and gloves, then went inside for mugs of hot chocolate.

4. Watching a winter sunrise.—I’m not a morning person by any means, and I’m more apt to watch the sunrise from staying awake all night. However, I’m always looking for the silver lining, and watching the sun glisten on ice-covered trees at sunrise when driving school bus routes was worth waking early for.

3. Making snow angel . . . naked!—Living in the country offers lots of privacy. During a fresh snow we would make naked snow angels in fresh powder and jump back in the Jacuzzi.

2. Christmas store windows in New York City.—We went to New York City for my Dad’s 80th birthday to see A Bronx Tale. Snow fell while viewing the window displays—a surreal snow globe experience that made me feel giddy like a child before Christmas Day.

1. Dog sledding along the base of Monarch Mountain—My favorite winter memory is dog sledding with the towering peaks on the horizon. An exhilarating experience tucked into a sled with skinned-hides covering us, and feeling the dogs’ strength pull the harnesses along wooded trails.

key to the universe  by diane sismour

Summer, 2018

lives crisscross through a 

template, persevering to reconnect. 

for what key must we hold to find each other, by

living rites of passage, frights, ends, breached beginnings?

following ourselves through eras, escaping each in a breath. we

trust a moment before the final pause, instincts to veer or duck, ever

splintering in time. lifting forward, tracing back, playing one into another,

wondering what we know is true,                 and fearful there is more to learn.

I hear your heart, for mine is the                       same. remembered snippets and

glimpses, parts of us together in long                  ago lives, fragments we envision in

dreams. hearts trill to sing, drowned in sorrow, fueling us through every cycle. a turn

in events, for better or worse, trite retrospect, changing who we are to alter the next

realm, when we fear the outcome, worry what is next, and retreat or lose our way.

until a spark renews our quest, focusing our vision, understanding nothing,

searching to uncover the path. how can we find the one through eras,

wading into every age to intersect? reunions of the

soul, passing crossroads, placed by

coincidence, by serendipity

or more, to reinstate

 familiars, eternal

 lovers seeking the

 other, jolted into

present. to see

you smile, our

eyes don’t lie

or hide from who we are, sought

through dreams, to listen to your

 heart beat with mine, in this here

and now. our souls content, if

only for a moment,

we found the key

to forever again.

Still Waving 

Diane Sismour 

(Featured Poem, Summer, 2017)

A festive energy trills

celebrating war re-enacted.

Remembering not the men fallen

Or the families lost.

Not the lands stolen,

Or the black man’s cost,

But bombs bursting in air

The flag stands, still waving.

Flares signal a hush

To the wick igniting.

A fizzle, pop, a crackle,

As rockets launch

Bursting skyward in colors.

Red, white, and blue

Initiating cries,

In splendor and wonder.

Hats gripped in fists

The anthem echoes.

Gunpowder rains,

Veterans weigh

To times unspoken.

Fighting nightmares

Battered and broken

Sacrificed for freedoms forgotten.

The final onslaught

Carnage unwanted.

Returned to homes

Long changed, lives levied.

But the crowd cheers

The red, white, and blue.

Rockets roar, the smoke settles,

The flag stands, still waving.

Living in Colors

Diane Sismour

Featured author, Mar/Apr 2016

The last person leaves the gallery carrying an unframed painting wrapped in an oilskin sheath. The sole purchase of the evening, a painting of Mount Rainier at Sunset. Of the larger artwork hanging, only one holds a sold sign. A canvas I’ll never sell.

Tonight’s sales present a bleak outlook for my career. The prospect of continuing to paint, to doing something that brought such pleasure through my life is fading—fast. I throw the latch to secure the entrance door and draw the thick velvet drape closed across the storefront window before walking to the center of the room. From this vantage, each piece should give some glimpse into the emotion experienced when my brush stroked the canvas.

I feel nothing when looking at them now. I’m not surprised they didn’t sell. They’re colorless. The past year held no joy for me and my art reflects the void. What was I thinking, exhibiting this trash? The piece that did sell hardly provided enough revenue for the booze everyone swilled.

