The Triple Bar

After riding one day, Jim tossed me a piece of baling twine and told me to use it to lead Freckles through the gate. Jim was always telling me that I was a wimp and so I didn't protest, I was afraid, but told myself it would be fine, you’re just nervous. I didn’t realize I was saying this to myself, it was a mantra I had been using for so long originating from my determination to be different than my mother. I followed Jim’s instructions. Freckles crowded me into Jack and the thin twine slipped out, as I maneuvered between the two geldings. In the momentary confusion, Katie, our mare, bolted free through the open gate. Jim called out to me "Get her". Freckles safely in the pen I strode after Katie. She hoisted her hind legs in the air and kicked toward my hip, I turned as her feet neared, so all she got was my wrist. I backed up cradling it, not sure of what had happened to my small delicate hand, making sure I was out of her way, and wouldn’t be harmed further, I sank down, stunned, searing pain focused me, as I sat on the cold spring soil. I didn't go to the emergency room, Jim didn't think I needed to. I waited 10 days, it was swollen, but not terribly black and blue. It was my right hand, I earn money drafting using auto-cad. I’m a professional ice skater. Finally I decided I needed to make sure it healed properly so I went to a Doctor. There was a small break, but nothing to be done about it, just wear a brace and keep it immobilized.

-Guilliana

Everyone in my family comes to me when they need money. At 16, I arranged for and took my whole family on a vacation with the money I earned cleaning horse stalls. I told them months ahead to reserve the time. I knew my dad would have to arrange to take off from his job. I bought us the plane tickets, selected and paid for a hotel and called a car service to pick us up. I told them nothing about where we were going.

-Sophia

It's a wonder that in all those years living with Jim that Guilianna didn’t get hurt badly working with the horses. Jim keeps order by fear, by hitting the horses, knocking them around and they are just waiting for their chance to get you back.

-Lori

Her profile looks good, she has experience with horses. She’s from Holland. Let’s see what she wrote… she’s already in New York, actually… she’s on a horse farm in Kerhonson. I wonder where? We know all of the farms around here… I bet its Lori’s farm. Well, let’s have her come for a visit, she has a car.

-Guliana

We’ve had over one hundred volunteers. My wife is a visionary, she set this all up. It’s called Farm Stay, Gulianna grew up in NYC she understands this type of eco-tourism. The volunteers clean all of the accommodations. Everyone who comes to the farm wants to meet us, they want our life, but the work never ends and now with all of these guests and volunteers living on the farm and some even in the house with us, we have no privacy.

When the guests arrive I say to them, “another day that you are here is another day that I can stay. Thanks for coming!”

-Jim

I didn’t like Sophia from the moment I met her. There was just something off about her. Jim and Guliana introduced me to workaway.com, the volunteer website. I’ve been doing it now for a year. Some of them I love, I take them out to eat, we have a glass of wine together. There’s this great restaurant a few minutes’ drive from me, Joe, my guy, meets me there after he finishes his day clearing trees. With Sophia, I just let her alone, who says I have to take her out to dinner with me. Once, I caught her doing a sly, cat dance in tight jeans around Joe. I just don’t trust her. When Juliana told me Sophia was headed to their farm next, I told her I wasn’t thrilled with her, but that she was okay.

-Lori

When Sophia came to visit in her professional suit, at 6’4 she towered over me, I thought, here’s a woman who could beat me up, awkward looking, and shy. I’ll let Giuliana handle her. Then one night at dinner Sophia told us she needed to do an internship with a tourism business to complete her degree. “Well, how about doing it here? Guillana and I can leave for two months, go to Costa Rica for the winter.” My wife’s got physical problems, she ice skated too much and now she can’t walk.

-Jim

It felt so good to pack up all of my things and leave. I will miss Joe, Lori’s friend, but he’s only a few miles away, he said we’d still see one another. Lori did let me store my camping gear in her basement. My semester at New Paltz University just ended. I have one year now that I can stay in the US. That will make two years here. I wish I could just stay. I’d go out west where there are herds of horses and cattle to tend. Buy some land and start my own ranch. Happy here for now. I love the golden retrievers, the male golden runs around in circles trying to catch his tail and he cries for his special ring Frisbee that he carries around on his neck.

