She Loves Horses

 Ever since she laid eyes on Trip, the sweet brown horse, at our milk farm years ago, it's been true infatuation for Chloe.  She thinks about horses all day long.  She pretends she IS a horse nearly the entire day, answering my questions with emphatic whinnies or snorts and head tossing.  She neighs in agreement to things or stamps a hoof in anger.

She gallops everywhere.  She draws or paints half a dozen horse pictures every week, sometimes that many in one day.  Sometimes she makes murals of horses or tracings or cut-outs and hangs them up all over the walls in every room of the house.  She builds small stables out of everything -- books, logs, stones, blocks, empty boxes, pieces of cloth and pipe-cleaners.  Her bedside wall is plastered with magazine and calendar cutouts of horses.

She has read every picture book about horses available at the library and never tires of them.  Her "looking books" are full of bookmarks on her (seventeen) favorite horse pictures for quick and easy reference.  She has dozens of horse figures to play with, but surprisingly she doesn't sit and play all that often.  This horse infatuation is deeper than toys can express.  Don't get me wrong, she loves her horse set-ups and accessories, but she would rather be imagining and living as the horse.

I wonder what it's like inside her daydreams.... I wonder where she goes on her imaginary horse rides.... I wonder what it is that appeals to her so deeply..... the strength, the beauty, the power, the majesty of a horse?
 

Out of curiosity, I asked her once, what made her so interested in horses.  She thought for a long while, her eyes sifting through mental pictures, before answering slowly and thoughtfully, "I just love the shape of them."  It was the perfect answer, really.  Just vague enough to keep me wondering, but solid enough to say that even she can't explain the mystery in her captivated heart.

She doesn't like horses.  She loves them.