Gathering the opened champagne bottles, I manage one glass more-empty-than-full from the dregs left by the customers. The smell of wine aerated too long and crab at the marginal time still allowed for consumption almost turns me away.

Who am I kidding? My morning toast and coffee burned off hours ago. I’m starving. In one swig, I down the flat vintage, and shovel the few remaining crab Rangoon through the Thai chili dip and into my mouth. The cleanup can wait until tomorrow.

The ever-present anxiety of whether to paint until morning or to spend time talking with Jeromy ultimately weaves an invisible door that closes me off from the studio upstairs. My friends’ condoling voices barrage my thoughts: “Julie, you’ll feel better in time.” He died over a year ago. The pain is still as deep today as then. “He’ll always be in your heart.” Yes, he will. “You’re young. Before long, you’ll find someone new.” I don’t want someone new.

Painting can wait until tomorrow, again.

Carefully, I remove the wire off the hook to carry him downstairs to the basement apartment. My sleeve catches the sold sign and rips the paper off the heavy frame. The tag flutters like a kite lost on the wind to the ground beneath the life-sized portrait.

The face I memorized is inches from mine. I can almost smell his scent of fresh air and salty sea above the oil paints. His mouth, a slant of the lips he greeted me with every morning. His skin tone, a perfect fleshy tan with sun-reddened cheeks from working the docks compared to the last time I saw him prone in the hospital bed.

The day he died held bittersweet memories forever etched in my mind. Often times I painted through the night, my muse freed from the everyday annoyances of running a gallery. That morning, I had just finished the last strokes on the canvas, the wisps of sun-bleached hair highlighted in Jeromy’s portrait.

He brought coffee up to the studio as sunlight drenched Mount Rainier at daybreak. The mountain effectively framed by the large bay window. The snowcaps glistened.

“A good looking guy. Anyone I know?” he teased.

“Just someone I found roaming the pier. Why don’t you pick a frame while I clean the brushes?” Turpentine fumes wafted in the small room overtaking the rich coffee aroma from the cup he had set beside me.

He placed several moldings alongside the canvas. “How about this one?”

The six-inch wide thick-ridged border didn’t overpower the image. “We’re going to need a forklift to help hang that thing,” I teased, and removed my smock.

Pulling me into his arms, he said, “I’ll carry the frame wherever you want.”

Hip to hip, our noses almost touched. We stared into each other’s gaze. Flecks of gold sparkled when he smiled. They sparked then. He smoothed a stray curly lock back behind my ear, and kissed me softly, tenderly, the black coffee flavor blended with his sweetness.

He bent on one knee, and removed a small velvet jewelry box from his jacket pocket. Inside held a marquise cut diamond. The engagement ring refracted the sunlight forming prisms of light around the room creating a surreal and magical moment.

“Julie, do you remember when you were little, and how you wouldn’t go to sleep because you were afraid of missing something? I don’t want to close my eyes and miss spending a minute without you. Will you marry me?”

Why did I tease him by saying, “Let me think about it?”

Hours later, a fishing boat pinned his body against a piling and crushed him below the waist. If I had said yes and Jeromy stayed with me ten minutes longer, the dock handler’s rotation might have changed, and someone else’s husband-or-fiancé-or-brother would be dead instead of him.

When the dock chief called to break the news about the accident, he gave me hope, reminding me how strong Jeromy could be. The moment the nurse walked me into the room, his injuries appeared much worse than described...

Heavy dried blood splatter covered his face and arms. Antiseptic pierced the air. Multiple monitors cast a blue hue to his face and the pale yellow walls glowed a sickening putrid color. His broken body lay strapped to a gurney twisted in directions not humanly possible. My heart broke knowing he wouldn’t survive.

I intertwined our fingers. My thoughts reeled. How happy we were together. His proposal uttered only hours ago. He never heard me say, yes.

A doctor droned on in the background about the multitude of injuries Jeromy sustained. All I heard—he possessed an organ donor card and he didn’t have much time. Surgeons hovering outside the surgical room peered in at us from above through a wide observation window, waiting. They gleaned for each vital organ still functioning.

