Travels with Kate: Motherhood still on my mind

I got so many nice responses to the posting about that day in the field in South Dakota, just before Kate was born, that I couldn’t resist posting this other image of a horse. I would have to say this isn’t my best moment of mothering, but it has been a kind of family joke (though at the time it wasn’t…). We were traveling in Ireland. Perhaps ten years ago. Kate had a mane of long, chestnut hair, and as we were driving I spotted a horse whose hair was almost the exact same color as Kate’s. I told my husband to stop the car because I wanted to take a picture of Kate with this horse. Kate was, and still is, quite fond of horses. We stopped and I told Kate to stand near the horse. I took a picture. I told her to stand closer. Another picture. Then I suggested she kneel down by the horse. One more picture. And finally asked her to take her hair out of the ponytail so we could really see it beside the horse. She was reluctant and tired of my picture taking, but I told her to be a sport. So with a big sigh she took the scrunchie off her ponytail and the horse, perhaps thinking it was hay, proceeded to eat her hair…Somewhere the whole series of snapshots documents this event, but the only one I can still put my hands on is this one. A country road in Ireland, a perfect day, a horse eats my daughter’s hair at my bidding. Somehow that sublime image of the black horse in the golden field felt right as I thought about Mother’s Day and being a mother on the road. And this unfortunate moment, captured on film, is one of the more absurd moments of motherhood about which I still feel guilty. And I still can laugh. And my daughter has long since recovered, and, I believe, forgiven me…