* * Mucking the stalls

The party we’d been invited to had been called off, so Jane and I were doing the Ward and June Cleaver routine on Saturday night, sitting on the sofa, watching the Tour de France on the tube.  Jane answered the phone.  It was our 19-year old daughter, Whitney.  From as much of her voice is I could hear, I could tell she was upset.

With one ear towards the commentary of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen in France and the other trying to overhear Jane's and Whitney’s conversation, I caught only snippets of what was going on.  But when Jane hung up, she said, “Whitney seems to have an appointment this evening to clean a horse barn for one of her customers and she either forgot about it or didn't follow instructions properly.  I told her that you or I would go with her to the barn because it is getting dark and she didn't want to go there alone.”

Jane was already in her pajamas.  When she asked me if I wanted to go, I said, “Sure.”

Twenty minutes later, Whitney drove to the house in the 1991 Toyota Camry car her grandmother had given her when she got her driver's license.  I sat in the passenger seat, scooching away all of the empty water bottles on the floorboard, as Whitney drove northward on the bypass around Blacksburg.

When I asked her what had happened she said, “I have a customer who has me look after her horses from time to time.  She asked me early in the week if I could do it tonight but she never told me officially that she wanted me to do it.  So I never wrote it on my calendar.  I had another barn to clean earlier this evening, so when she called I was already booked.”  Whitney takes her commitments seriously so she was upset when her customer intimated that she had skipped the appointment. 

We left the bypass on Coal Bank Hollow Road and drove to Mt. Tabor Road, and then eastward for several more miles.  I had never been to this particular barn.  It was at the end of a long gravel driveway through a forest that was surprisingly free from undergrowth as if animals grazed there.

Whitney and I began working her tasks, she giving me instructions on what to do.  There were three horses including one adorable miniature.  It had been an extremely hot day and even at this crepuscular hour was still warm.  The horses had been kept in the barn all day out of the hot sun.  Whitney gave each some food and set them outside in the pasture.  I dumped their water buckets and refilled them from a hose.  She mucked the stalls and scattered new sawdust.  All the while, barn swallows flitted in and out of open high windows.

We used this opportunity to catch up on each other's lives.  Whitney was taking summer school and told me how she had not done as well on a recent Chemistry test as she wished.  It had become a surprisingly busy summer for her, and her next few weeks of activity were similarly overbooked.

As we emerged from the barn to begin our trip home, the lightning bugs sprinkled the sky with their luminescent pixie dust and a lustrous full moon rose in the eastern sky.

On the way home, she talked about her love life and guys she was seeing.  She had brought one of her boyfriends to dinner at our house a few evenings earlier.  Jane and I were underwhelmed by him.  He was uninteresting and uninterested.  I said, “I'm not sure whether he is typical of the men in your age range but I can't imagine that there aren't some guys out there who bring a greater zest for life with them.”

She admitted that her time with him during his visit fell short of her expectations and she would be seeing less of him in the future.  She said, “He is a bit more engaging around me but he doesn't really have as much personality as I thought.”

She mentioned a couple of other guys she was interested in.  She said, much to my delight, “I like to bring the guys over for you and mom to meet.  I am clouded by my attraction for them but you two see right through that and help me better understand what the guy is really about.”

I admitted it was nice to hear that she appreciated our wisdom and insight.  I said, “You are worldly, smart, interesting, and attractive.  "You make a pretty good catch for a guy.  Don't sell yourself short.  Look for a guy who is who is interesting and who has the same zest for life that you do.  Find yourself a guy who brings something of value to your relationship.”

She drove her car down the short street to our house and our time together ended too quickly.  As I kissed her goodnight and as she drove home to her apartment, I thought to myself how special it was to share a warm, moonlit evening with a beautiful, wonderful girl, and swallows, fireflies, and horses.