My soul fractured, as crushed as his body. Tears fell onto his cheek off mine.

“I’m here, Jeromy. I love you.”

I rocked in distress and stared at the finest in modern medicine from the person who needed them the most. None of them made eye contact with me.

“Can’t you help him?” I screamed. “You’re just letting him die?” His mangled body looked so...broken. “Please, somebody,” I begged, sobbing. “Fix him. Please, fix him,” I pleaded, my appeal ended in a whisper.

His lips became paler with each passing minute. I kissed him, his mouth unmoving and cold. The coppery taste of blood mingled with the taste of him. The man I’d always love.

The numbers and chart lines fluctuated erratically on the monitors. Buzzers and alarms sounded. More nurses and technicians rushed into the room and they shouted orders to one another above the din.

“No,” I wailed. “Jeromy, don’t leave me.”

A nurse pulled me away from him. The moment I stepped back from the bedside, someone else pushed me from the room, into a hallway, and onto a bench opposite the doorway. A door blocked the view, but I knew the surgeons leeched to him and kept him comatose only long enough to retrieve whatever organs they could harvest.

They were vultures, the lot of them.

I waited, and prayed to the gods for mercy, refusing to acknowledge the brush of Jeromy’s soul against mine until his presence shifted. Air filled my lungs in a whoosh. With my next breath, I knew he was gone.

Through hiccupping sobs I whispered, “Look for me through the next door.”

An attendant brought two plastic hospital bags to me when they finished. One with Jeromy’s personal effects, and the other with the clothes they cut off him.

The trauma caused my hands to tremble when I returned the sack with bloodstained garments to him. “I can’t.”

Without a word, he carried away the carnage.

The remaining bag held a wallet, a watch, and a small jewelry box. How could I accept a gift so symbolic when he never heard me say yes?

I never looked at the ring again. The box sets beside Jeromy’s urn on the highest shelf in the closet.

I push the memories from the present and carry the painting to the rear of the gallery. The lack of sales has me irritable. The heavy clicks from my heeled boots on the polished concrete floor echo my mood in the large bare room. The champagne on my empty stomach takes effect, and the effort to move him this short distance exhausts me. I should remove the boots before managing the stairs, but carrying both Jeromy and the shoes down to the apartment seems an impossible task.

In order to open the door to the basement apartment, I place Jeromy on the floor and lean him against the wall. The stairwell’s motion light flickers on. Stale air envelopes us as we descend the first few steps into the windowless basement.

After we’re both through the doorway, I stop and balance him on my instep before pulling the door closed behind us. I maneuver him in front of me and manage to descend two more before having to rest the forty-plus pound replica on my foot again.

“You need to go on a diet.” I struggle to regain enough arm strength to complete carrying him the remaining steps to the apartment. Transporting him back and forth from the basement to the gallery, from the gallery to the studio, or from the studio to the apartment is the only exercise I’ve managed since he left that morning.

Such a different lifestyle from the long walks we took through Seattle to listen to bands playing around the square, or the strolls through the marketplace—the fish flying between sure-handed clerks at the wharf market, bountiful flowers piled into baskets, and crafts made by the Indian tribe from across the Sound.

“Maybe I should get out more.”

No, I would do anything to avoid seeing those knowing looks. What I can’t buy online, the corner grocer delivers with everything paid by credit card. People expect quirky from artist. Becoming a recluse didn’t take long.

“We didn’t do too well tonight, Jeromy,” I say. “Only one small piece sold. There’s only enough money for another year of mortgage payments. Should we sell and find another place? We could rent out the art studio,” I suggest.

The words barely leave my mouth before I’m regretting them. I can hear him. “You’re so talented. I can’t even draw a circle and you create art.”

How can I just give up so easily?

Exhaustion from masking my feeling for the public all evening wavers my resolve to stay strong. Tears well and I struggle to find the next stair tread through the emotional haze. Blindly reaching with my foot, I get down another step before stopping again.

“Tomorrow I’m building you a different frame out of balsa wood. Eight more steps—we can do this.”

