Wired Shut

While I was White Water Rafting down the middle of the Colorado River, my mother was getting surgery on her jaw. I wasn't there for the surgery so I don't know what the rest of the family was going through - only what happened once I got back. It's a memory I had forgotten long ago until my memory was jogged while writing my story about the White Water Weggie.

Dad had to do all the cooking in the house for a while. Mom was on some incredibly strong pain killers. Her jaw had been broken in two places and moved forward a quarter of an inch on both sides. The doctors said her lower jaw had stopped growing when she was about 7 years old. The surgery was necessary.

She was on a liquid diet while the wires held her jaws clamped together. She could barely mumble out the words she wanted to say, and for the first few days upon my return she had to write everything down on a notebook and have us read it. This was more than unpleasant for her. She was miserable. Even her liquid diet had to be taken with a syringe. I won't go into details about how it operated, but everything had to somehow end up behind her wired teeth.

Laughing, or even smiling, was incredibly painful for her. She smiled quite often when I was young. She still loves to laugh. This was one of the hardest tasks bestowed upon the family, not to say or do anything funny around her for a total of 6 weeks. When a family is as strange and funny as mine is, I'm sure you can imagine how often we had to walk away from her in order to stop from causing her pain at something we had thought of or wanted to say.

We all pitched in around the house. My brother and I did the laundry (except the unmentionables they hid in the bedroom until Dad had a chance to take care of them), we would cook on the occasion Dad was gone and it was just us taking care of her, but most of the time he did the cooking while she was laid up. We would get her books from the book shelf, fetch the TV remote, grab fresh pillows and blankets and just take care of her the best we could. After all, she had always done that for us when we were sick.

Mom was in the living room one day when I started to hear this gurgling scream coming from the back of her throat. I was standing in the kitchen at the time getting her a drink. I had no idea what was going on, but I went charging into the living room, full steam ahead. She sat there with tears rolling down her face holding her jaw on both sides.

"TRN IT UFF!" She screamed at me behind clenched jaws. "Trn it uff! Trn it uff!" She screamed over and over, trying to kick the TV remote over to me. She was sobbing!

Without even noticing what it was she had been watching, I switched the TV off as quickly as possible and sat down at her feet, wanting more than anything to make her feel better. She was obviously in agony.

Suddenly her eyes lit up and she giggled. That made her scream again and the tears once more rolled down her cheeks. Then she giggled again, which made her cry again. It was a wicked cycle she went through for a good ten minutes. It wasn't funny, and I hated seeing my mother in pain, but her occasional giggles made me want to giggle, which I knew would be even worse because everyone knows giggles are infectious. Finally I had to excuse myself and walk back into the other room. There, I burried my face in a hand towel and giggled to my hearts content. By the time I went back into the room, she was doing much better. She looked up at me and whimpered "I'm sorry," as best she could through the mesh in her teeth.

"What happened?" I asked innocently enough. I shouldn't have. At the mere thought of whatever it was, she giggled again and the whole viscious cycle repeated once more.

Weeks after the brutal mess was taken out of her mouth, she told me what had made her laugh so hard that day.

"Manda, you know how I don't like vulgar comedians?"

"Yeah," I said, knowing even the "S" word or using the word Hell too often would drive her insane.

"What I was watching that day was by accident. I was flipping through the channels and I came across this comedian talking about how he once knew a guy who had all of his fingers on both hands cut off in a saw mill accident."

"Well that doesn't sound funny at all!"

"He said that the guy took up being a thief because he couldn't find a job since all he had were two thumbs. He said the guy would steal donuts all the time." She mimicked the action he would have needed to use by holding her thumb up in the air, stabbing through the center hole of an imaginary donut and holding it proudly over her head." Finally he stole donuts from a shop that all the cops ate at all the time, and it made them all mad so they arrested him.

"Well, he decided later on that he was going to clean up his act and go straight. The problem was that he still couldn't find work with only two thumbs. He couldn't dig ditches or type or do anything for anyone without fingers. Frustrated, he decided he'd start over in another town. Without fingers though, he couldn't grab a steering wheel and so he couldn't drive. Instead, he decided to take up hitchiking."

