Wind in Her Hair
In mid-December of
2021, I arrived to my small condo unit on Jingle Pot Road. The lofty ceilings
made it seem even emptier during those weeks alone before my furniture arrived.
But I came prepared: in my car I had packed my Christmas decorations, basic dishes
and cookware, a couple IKEA chairs, an air mattress, and a tiny, wrapped present
from a friend for under the tree.
When I arranged to
have my things shipped to the condo, I told the admin at the moving company
that Jingle and Pot are spelled separately. She giggled as she
asked me to spell it out. “That is just the funniest thing I’ve ever heard,”
she said. A friend of mine I emailed my new address to shortly afterwards asked
me, “What? Jingle Pot? Is that even a real name?”
Despite the name that
tickles like feathers, I have tested my mettle on this road many times.
I rode like the
wind down Jingle Pot Road on the bare back of my Quarter Horse when I was 11
years old. He ran the fastest in the direction of the stables, and despite several
warnings not to teach him bad habits, I exploited this. On our way back to the
stable, we were all mane, reins, and hair, rocketing through the hot summer air
so fast that it filled my wild eyes with tears. I was convinced that we could
outrun anything and anyone – including the thoroughbreds in the neighboring
pasture. Sometimes I would race passing cars on the shoulder of the road, kicking
up dirt and gravel onto their windshields as they came up from behind. Some
cars honked in dismay, but several slowed down to match our pace just to watch
us for a while. Not knowing then that our pace was matched only because they
slowed down, I thought we were ready for the racetrack.
“Clock us,” I said
to my grandpa one day. “We’re fast, grandpa. You gotta clock us.”
“Sweetheart, that ain’t
no racehorse. He’ll run like lightning for a quarter of a mile, on his way home
to eat. That’s about all he’s got in ‘im.”
“But I want you to
see.”
And so, he did.
For just over half a mile, my horse and I hurtled down Jingle Pot Road
alongside my grandpa’s rusty yellow F350 pickup truck. With his left hand on
the steering wheel, and his right arm draped on the vinyl seat, my grandpa watched
me through the open passenger window, intermittently looking down at the
speedometer while keeping an eye on the road.
We met up at the
gates of the pasture. Breathless and ablaze with excitement, I slid off my frothing
and sweaty horse and walked over to the truck window.
“How fast did I go,
grandpa?”
“Well, I figure
that you clocked at about 35 km an hour for most of it.”
“Is that fast?”
He chuckled, took
a drag off his cigarette. “Yup. Pretty damn fast, kid.”
I know now that this
was not fast. He knew this, too. But he also knew that I needed to believe that
I could do great things and soar above everything that was happening at
home.
When I was in my
late 20’s, I jetted up and down Jingle Pot Road on my motorcycle while going to
university. The pungent, sappy smell of conifers filled my nostrils on summer
days as I sped down long forested stretches, exhilarated by the warm wind
lashing against my skin and hair. I rode to school on wet winter days too, with rain needling
my eyes and soiling the edges of textbooks in my pack. After four years of these
journeys, I rode back to my cabin from the convocation ceremony one sunny day
in June, flashing by the old stables of my youth. I had a degree certificate
rolled up tight in my pack, and a heart burst open wide. I had defeated the
odds for kids like me who never made it through high school.
That first Christmas
morning on Jingle Pot Road in the empty condo, I awoke to silence. It was permeated
only occasionally by the swooshing sound of passing cars. The world lay
blanketed in heavy snow, with more falling gently on the bare branches outside
my window. I lay quietly for a while, nestled under my own blankets and
reluctant to greet the day.
Okay, let’s do
this.
I took a deep breath
and slowly rose from bed. I slipped on some soft, fuzzy socks given to me by a
friend, then ambled over to the kitchen and made coffee. I put a couple homemade
gingerbread cookies on a plate and sat on the couch by the light of the
Christmas tree, wrapped in a favourite blanket.
Just when I thought
things were about to get heavy, I realized that I was not alone. With me was Wind
in Her Hair.
I
see you, she said. I smiled.
We sat together and ate cookies while watching snowflakes dance on the wind, and planned our next adventure on Jingle Pot Road.
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