“I’m not upset at you,” Boyfriend says. He’s lying down for a nap, newly discharged from the hospital. “I’m almost never upset at you.”
It’s not that I don’t know how electrical sockets work, I swear. It’s not that I can’t follow directions. I was just temporarily confused about which electrical outlet I was supposed to be using to plug in his CPAP so he could take the nap he needed. But when he got up, leaned over, took the plug from my hand and plugged it in himself, I just froze for a split second.
It was every moment of being flustered by someone I cared about. Being disappointing.
I thought I covered my shame, but he sensed it.
I think it’s a pity he never learned to handle horses. He’d have been good at it. You have to pay attention to the smallest movements: the directional flick of an ear, the shiver of a flank, muscles going rigid right before they bolt.
And I wanted to.
He reaches for my hand, draws me to him, and kisses me. He’s lying on his bed. I have to lay my hand on his chest to stay steady on my feet as I lean closer to him.
“You’re not the nuisance you think you are.” He is still holding my hand. “That other people have told you that you are.”
He lets me go, and I leave him to his nap, shutting the door behind me. We both pretend my voice is level.
Damn, I think, feeling my back trembling a little, he would have been great with horses.
I was riding horses before I could walk—sitting in front of my mom on saddles with tiny, fat legs too weak to carry me, hair like wispy cotton candy. My first real good cuss was over a horse—Pancho. I guess it counts as my first sincere bout of jealousy, too.
I couldn’t have been much past two years old, and I know this because Dad “gave” me Pancho for my second birthday, not long after Pancho had reached his return to life.
To call Pancho a rescue is an understatement. Pancho was a miracle.
Pancho was a roughly built blood-bay half-Thoroughbred, half-Quarter Horse, around fourteen and a half hands tall, if you know horses well enough for that to count. If you don’t, picture a small, rugged thing with a black mane and tail and a coat the color of a red, ruddy mahogany.
Pancho had been starved.
Pancho had been the only foal left in a pasture with larger, unrelated horses who had kept him entirely away from all of the hay, feed, and water for months—long enough for him to become a walking skeleton. His chest was concave, his ribs and spine sprung out so you could count every articulated bone, with shoulder blades so devoid of flesh you could bruise yourself on him.
My Dad took him and a .22 gauge rifle in trade for work he’d done for Pancho’s owner. He’d meant to be paid cash money to care for his small and hungry family, instead of making a slightly larger, much hungrier one.
Mom said he’d asked for the rifle because he could at least feed us with the gun.
Pancho was so weak he couldn’t step into a trailer; Dad had to lead the emaciated yearling home. Mom was shocked to lay eyes on the horse. Dad begged her to see potential, or perhaps to forgive him for his foolishly weak heart.
“You just have to look past… this,” Dad had said, gesturing at a colt so near to death that he was knocked to the ground by my father patting him on the shoulder.
So, having few other options but to trust and pray, she looked past. And they fed Pancho a single flake of hay and handful of grain at a time, tending, nursing, begging him back to life.
Pancho lived, and he became one hell of a horse.
I think of Pancho sometimes when I realize that Boyfriend knows how to look past, too. He puts up with me.
Boyfriend is fairly city. He has loving and tender memories of a country grandfather. He’s also got an independent and determined streak that I recognize as a country tendency. He loves the outdoors, speaking rhapsodical about camping, hiking, and forest-bathing.
Boyfriend has a softness and a gentleness to him, though. I don’t know if he would harden or buckle in the extremities of country life, and I wonder about that sometimes.
Pancho would have run through hell for my father because my father saw something in him worth saving. He was tougher and stronger because he had known what it was to suffer. But he wasn’t left without his problems. Pancho wouldn’t share feed worth a damn. He was aggressive and protective of his food for the rest of his life because he had known what it was to starve.
The older I get, the more I understand my father’s imperfections in perspective. Even taken in the whole picture of his life—sins and warts and all—my father opted to take a starving horse instead of money he was owed. He saw value in even a fragile, tenuous life. There was still breath in the body, still opportunity, still a chance worth taking.
It’s the first day of 2025.
On December 31st, Boyfriend got five stents in his heart. This is a feat that he continues to downplay as “not as big as it sounds—it’s really just five small ones instead of one big one.”
The nurses I know, including the cardiac ones, remain impressed despite explanations.
On December 31st, I worried, I cried, I held his hand, and I prayed. I listened to music, distracted myself, wrote small lists, and realized I could no longer happily imagine my life without him. After he came out of the cardiac cath lab, the doctor recommended he remain inpatient overnight.
Over New Year’s Eve.
We had prepared for this potential event, both having packed overnight bags. We were exhausted, and we fell asleep after one early evening song of a New Year’s Rocking Eve.
I set an alarm on my phone without telling him…
And last night, at midnight, I woke him. I played “Auld Lang Syne” on my phone. We toasted—him with diet ginger ale, me with lemonade. Alone in a room in the cardiac floor, we danced a very slow turn to “What a Wonderful World” with his ass hanging out from his hospital gown. He kissed me, and he thanked me for one of the best years of his life.
And when he says, “You’re not a nuisance” or “I’m not upset at you” or “This has been one of the best years of my life,” I still don’t know what to say.
I still freeze a little. Last night, tears rolled as I laid my head on his chest, bumping the mobile heart monitoring unit tucked into his hospital gown pocket.
This evening, I stepped out of the room and cried, thinking about Pancho and tiny handfuls of feed. At some point, it didn’t hurt to eat anymore. And then, one day, no one could keep him from it. All it took was someone to see past.
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