I lift him higher. My arms are shaking under the strain. “One step, two steps, three…” The painting tips forward pulling me, and gravity does the rest. We tumble, cartwheeling down the stairway and crash into the apartment.

Thankfully, Jeromy breaks my fall.

In a panic, I realize the absurdity of this thought and hurry to remove my leg from the painting. At the same time, I’m trying to twist the wood into some semblance of a rectangle. He appears as contorted now as the day he laid bloody and mangled.

I run my hands over his limbs and smooth the wrinkled canvas. He lay on the floor with rips shred up his neck and across his face. The hole punched through his body appears irreparable. A hollowness seizes my heart. Keening shrieks and crying fills the room for a long time before I realize the mantra of “I killed you” is coming from me.

Pain radiates up my leg. My ankle won’t support me to stand. On the floor beside him, sobs choke me. I trace his face, his lips, and rest my hand on his unbeating heart.

I wake on the concrete floor, stiff, sore, and cold, with the torn canvas clutched in my grasp. The painting lies in ruins beyond repair. “You will live again, my love.”

My ankle throbs in pain, but my toes wiggle on command supporting the theory that the injury is a sprain rather than a break. Nothing a good night’s sleep and some ice won’t fix.

Sorry, Jeromy. Wincing, I pull the broken wood off the canvas, and feel the last connection to Jeromy slip away. The emptiness more painful than any injury sustained tonight.

Tears fall unchecked as I push myself off the floor using the support as a crutch for balance, and hobble to the small kitchen nook to assess my wounds and gather all the supplies needed. No cuts, just some scrapes. I grab three Ibuprofen for pain, use scissors to remove my leather boot, fill a plastic bag with ice, and hold the pack onto the ankle with painter’s tape.

The bed beckons only a few feet away. Jeromy’s broken body left just beyond. I shuffle and hobble my way to the rumpled sheets.

Three days later, the ankle is purple and black, but supports my weight without the makeshift crutch. I don’t want to chance destroying Jeromy any further by moving him up two flights to the studio. After several trips, I manage to carry enough art supplies from the studio to the basement to repaint Jeromy.

Every artist paints differently. My preference is to apply oils from top to bottom by overlapping my wrists to stabilize the brush hand. The focal point grows in small, finite strokes. The final details touched into place at the end.

The ultimate luxury of a windowless apartment, time becomes irrelevant. Unless I watch the clock, days can speed passed. I eat when hungry, and sleep when exhausted, my muse controlling my focus. At one point, I shattered the bathroom mirror to avoid seeing the haggard, half-starved woman reflected.

In tiny caresses, his proportions emerge onto the canvas. The pigments color a burst of brightness against the stark white. Days turn to weeks and weeks to months. The image before me expands to full height, the background, a hazed ocean scape. Finally, I step away. Before me stands a perfect portrait of Jeromy’s doppelganger, but not one of him.

What’s missing? I study the first portrait—his eyes, his mouth, the jut of his jaw. The painting, even fragmented, exudes his personality. He’s alive.

His twin doesn’t compare.

“I failed you. I can’t bring you back to me.” The croaking in my unused voice sounds foreign.

Tears don’t fall. A calm replaces the ache, cloaking my soul from the pain endured for too long. For the first time in months, I notice the piles of takeout boxes, and laundry heaps on the floor. A stench equally bad emits from me.

After a massive housecleaning and a long necessary shower, I climb the stepladder to remove the velvet jewelry box. The container shakes in my hands as I open the lid. The diamond band slides onto my right hand ring finger, very loose after my depression and weight loss, but still shimmering.

“Let’s put you on a chain, just in case.”

When the paint dried the next morning, I fit a thin frame and string a wire to the canvas to hang the portrait in the highlighted area centered in the storefront window. The idea of having people gawking at him as the surgeons had, almost forces me to return to the basement. Instead, I affix the for sale sign on the upper corner and open the heavy velvet drapes.

Sunlight spills into the room. The diamond refracts prisms over me. The color sweeps across all the canvases, brightening each piece, bringing them to life. I unlatch the lock and flip the sign to open, ready to resume living.

