The Embroidery Horse-A True Fairy Tale

Author's Note: This essay was originally published in The Camden Equestrian Magazine

Janice waited nearly sixty years for her horse. A horse was impractical to her practical parents. Riding lessons were something for a wealthy girl. Food for a horse? Out of the question. It didn’t matter that Janice begged at every Christmas or birthday for a ‘pinto paint pony’ with a ribbon in her tail, the pony never appeared. Her parents prayed Janice would ‘grow out of it’. She didn’t grow out of it but she learned to keep her dream to herself.

Janice went to school, played, grew up, married and had children. She lived the life most live, soccer and play dates, wedding and funerals, movies and vacations, sadness and fear, happiness and love. She lived the normal life, the expected life and kept her dream to herself.

However, on a wall in her bedroom, in a small frame is an embroidery image of a black and white and brown horse on a little farm. Janice created the embroidery, lovingly stitching the image of the pony of her dreams with her tiny nine year old hands. She waited, no longer speaking her dream but keeping the image in the frame on the wall.

During the course of Janice’s normal life, she and her husband bought a house in ‘the country’. It was as close as she thought she would get to the life she lived amidst the threads in the frame. As Janice drove to her new home, her heart thumped, hard. One side of the road is crowded with new houses. Sidewalks and two car garages abound. On the other side of the road to her new home is the world of dreams. Horses scattered across velvet pastures, framed by beautiful white fences. All colors and sizes grazed and played.

Later in the dark quiet, Janice looked at her embroidery, trying to match the black and brown pony to one standing in the pasture. The large brown one, the grey or chestnut in the far pasture but none matched. None made the little thread pony come to life

Not knowing what she would do when she found the horse but nearing sixty, she knew time to bring the embroidery horse to life was slipping away. Her health was changing and not for the better. Her husband, Tommy, who knew the tiny horse in the frame, was also suffering the changes in life. He wanted his wife to find the ‘pinto paint pony’. He wanted her to find that joy from her childhood, extraordinary and perfect.

The pressure, the desire to touch the little horse, to feel it breathe under her hand and move down the trail was becoming intense. Janice could feel the warm softness of its breath in her dreams. She heard the quiet nicker and knew the embroidery horse wanted to come to life soon.

Janice drove by the pastures every day, going to and from work, shopping, living her day. She always slowed by the fence looking, carefully, hopefully. One day as she drove home, she spotted a new horse, a black and brown and white horse grazing in the pasture. Her heart pounded in her chest. The colors of the horse sang to Janice. Without hesitation, she pointed her car toward the farm house.

The farm owner greeted her and listened while Janice talked, asking the question. ‘Is the black and brown and white horse for sale?’ No. His wife’s new mare is not for sale.

That night Janice stared at the framed pony. It danced and trotted inside the tiny fence, tossing the delicate head and calling softly. A door had been opened, the gate swung wide. It was time, if there ever would be a time. If it wasn’t the wife’s mare then there was another out in the pasture that would free the thread bound pony.

She looked in earnest at all the horses in the pastures. Each horse was considered but Janice always came back to the black and brown and white mare. She stopped occasionally to visit the farm owner and his wife, hoping the spotted mare was for sale. The answer was always the same.

A year slipped away. Another Christmas, another birthday came and went. The pinto paint pony didn’t appear. No ribbon in the tail. No soft nicker. Janice began to lose hope. The old dream darkened, quieted. She still slowed along the fence, watching the horses graze but the embroidery horse stopped prancing inside her little fence.

Life takes strange turns. Just when you think the dream is dead; you find it is only asleep. Out of reach becomes a finger-tip stretch away. And so Janice stopped at the farm one more time. The black and brown and white mare trotted in the round pen, turning and spinning, tossing her mane and calling loudly. The farm owner stood watching her. Janice quieted her heart, but hope kept whispering in her ears.

She asked the question. Her ears buzzed. Yes. The mare was for sale.

Today Janice grooms and bathes, feeling the mare breathe under her hand hoping she is taking good care of the embroidery horse. She takes riding and horsemanship lessons. She reads and questions, absorbing all she can. When she feels the sweet breath of the pinto paint on her cheek or relaxes into the rhythm as she rides down the trail, Janice makes up for the nearly sixty years of waiting.

No more keeping the dream to herself; Janice shares it with all. Friends and family visit the little mare. The barn is the first place she brings them when they arrive. The mostly non-horse people marvel at Janice’s independence, at her new found confidence. They comment that she is a different person.

Everyone admits they thought she’d grown out of it. She hadn’t. She just kept it to herself until the embroidery horse came to life and found life outside the little thread fence.

The End