A Boost Up
May 1999
Are you familiar with Belgian horses? I don’t mean are you a first-name friend of one. I mean, do you know how BIG those animals are? No, they’re not the size of Clydesdales, the draft horses in the TV commercials. Belgians are bigger - but calmer. They are the gentle giants of the horse world. Last year I got acquainted with one.
Last Spring, my brother Dick decided the extended family needed to have a memorable, unique party. There were three new college graduates in his family; Dick’s wife, their son and their daughter-in-law. To celebrate, Dick reserved several hours at a ranch where Mr. Stritzke, a former high school teacher of ours, keeps Belgian horses and uses them to pull a big wagon for hay-rides. Hey! Great way to celebrate!
About twenty of us piled on to the hay wagon and soon we were off, pulled by Tadpole and his father, Josh. We traveled back roads entertaining the local wildlife with our lustily sung camp songs. What fun!
When we got back, two of the smaller children, my great-niece and nephew, were offered a chance to have their pictures taken on the back of one of the horses. They were delighted! The gentle giants stood perfectly still while Brandon and Breanna were each in turn lifted on to Tad. It was a long ways up, but the children were light.
Then Mr. S. suggested that they should get me up on Tad’s back. I wasn’t going to miss a chance like that!
This was not going to be easily accomplished. For one thing, Tad stands six feet at the shoulders while I stand 4’7” at the top of my head. It’s true that even including full-leg braces I weigh under 100 pounds, considerably easier to toss than a normal sized person. However, the weight of my braces plus my weak leg muscles combine to create limbs which, in that situation, are not quite dead weight but almost. I would have to rely on my arms. If the guys could boost me high enough so that I could grab on to parts of Tad’s harness, maybe I could pull and drag myself on my belly to the top of the horse, squiggle into position to swing a leg over then push myself up to a sitting position. We’d have only one try. My arms wouldn’t be good for another.
I loaded my camera, showed someone how to shoot it, walked up to the horse, handed someone else my crutches and positioned myself for the boost. Up! Grab! Pull! Wiggle. Grab again. Pull some more. I was making it! When I had wiggled and pulled until I was in danger of taking a header off the other side of Tad, I managed to swing my right leg over, drag myself further toward Tad’s shoulders, and sit up. Triumph! I did it!
I did it, that is, with a considerable boost up. There were witnesses to the fact that I didn’t do it all by myself. But that doesn’t diminish the accomplishment. It just spreads the satisfaction around to more people. WE did it.
That’s not the first boost up I’ve had. A mere fraction of the list would include: My brother who carried me up and down the steps in grade-school until I could manage them alone. Friends who carried my cornet to and from the bus so I could practice at home. My parents who never told me I couldn’t do what I had an idea to do. Doctors whose surgical skill coaxed an amazing amount of mobility out of this crippled body. During those marvelous years among the Kimyal people in Irian Jaya (Papua), Indonesia, there were the Kimyal friends who carried me for hours in a special litter over narrow mountain trails. Now there are friends who help me in numerous ways, from doing massage to shopping to pulling weeds to ... anything. Certainly it includes my sister and brother-in-law who so unselfishly left home and jobs to take me in their RV to Mississippi so I could get the treatment that got me walking and breathing again.
As wonderful as family and friends are, though, my experience is that all of us together still aren’t enough to get me on top of the PPS mountain. We need my supreme booster-upper, God. He’s always available to do it. And smiles with us at the triumph.