Favorite Things in Nature

1. The water sparkling with the first glints of light at sunrise

2. The blue on a cloudless day

3. Water lapping against the beach at night

4. New blooms in spring

5. The different greens patchworked in the farmers’ fields during summer

6. Mirrored images on a still lake

7. Autumn’s leaves splashed with color

8. The maple tree’s shade in my backyard on a hot summer day

9. Bright stars on an inky black sky

10.The deep colors just before the sun sets in the mountains

New Year’s Wishes

by Diane Sismour

January 2014

Critter

Diane Sismour

(Featured, September 2012)

The equestrians file out from the warm barn into the brisk December air. Small bursts of hot breath puff from the horses’ nostrils on their way into the stable-yard. The sky is gray and the weatherman promises snow to fall in a few hours. The riders are wearing riding-helmets, trim riding pants, and bright quilted vests adding colorful splashes to the bleak Pennsylvania landscape.

I collect their lesson fees, and check the chinstraps on each helmet and the cinch-girth of every saddle, before the six kids can mount up for their English Equitation lesson. “Chrissie, Mom said to tell you she’ll write a check after the lesson,” says the last student before she climbs astride.

This is the second time this month her parent has forgotten to pay me. "I’ll have to speak with her mother soon before this becomes a habit," I think, and walk ahead to open the indoor arena’s gate.

My gloved fingers straighten the bills. Most 16 year-olds save to buy a car, but not me. Soon I’ll have enough money to buy my very own horse. I shove the crisp cash into the pocket of my heavy barn coat. There’s no time for dreaming today . . . not with a storm brewing.

The riders bend figure eight turns and practice gait changes to prepare their mounts. The horses sense that a storm is coming too; their steps are springy and tails arch high in excitement.

 “Keep a hold on them. You’re in for some spunky rides today.”

Before the hour-long lesson ends, snowflakes drift in through the arena’s sliding door. Parents line the gate hurrying us along. The snow is falling in steady, small flakes. This kind of storm can dump a foot or more before the day is over. With fifteen minutes remaining, ending early is the right call.

“Dismount and lead your horses to the barn. Unsaddle and I’ll groom your mounts.”

Parents and students scurry to the tack room to hang saddles and bridles.

I hear Dad’s dual wheel pickup truck rumble up the stone driveway, and watch him skirt the edge as the cars race past him. He parks alongside the paddock and ambles into the barn with a large sack of oats over his shoulder.

I open the feed bin and he dumps it into the wooden box. “I have good news . . . I saw Molly at the feed mill and she has a filly to show you,” he says. He looks out into the storm. “We can go look at her tomorrow. It’ll be a slow day here.”

Molly has pointed out two other horses that didn’t fit into my meager $600.00 budget. They were both older and already partially broke to ride. I’m looking for a horse to train that can become a champion someday, to make an investment in my own equestrian career.

The next day we follow a plow truck the entire mile drive to Molly G’s Ranch and lean against the fence railing to watch a dun-colored Appaloosa filly play in the field. Her coat is the color of funnelcake with a sprinkling of powdered sugar over her hips. The snow bounces off her hooves as she trots down the pasture path effortlessly. I’m picturing her flaxen mane and tail flowing in the breeze when in reality, she’s a mess with burrs snarled in her coat and tail.

The young mare tosses her nose at us. I say, “She’s beautiful, Dad. Don’t you think?”

Dad pushes up the bill of his Phillies baseball cap. “You know she can’t come on the road with us. You won’t have much time to train her.”

Her ears pin back and I watch her chase another horse away from the hay trough. “She is a wild one.”

The other horses put more distance between them and her. There is just something captivating me about the horse that I can’t quite place. The glint in her eye should be enough to warn me, but I'm a girl in love.

“I think she’s the one.”

He shakes his head. “It’s your money, your decision,” he says, but his smile is a dead give away. He sees her potential too.

Molly coaxes the filly into the barn with grain and backs out of the stall closing the door behind her slowly. “We just found her last weekend at the auction and she looked like one that might interest you.”

