The tiny triumphs.

.

A grand day. The sun shone, and a dear friend and I took both mares out for a walk and stood in the sloping meadow looking out over the hill and talked and talked and talked. The dogs had already been dancing along the burn with their small friend who is four years old. ‘Where has that Darwin gone?’ she asked sternly, slight exasperation in her voice.

I did a lot of work and then had a huge ride with our training partners in the Wobbleberry Challenge. This was mighty on at least eight different levels. It was hard exercise for mind and body, it had some moments of pure beauty in it so that I cried out into the bright air with admiration and pride, and the red mare remembered that her grand-sire did in fact win the Derby and put her racing shoes on for a moment and I felt her power. That power used to frighten me; now it no longer does. Come on, old lady, I said, we are both far too advanced in years for such nonsense. And then she settled herself and reverted to her usual dowager duchess self and the ancestral voices that were singing in her head stopped their siren song.

It was a day of achievements. They are all very small, in the ways of the wide world. In my world, they are vast, and they make me smile as I think of them. A triumph can still be a triumph, even if it is so tiny that it can hardly be seen by the human eye. Record those little victories, I think, so that when the failures come, you can go back and read and remember.