Ride or Die

One of the things that I miss the most since my mom passed away is listening to her tell me stories of when I was a child. There’s nothing more enchanting than listening to other people’s experience and perspective of life with you. I don’t know if my mom ever really knew the kind of fulfillment it brought me listening to her stories. It was like putting back together a shattered vase; the glue that filled my inner brokenness; the hand that lead me back to a lost little girl. One of my favorite stories she’d recount was how much I loved horses and horse riding, how they’d take me to Griffith park to ride the ponies every chance they could. She’d recall any time I’d see a horse anywhere that I would scream in excitement and bug the shit out of my dad to take me to see the horsies.

My dad loved to gamble. Poker, blackjack, craps, but most of all, he loved to bet on horse races. As I reflect back on it now, I think it was that part of him that was still a risk taker, the kind of guy that left life up to the luck of the draw, the roll of the dice, and let chips land where they fall. A guy who knew when he had a good hand and could bluff his way to a better position. He was the kind of man who knew that life wasn’t always fair, that sometimes it dealt you a bad hand, but somehow he always knew how to make best of it. Even when the doctors came and told him he only had a few months to live, he managed to crack a joke through it all and had the last laugh by holding onto life only just a few days later. A shit talker with the driest sense of humor, like hot desert sand with no oasis in sight. From what my mom use to tell me, he wasn’t always so accepting of defeat. In those earlier years together, my dad struggled with alcohol and depression. A man who never fully recovered from the biggest gamble of his life. A chance that could have changed all of our lives. A businesses deal that went south and left us coming back home to California with his tail between his legs and a defeat so big that it would never get him to bet on that type of gamble again.

So he stuck with what he knew and boy did those horses get him every time. It was one of our favorite things we did together. We lived not far from the Santa Anita horse track and if there’s one thing that sticks out in all of my childhood memories with my pops, it was that race track. We never entered through the front entrance, always through the back, where the stables were. Dad was a stickler for time and he always made sure we got to the track before races began. It was our ritual to visit the stables so I could see the horses up close and personal. One by one my eyes memorized over these beautiful creatures. I could daydream all day riding one of these beauties on an open mountain range with nothing but bright blue skies and the dusty winds we’d create together. Dad would ask me which horses I’d like and he’d right down their names so that he could bet on them later. Sometimes I think how different my life could have been had my father’s dreams come true. If I would find myself everyday riding in the open plains. If I’d still feel like a city girl who never felt like she belonged here.

To this day I have an affinity for horses. They are truly one of the most magical and majestic animals I have ever seen. There’s a sense of wild freedom they exude, the kind that I have always been in search of, or maybe more so a feeling deep inside me that has always been yearning to be unleashed. Carefree and spirited without any preconceived notions about the world that surrounds them. A sense of living that is soaked by present moments and nothing else. Like most little girls wanting a horse when they were little, it has always been something on my long list of things to do and accomplish in life. And with each day that I sit and write, reminiscing over old photos like this one of me and my dad with the ponies at Griffith, there’s an inner pulling that grows stronger each day, and I know deep within my bones it’s that little girl tugging, like she would with her daddy to take her to be with the horsies. Time seems to go by faster as we get older and again I am reminded that time is all we have in this life and how we choose to fill it is what makes the biggest impact. And as I make my way back to myself, I realize that part of my journey is making sure that I take that little girl with me as we ride into the sunset. Because when the world all around you seems to be on fire and falling apart, she will always be there; she is my ride or die.