As I open the thick wooden door to enter, the filly lashes out with a hoof to keep me from approaching. “Aren’t you a sweetheart?” I mock.

She spins and lands a kick on my thigh in answer.

The heavy layers of winter clothing add some protective padding against the blow, but “OUCH!” That hurt. The horse is not to blame, since I invaded her space, but her sharp hoof is still going to leave a deep bruise.

“You are an ornery critter.” Her ears swivel to listen as she moves away from me deep into the far corner. The filly’s new nickname speaks volumes about her. Critter fits her personality perfectly. My inner voice is shouting at me to stop . . . that I will regret this action later, but I see a challenge worth the pain of dealing with the nastiness, and negotiate a deal.

The next morning Dad and I remove a partition from the trailer, and return. We back up to the stall door entrance. The greedy mare smells the sweet alfalfa hay and can’t resist temptation. She hops into the trailer. By the time we drive the short distance home, she finished all but a few bites. As soon as the tailgate swings opens Critter tosses her nose and stomps her hooves as she trots around her new home in the paddock.

 Usually a foal’s handling begins at birth and they are halter-broke to lead when only a few weeks old because of their manageable size. On January first, Critter officially turns two-years-old and this 700-pound horse never wore a halter before. Dad lassoes the mare to gain control and loops the rope around her nose to use as a temporary halter until we can get close enough to fit the mare with a proper one.

Training the mare to lead confirms her stubbornness. My inner voice was right, but I’m stubborn, too. Hearing “I told you so,” this early into her training just won’t do.

It takes one of us to tug the rope, and the other with a come-a-long tied behind her, to gain the first stiff-legged steps. When the rope slides too high along her flanks, she bolts forward dragging me behind her. We progress literally one-step at a time. The certainty I have of turning this ratty looking horse into what I envision is slipping away with each new bruise she gives me.

Critter learns trust in small doses. After some horrific days of struggling, she stands tied without pulling backwards and learns that once the halter is off she is free again. Exercising on the long line turns to free lunging and I use voice commands to control the pace by singing different songs. She must consider the reward of moving without restraints a victory, because our relationship is a constant battle. There are more days I regret every dime spent on her than not.

Although I’m only able to work with her between competitions, the strides Critter makes in six-month moves her training beyond the other two-year-olds. She gains more height and muscle with regular workouts. By late summer, she is fit to saddle, another adventure unto itself.

No horse I ever rode acted so obstinate and she takes longer to break than most because of it. Critter turns left when signaling right, runs through the bit instead of stopping and stands as a mule when asked to move. The mare is enjoying a good battle of wits and figuring out how to out-maneuver her becomes a lesson in wills between us. One of us is going to sway and it isn’t going to be me.

We select Critter and two other three-year-old fillies to ride in the winter circuit where they’ll learn the crash course in show ring etiquette at the Winter Riding Events. I’m more than a little nervous. Carnansa Stables in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania isn’t the easiest arena to teach a young horse the ropes. There is competition against an arena filled with horse-trainers out to pursue the same advantage; to season their green horses amidst the noise and confusion found at a show ring before the regular season begins six-weeks later.

I rode Alibi, a well-behaved stallion, in the Western and English pleasure classes the previous year. He nearly jumped out of his horseshoes when the loudspeaker screeched and the indoor arena walls rattled as the winter wind blasted in from the west. If Alibi reacted so poorly, I can only guess how Critter will act.

Grooming shaggy hair increases Critter’s education in standing patiently. She is still quick to lash out. The first few times the farrier shod her hooves we lifted a second foot on the diagonal to protect him from undue harm. However, there is no one else at the barn tonight and I am on my own.

The horse-clippers rattle in my hand as I trim her fetlocks and all my senses are alert for any threat. Forty-five minutes into grooming her, I squat beside the rear leg and relax after managing the first three without any mishaps. A big mistake; she feigns a kick, I fall backwards, and the mare slams down on my foot.

“Get off me.” No amount of pushing from that low angle removes the weight off my boot and I jab her in the flank with the clippers. The vibration jolts her forward, but the clippers cut a broad swatch of hair off her flank.

