Horse Lady

“Do you like horses” I asked the lady who sat facing me at the next table over.
She looked at me like she wasn’t sure if I was talking to her.
“Do you like horses?” I said a little slower and louder.
“What?”, she asked. He voice was gritty.
“Do you like horses?!”
She motioned with her hand like she didn’t hear me.
“I’m sorry, what are you saying?”
I raised my hand up to say wait, and then I picked up my tray. I found a seat across from her at her table. She was round, slumped shoulders, lots of wrinkles, smoker I thought. Her cheeks looked heavy; they sagged on her face. She wore gold ear ring, her hair was brown grey, like the bark of an oak tree in winter.
“Do you like horses?” I said.
“Horses?” she asked
“Your shirt.” I pointed to the sweatshirt she wore. It was maroon with three horse wearing cowboy hats. It said “Pineville Dude Ranch”.
“Oh, these.” She said looking down, “I like horses.”
“They’re nice,” I said, “what’s with the hats.”
“Oh, the people at the ranch put them on the horses” she said, “so you know which one is yours. Just the first day though, you know your horse after the first day. I don’t know why they use hats though, I guess so they can make these sweatshirts.”
“If you don’t mind, who got you the sweatshirt?”
“Don’t mind,” she said “my sister got it. I bought one for her and she bought one for me”.
“You each bought the same sweatshirt for each other, at a Dude Ranch?”
“Uh, huh”, she slurped her soup.
“That’s nice. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why not buy your own?”
“Well, we could’ve. But gifts are better, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I suppose they are.” I said and took a bite.
“Janey, my sister, she would’ve been happy buying it for herself.” She smiled and then “She always took care of herself.”, picking bits of the sandwich off the plate and putting them into her mouth.
“Oh, how so?” I asked.
“Another time” she smiled.
We ate for a bit. She was a loud eater, slurping her soup and she smacked her lips while she chewed. He cheeks jiggled and she coughed. I figured she had a cold, then I wondered if she wished she’d never smoked.
“My daughter loves horses.” I said
“Good, she’ll love them for the rest of her life.”
“I’d always thought she’d grow out of them.” I said “They grow out of everything.”
“Clothes, toys…yes. But not horses, pets, brothers, sisters, moms, dad’s, God…not the important things. Those stay with them. Does she know God? ”
“Yes, she knows about God.”
“How old is she?”
“She’s two and half, going on sixteen.” I said.
“It happens fast, but don’t kid yourself,” she said “she isn’t anything like sixteen.”
“I know, I have to keep telling myself these are the easy days. I know it’s only going to get harder.” I wiped my hands off and leaned back.
“It’s true what they say, that with each stage what was hard goes away and all the new stuff is harder than before.” She chewed and rubbed her fingers together, bits of bread dropped into her lap.
I said, “I know, that’s what scares me the most. I see and read what kids are doing now. What is acceptable, what the parents and schools are letting the kids get away with, I mean even if you leave God out, there still is a common understanding of decency, right?”
“No, no don’t leave God out.” She stopped chewing, wiped her mouth and dropped the napkin on her plate. “Never leave God out for a second. Well first of all you can’t. No matter how hard you try, God will never leave you; because he created you, he is in you and everyone else, believers and non-believers.”
“I’m not so sure; look at how people are acting today.”
“It’s been that way for ever, each generation is decay’s or progress, depending on what’s important to you. worse than the last and we’re all still here. It was like that when I was kid, the second war ended, segregation, communist, mafia…”
“I’ll take the mafia any day over some seventeen year old kid, chopping his buddy to death with a hatchet over money. That happened you know, last week, it was in the paper. And after he and his buddies chopped this kid to death, they cleaned up and the next day they went to the mall with their mom.”
“Yes, yes always things that were unheard of do become commonplace. Taking a life is not such a bad thing nowadays.”
“Right, and the scary thing is, what is commonplace now – video games killing cops, singers singing about “beatin’ their woman”, movies that glorify the evil in people and the news is only about the worst and when it isn’t bad they make it up. Heck it’s even in church. I was at a men’s breakfast at my church last week and the speaker, he was a priest, showed four successive slides of a tank being blown up; each slide he pointed to one of the bodies as it sailed up and out of the picture. I think he even said ‘Notice there’s not a whole lot above his shoulders.’ His point was you never know when your number is up, so be prepared.” I paused and then said “It’s valid point, but a tank being blown up?”
We stopped for a moment. Then she said

“What do you want? It’s the same; the bar of decency is low and keeps getting lower. It’s like someone who grows up in the slums only knows that way of life, so it seems ok. You hear of their stories ‘We were poor, but we didn’t know any different, so it was fine.’”
I interrupted, “And another thing, what is so wrong with God. Really, even if you don’t believe in God, why would you not want his commandments to be followed? Who ever disagreed that we should do things that were based on love? Who disagrees with loving your neighbor as yourself? Who disagrees that murder is wrong?”

She said, “But you can’t remove God, even from the commandments. The way I see it, is that we are all born pure, without error or fault. We are pure because God created us, and God does not create anything that is impure. Even the down baby is pure, imperfections are intentional, to be used for God purposes,” She stopped and then said “or they were caused by us. God’s purity is a light that will never be put out and it is in all of us. The atheist, the terrorist, the serial killer, the rapist, the pedophile, the priest, the mother, the first grader, the high schooler, the business man, the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Christian, the Jew…The light never diminishes; instead it’s covered up bit by bit, with each impure decision, until a shell is formed around it. At it will grow thick, making it harder to break over time.”

She stopped, wiped her mouth and looked out the window. I was watching her when she continued, “Our objective then, because we are bearers of the light, is to protect it – do not let it get covered. That’s what you teach your daughter, protect her light.”