At this point I was already grinning ear to ear over her hand movements describing the donut thief. While continuing the story, she had carefully folded all of her fingers inward, making sure to poke ther thumbs out as far as possible. She looked like Fonzy from Happy Days. Suddenly she started laughing hysterically.

"Hitchiking?" I asked.

"Yeah - he was great at flagging down the cars with that thumb sticking out" she waved her hand through the air again mimicking the actions needed, including stabbing at an imaginary door handle with her thumb, "but once they got pulled over he couldn't get the car doors open! Finally he got frustrated and yelled at them 'Oh Hell, just go on!'"

My mother roared, and her laughter made me light up as bright as a Christmas tree. I laughed right along beside her. I always loved to hear her laugh.

She swore that day she would find out who that comedian was so she could watch the show again, but try as I might I can't seem to find it anywhere on the internet, to purchase or watch on Youtube. I can't help but think that would have been a great birthday gift for her this year.

If anyone out there has any
information on the comedian
I'm talking about, please
contact me with a link - either
on facebook or by leaving a
comment below. Any and all
help is greatly appreciated.

Horse Farm Arthritis

My knees are bothering me a little today. Its a strange thing, this arthritis. I feel as though Im too young at 30 years old to have it, but yet it plagues me. My mother warned me about it, but I guess I just never really believed, or wanted to anyway.

My mother warned me about arthritis in my foot. When I was 15, I broke my foot in 3 places playing football with a friend. The bones were never set, and instead I limped about in a bulky cast for 6 weeks, only to have an odd lump on the top of my foot afterward. Mom was convinced I would have arthritis before long in that foot. To this day it doesnt bother me.

My arthritis stems from another adventure all together. It comes from a horse farm. Yes, a horse farm.

I was only 19 years old when I went to work at Cadron Creek Arabians. I lied to get the job. I loved horses so much that I just knew this was the perfect job for me. When they asked if I had experience, I told them all about taking care of a sick friends horses which never actually happened. Rather, the friend got so sick that he had to sell his horses. It wasnt long after that his health finally gave out and Jerry passed away peacefully in his sleep, in Clearfield Utah.

So the story goes that I began to work at Cadron Creek Arabians in Quitman Arkansas back in 1999. I loved my job! I got to roam fields just filled with beautiful mares, feeding them, bathing them, brushing them, and during my first month there, assisting in the birth of a new foal. The horses were almost all straight Egyptian Arabians, with bloodlines fully traceable back to the time of Alexander the Great. They were proud horses with tiny ears, huge eyes, graceful necks, and the most beautiful gait Id ever seen.

I got used to my job. I even got to know a few of the mares and was very close to them. There were two in particular that were outcasts because they were not the precious straight Egyptian bloodline. One was a Russian Arabian named War Princess, the other was a Polish Arabian named Sonrisa. They were both lovely and I adored them. But because of their lineage, they had been, I dont want to say mistreated, but perhaps not treated with the same courtesy and kindness the others had been treated with. War Princess was a beautiful Bay with long black stockings and a tiny white streak in her pitch black tail. But this is the story about Sonrisa.

Sonrisa was a beautiful and elegant Gray who had an incurable disease called EPT. The way it was explained to me, this disease made her legs completely numb, which in turn made her rather skittish. This EPT was a fatal disease. She tended to prance a bit since she couldnt feel where she was stepping. I think that would make me nervous, too! Sometimes the other people working on the farm would get frustrated with her and smack her on the butt with the reigns when putting her out to pasture, as though they were in a Wild West movie.

It took me months to get her to where she would allow me near her with reigns of any kind. I worked with her for what felt like ages before she would trust me at all. At first I bribed her with sugar cubes and carrots. Usually I just left the reigns behind and didnt mess with them. Then one rainy day it was time for a vet check and guess who was sent after Sonrisa to put her in the stocks? Im sure you've guessed already. Me.