“Oh, crud.” It is impossible to feather smooth a shaggy winter coat. I grit my teeth and resign myself to several more hours of clipping the hair on her entire body short to cover-up my mistake. “Behave or I’ll give you a poodle cut.”

Early the next morning, Dad and I load the chosen mounts into the trailer and drive to the event at sunrise. When we arrive, I notice all the usual trainers attempting to tire their horses by working them in the outdoor warm-up arena, and know no that matter how long I attempt to wear her down, it is an exercise in futility. This January is no different from any other: the wind is blowing and the metal walls will rattle. What little mental calm the mare has gained is certain to evaporate as soon as we unload her.

An hour later the loud speaker squawks for us to gather at the gate. The previous class is receiving their awards as we enter the ring. The ringmaster checks our contestant numbers as we enter, while handing ribbons to the winners as they exit the indoor arena. The ribbons’ fluttering scares Critter and she veers sideways, banging into another horse.

I nod an apology, but every trainer is expecting a few calamities in the ring at the first of the six-show series. “Welcome to the world of the winter show circuit,” I mutter to Critter and pat her neck reassuringly. If this training didn’t create such tolerant animals for the regular season, nothing could drag me here…ever.

The announcer calls all contestants to jog and the class begins. Critter’s ears pin back at every horse riding beside us, her strides lengthen and we’re stuck three-deep on the rail with nowhere to maneuver. The mare’s body tenses, building up to lash out at whichever unfortunate competitor passes too close. I sing anything that comes to mind in a soft melodic tone. Her ears flick around to listen. My voice is soothing and she falls into the rhythm, relaxing back into a slower step.

The judge is watching along a fence section at the opposite end of the arena and we circle around to find a clear spot to ride a clean pass before him. Critter calms further in less traffic. Her ears point forward, we come to an opening and I exhale knowing this pass in front of the judge is a winner.

Just as we are about to pass into the judge’s view, a spectator beside us flails her arms overhead and screams at someone across the ring, “Circle, Sally. Circle.” Critter spooks, lunging forward and bounces off the horse in front of us, setting off a domino of show ring catastrophes. All around the arena riders are reining in their mounts for control.

Even though I have a lot of apologizing to do after this class, I am smiling. It was fleeting, but right before Critter skittered and caused the chaos, the image of the scruffy dun filly having the potential to become a champion changed to a reality. We have more work to do, but my intuition will pay off. I just know it.

Top Ten Memories of Living on a Horse Farm in Kempton, PA

Diane Sismour

(September, 2012)

10. Watching foals walk for the first time upon spindly legs. One moment they are wobbly and the next they’re sprinting across a field.

9. Traveling the show circuit in a motor home. My Mom would pass breakfast sandwiches to us through the kitchen window as we rode up; fast food on horseback.

8. Riding in the fields away from all the lights to stargaze. It was a nightly occurrence. I still love to stargaze.

7. Riding to a friend's house. When I was a teenager, there were miles of open fields to ride across instead of driving.

6. Winning my first blue ribbon at the Greater Eastern Appaloosa Regional Horse Show in Knoxville, TN at age 12. It was an unforgettable experience. This competition was only for exhibitors from states east of the Mississippi river and Canada. There were over 150 competitors in the class on a very hot July day.

5. Hunting for Easter eggs on horseback. We had to ride with no saddles and the trick was mounting without crushing the egg before racing back to fill our baskets.

4. Swimming across a quarry on horseback. I remember entwining my fingers into the horse’s mane and hanging on for dear life as he lunged into the water. The water was ice cold.

3. Riding before three different presidents at Presidential Invitational Horse Shows in Washington, DC. It was a thrill to ride before presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter.

2. Playing "Chase the Fox" on horseback. It was our version of tag. One person had a head start while we looked the other way. There’s nothing like racing across fields and acting as a child to forget a long weekend of competition.

1. Taking Critter from a green three-year-old to a world-caliber competitor in one year. She won and placed in several classes at the World Championship Horse Show in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1976.

the writer

diane sismour 

(January, 2012)