While visiting a friend in a Santa Monica shop last week, I overheard the most beautiful conversation.
A woman whose prior shop agenda was to try on as many skirts as possible and go home with at least two or three new ones, had only stopped in to say hello to the shop owner, as shopping was no longer on her list of activities. Every dime that she had was now being funneled into her new child, an old horse.
She had dreamed of owning a horse ever since she was a little girl and had lived a life of glamorous city luxury until recently. Apparently a divorce and her ex-husband’s plummeting finances had left her with a small apartment and a part-time job; and now she was about to be laid off. She had inherited a vast collection of Hermes bags and exquisite antique jewelry, which had been her backup should she ever have a dire emergency. And then word of an abandoned horse that badly needed a home drifted by, and her childhood dream re-surfaced. She sold her backup to buy basic horse equipment and her greatest pleasure on earth is her Beau.
Beau was a weathered, filthy, skinny old white smudgey horse, standing alone with his head down and looking as if his life was over. The moment she walked over to him, there was a soul recognition and all she could think was “Oh my GOD, what am I going to do with a horse?” By the look in his eyes, she knew his thoughts were very similar.
Beau now lives in this woman’s backyard, and though her young dreams included leaping over fences and streams on bareback, she is delighted to walk Beau around the neighborhood on a leash. They both bring joy to everyone who sees them, and Beau is the neighborhood adopted child. As she bid adieu to her friend, she said “I’m living hand to mouth, something I could never have conceived of. And because of Beau, I’ve never been happier in my life!”
Oh Beau, how you’ve brought life to someone’s heart! And I have a feeling yours is smiling as well.
Award winning writer, Francie Lora, has been living and writing from the heart for most of her life, from South India to New England to LA. More recently earning her Master’s in counseling, she serves women with breast cancer. After a year counseling women who’d lost their beloveds during 9/11, she was given a computer and sent to LA to write her stories for the big screen.
More links to Francie:
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Homeless Mountain
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