I tied the reigns around my foot so she wouldnt see them I went out to her as I normally would, one hand extended, palm up. She came to me as she had been doing for the past week, nuzzled my hand, and then reached down to pick at the grass around her hooves. Her beautiful silver mane cascaded around her head, the matching tail swishing at the flies near by.

When I reached out and put my hand on her flank, her dappled gray body quivered. I ran my hand slowly down her legs, getting her used to my movement. I was about to do something with her Id not done before. I wanted her to be prepared for anything. My hands went down to the hoof, and back up again coming up her back against the grain of the hair, lightly scratching as I went. I got to the base of her mane and her head lifted. Her lower lip began to tremble as though she were trying to tell me how good my scratching felt, so I lingered longer. I lifted my hand higher, stroking under that beautiful silvery mane as I went. Finally I reached her head. I ran my hands over her face, her ears, her eyes, her nose, and finally under her head.

I reached behind me and lifted my foot. The reins came with it, silently and unnoticeable - part of the reason I had paid so much attention to her face and eyes. I untied the reigns as I played with her face a little more, and finally was able to manage getting one side around her head. She didnt budge. It was as though she finally trusted me where she wouldn't ever allow anyone else to go. I fastened the bridle on her elegant head and began to walk with her. She came along as obediently as a well trained Golden Retriever.

One of my coworkers, Keely, who had been working at the farm for many years reached out to touch her nose and Sonrisa reared up instantly. I immediately stepped in to calm her. I walked right in front of her, put my hand out with the palm up, and bent my knees slightly, making myself smaller. She lowered herself, nuzzled my hand, and calmed immediately. That was the day I gained the respect of my coworkers.I got her all the way to the vet stocks and marched her right in, with everyone I worked with standing in astonishment at the ease to which I accomplished this task. I clipped the stocks closed behind her and removed the bridle. Her head moved not an inch. She stood as still as a marble masterpiece.

I went to gather some hay into the back of my farm truck to feed to the mares while the Vet was doing his inspections. I wanted to have a nice surprise for Sonrisa when she came back to her stall later. She had earned it. The rain started coming down harder, and the wooden ladder was starting to get slick, so I climbed the bails of hay instead. I was climbing high into the loft to gather a few of my hidden sugar cubes to hide in the bottom of her feed trough when I lost my footing and came down hard. When I saw the bed of the truck looming before me, coming faster by the second, I twisted in midair somehow. By doing this, I caught my foot between a couple of hay bales and my body suddenly was jerked to an excruciatingly painful halt, leaving me dangling from the bales like a rag doll stuck in a tree. I cried out in pain, as anyone would. Somewhere off in the distance a horse whinnied aloud.

My foot finally came free of the hay, my knee feeling like it was being torn in half, and I plummeted the rest of the way down to the bed of the truck where I hit with a thunderous explosion of crunching body parts on a hard metallic surface. Moaning, I wrapped my arms around my knee. It had already begun to swell. My Wranglers were feeling tighter by the second.

I got up, leaving the truck where it was. I limped the 100 yards or more to Sonrisas stall and finally opened my hand. The sugar cubes were slightly crushed, but she'd still have a treat when she made it back. I turned around to go back to the truck, and there stood Keely right behind me.

"Everything ok? Sonrisa started screaming out for no reason a minute ago. The vet told me I was upsetting her, so I thought I'd come up here for a minute. It's funny, though. Nobody was near her when she started screaming."

My mind flashed back to when I hung from the hay, dangling like a loose thread from a hem. I remembered hearing a horse scream. Could that have been my Sonrisa? Did she hear me? Did she love me as much as I loved her?

About a month later, it was decided that I was in need of surgery for some severely torn cartilage in my knee. I was to fly down toFlorida in order to have it done. Little did I know I would never have the surgery, and would instead find myself homeless for the first time in my life. But thats another story.

That leaves me here, now, feeling arthritis from a horse farm. I wouldn't trade that day or that memory for anything in the world.