A Thank You Letter to Santa

Dear Santa

I guess I may have not written you many thank you letters over the years.  As I’m not sure when my manners dissipated I thought I could mention the most memorable ones? The first I recall was a bike. Looking at me now you’d never know I’d been on a bicycle or that I’d indeed have the stamina but I can assure you at 5 it was a success. It might have been 4 but there was a lot of falling off and head knocking so my memory is a little foggy. Later there was absolutely a hit with a farm set, some slight merging of farm and zoo toys but everyone seemed to get along happily enough.

 You must have sensed the triumph of that farm because I next remember a stable block. It had a set of show jumps matching Hickstead although the less said about show jumping the better. It and all its accompanying horses are tucked away safely in the attic awaiting a child I like enough to gift it forward.

Books were high on your list, any book with a sighting of horse was included. The “My Friend Flicka” trilogy meant joy three years running, it being my first books about a boy and his horse, I was already effeminate enough without only the possibility of reading “Jill’s Gymkhana”.

My first pair of riding boots, like a right of passage, with riding gear in blue, still my favorite colour. Apparently it’s a calming colour although I can’t for the life of me imagine why people think I might be highly strung.

There was so much more beyond that but, thank you for the bike, the farm, the stables and horses, the books and the riding gear. 

Most of all, thank you to my parents for Santa. Thank you to my father, a wonderfully talented carpenter who made the farm and stables piece by piece despite not knowing why on earth I loved horses. Thank you to my mother for the books, thank you for recognizing the thirst for knowledge and creativity in the young me despite horses being so far from our reality. Thank you both for believing that somehow it would realize into something more.