I’ve come to the realization I raise half-wild horses. And half-wild boys. This epiphany dawned on me last week on G2’s first day of kindergarten and my colt, Diego’s, first day with a horse trainer. Both of which took place last Thursday.

The day started out sweet enough. G2, my happy little boy, and Diego my happy young horse, were galloping around with grins on their faces. For anyone who didn’t know horses could grin, look again at the above picture. This is not my son or my horse, but it’s one of my favorite Pinterest pictures, and this horse is grinning.

So off goes a grinning G2 to kindergarten while I stand and wave with the other mommies and several daddies too, all of us with cameras pressed to our faces, documenting the eminent occasion.

Four hours later, I pick G2 up and the look on his face concerns me. “Did you have a good day or a great day?” I ask him, it never dawning on me he could have had a bad day. “A good day,” he says quietly, his eyes not meeting mine in the car. He’s strapped in his car seat, all forty-five pounds of him, his hair blond as wheat from a summer of swim lessons. Me so proud of the fact that G2 can swim like a fish now after I drove him to the public swimming pool nearly every morning for two months to insure he wouldn’t drown trying to keep up with his three big brothers. “Did anyone get on the star board today?” I ask him. He’s in the same class with the same teacher our older sons had so I pretty much know the routine. “Yes,” G2 answers so softly I can hardly hear him as I drive out of the school parking lot. This soft, little voice isn’t like G2 at all. In fact, he usually talks too loud, especially when excited. I can tell by his voice he didn’t make the star board. “Did anyone get their name on the oops board?” Now G2 doesn’t answer at all. “The oops board…” I try again. G2 interrupts me, “One boy got his name on the oops board but it wasn’t me.” Then we drive home with G2 silent in the backseat.

At home, we eat turkey and cheese sandwiches together after I put Cruz down for his nap. G2 is being really quiet. “When can I stay home again with you?” he finally asks me after eating his sandwich. “We are home,” I tell him with a smile. His big blue eyes, all soft and sad, make my heart hurt. “Stay home with you instead of going to school,” he persists. “This weekend you can stay home with me,” I tell him. “You only go to school Monday through Friday. On Saturdays and Sundays you get to stay home.” Wordlessly, he lies down on the beanbag and stares at the movie I’ve put on for him. “You okay?” I ask. “I’m okay,” he says, looking all tuckered out. At least he didn’t get on the oops board, I tell myself as I tackle folding the laundry.

G2 after a long day at kindergarten.

A short while later, a truck and horse trailer pull into our driveway. I’ve dreaded this day. My colt, Diego is two and a half years old. The horse trainer, Tom (one of my dad’s best friends for nearly as long as I can remember), is here to take Diego away. Diego will go and be a working horse used to herd cattle and such. I’ll get him back when he’s done his time with Tom, when he’s learned to be what he was bred to be, a cow horse. I know Tom will take good care of Diego and teach him all the things I can’t teach him, but right now my heart is breaking having to let go of this special colt.

How I will miss every day when Diego runs to the fence once he sees my old Suburban pull into the drive. I usually stop and pet him either coming or going out our gate, blowing into his nostrils and letting him smell me, scratching his cheeks and rubbing around his ears and leaning my forehead against his. He doesn’t know how to lead or load or any of those traditional things colts his age should know, but one day he got out in a windstorm and was running wild through the orchard. When I ran after him and called to him in the storm, he came racing right back to me and followed me to his pasture where he stood trembling as I calmed him with the wind pounding us both. Diego loves me and I love him, but now it’s time for him to be trained.

It takes several difficult hours to get Diego into Tom’s trailer. By the time it’s all over, Diego is looking at me with those wide, wounded eyes G2 has today. As if I’ve betrayed both of them somehow by letting G2 and Diego run wild during their young years, and now I’ve brought the hammer down by turning them over to tough teachers.

Yet, I know both these teachers: G2’s kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Crawford, and Tom the horse trainer. I deeply respect and admire these two people and I know they want the best for G2 and Diego just like I want the best for my boy and my horse. And both Mrs. Crawford and Tom are very good at what they do. But with that in mind, I still spend the rest of that long, hard first day doubting myself. Thinking about all the things I should have done and could have done to prepare G2 and Diego for schooling. Yet instead of preparing them, I played with them, loved on them, and had fun with them.

I recalled the day I spent getting goatheads (a terrible, thorn-producing vine) out of Diego’s pasture. How I walked around with a bag and shovel digging up the goatheads while Diego followed me. From time to time I’d stop and pet Diego, then I’d shovel another weed into the bag, Diego sticking his nose into the bag, too. Or other days when I worked in the yard and Diego trailed me along the fence. Sometimes I’d stop and rest from my labor, leaning on the fence, loving on Diego standing there waiting for my attention. This pretty much is how I raised G2 and my other boys as well. Taking them along with me just living life in the country. Teaching them about chores and the birds flying around us and pointing out the bugs and lizards and frogs from time to time. Getting little jars for G2 and his brothers to collect their critters, turning on the sprinklers so the boys could run through them on hot days, gathering the chickens’ eggs and going to the kitchen to fry them up for breakfast with the boys’s help, having G2 and his brothers pick tomatoes and squash and watermelons with me from the garden for dinner. G2 and his brothers learning all kinds of things about living off the land, but nothing much about schooling.

And that night, on the first day of school, we got a call from Mrs. Crawford. G2 was the boy who got his name on the oops board. So not only did G2 have a bad day, he lied to me about it, and I cried into my pillow at bedtime because I felt so bad for G2 and Diego and about myself as a mother.

But God’s mercies are new every morning, and I woke with the sunrise on Friday praying for a better day for the three of us. Praying G2 would adjust to kindergarten, and Diego would adjust to life with Tom, and I’d adjust to letting go of my boy and my horse and also letting go of my own shortcomings.

Later in the day, when I picked G2 up at school, he was beaming and talking a mile a minute in the car. He’d made the star board. Probably because his older brother Luke promised G2 a candy bar if he could get on the star board that day. Then just a half hour later as G2 and I were grabbing lunch at a deli to celebrate the star achievement, Tom called to say Diego was doing great. That he’d already learned to lead and was accepting a saddle now. That Diego had a willing spirit…

A willing spirit… I loved that.

G2 has a willing spirit, too, according to Mrs. Crawford. He just needs to learn his boundaries in the classroom, she says.

A couple days after this, sitting at the dinner table, we asked all our boys this question, “What do you like best about school so far?” Three bigger brothers answered first, then it was G2’s turn. “I like my teacher, Mrs. Crawford,” he said.

And Tom says he and Diego are getting on just fine. He’s calling Diego “Tucker” because Diego’s registered name is Blue Moon Tucker Chex. The boys named Diego after Dora the Explorer’s friend Diego from the kids’ television show. Diego’s grandfather’s name was Teddy Tucker and his great-grandfather Doc Tom Tucker, two famous quarter horses, so the Tucker name fits the horse Diego’s meant to be.

This willing spirit isn’t something I taught G2 and Diego. I believe God gave them those willing spirits, and this I know, I did my best to encourage their willing spirits, teaching G2 and Diego how to trust and how to love and how to enjoy being half wild when they were young. And that’s enough for me.

Below is Diego’s grandfather Teddy Tucker with Bridget and Steve Isle’s grandchildren on board. Bridget and Steve, Teddy Tucker’s owners, blessed us with our Teddy Tucker horses and we are forever grateful to these dear friends for all their love and generosity. My dream is that one day my grandchildren will sit upon Diego’s saddle and smile with joy like these little ones are smiling on the legendary Teddy Tucker, the finest stallion I ever met.