-Sophia

The night I met Giuliana, my first marriage was collapsing, I got into my car and started driving. Woodstock radio announced the Michael Franti and Spearhead concert that night at the Woodstock Playhouse. I headed to Woodstock. As I drove, I put my hand out the window and I wished for a woman ‘fluid in movement.’ In line waiting for tickets, Gulianna stood right next to me. She is a gorgeous woman, at the time she was very slender, waif like. Everything about her was the opposite of my first wife. At the ticket booth they said they were sold out. That’s what got us talking. The ticket person said hang out, there will be some no shows and we’ll let you in. I took charge and when I went up to get my ticket, I got her one too. Inside we separated. I saw her dancing, she was obviously a professional. She danced with the children attending with their hippie parents. She danced with me. The woman I had wished for had appeared. I should have asked for one more thing, that she be really into sex.

-Jim

After Michael left me I was a mess. I stopped eating, I thought he might take me back if I looked more like the dancers he was used to working with. That made no difference to him. Not eating became a habit, something to focus on. I dropped 20 pounds, down to 105 pounds when I saw him for the last time. I went to his Pilates class. There was a woman there who I was certain he was sleeping with. As I walked out of his class he said “You’re melting away.” I met Jim around then. I remember my first impression of him, he was not a really good looking guy, but he had a vibrancy to his smile, he stood up strait and was enthusiastic about dancing, about his horses, about camping. He was still living with his first wife so we didn’t see each other for several months until she moved out.

-Guillanna

I’m really worried about Guillanna. She hasn’t been able to walk for two years now. I think she needs to do some extreme exercise. I read that this can get the body to snap out of its patterns. She won’t listen to me. She hasn’t been interested in sex for years, not at all. I’ve told her that I need sex, that it’s my playtime. I’ve forced her to have sex with me a few times, but she ruins it by squirming and crying. Then I feel bad about it.

-Jim

The first time I drove into the farm, it was dark when I arrived. Jim’s farm, was further South than I had driven before. The driveway was long and had big pot holes, the house had no siding and the property was jungle like. When I opened my car a huge slobbering St Bernard/Mastiff shoved her face at me. I was momentarily afraid. Jim quickly appeared and escorted me inside. Jim was so different from any other guy I had ever been interested in, he was earthy, a cowboy, he could fix things, he could build; but I married him because I thought, ‘this man will stick with me, he will not ever leave the relationship’.

-Guillanna

My parents loved each other like crazy, they were so happy together. My mom always had a big pot of soup on the stove. My dad would put on a scuba mask to cut the dozen onions for French onion soup. They fought often and hard but always made up. My mom was tough; she owned a hunting rifle and drank beer with the guys. She also fed me the best food, made me Adelle Davis shakes with brewer’s yeast. At 18 I was offered a job in Egypt working for my uncle, he was a contractor brought in to build a resort. I went to visit him met an Egyptian Princess and raced across the desert on a camel with her. Then I found out my mom had breast cancer, I flew home to my 4H girlfriend Kathy who became my wife and mother of my 4 children. The Doctors tortured my mother. She died 10 years later. When my father got cancer he moved up to Maine and became a lobsterman. When he saw himself slipping he shot himself with his hunting riffle.

-Jim

At 16 ½ my parents brought me to get psychological testing. The results came back when I was 17. In Holland, you’re an adult then, so I got the results. I never told my parents or anyone else what they said. I have Asperger’s Syndrome.

-Sophia

When his children came to stay with us for the weekend, Jim would wake them up with music and the smell of bacon cooking in the cast iron pan.

-Guilianna

Accord, New York

December 24th, 2016

Sophia drove onto the farm in her Hybrid, dressed in what one would wear to interview as a personal assistant for a NYC executive, a tight, strait black skirt with a small slit, stockings, a light blue silk blouse and high heel ankle length boots which brought her height up to 6’5. Her long blond hair hung down to her lower back. She moved awkwardly like a newborn colt, she was slender, and strong. Her whole demeanor was shy and self-deprecating, dropping her chin and slumping, she answered every question about her abilities with "well, I could do that for you." After speaking with Sophia about her experience at Lori's we were close to not talking to Lori who had given her a new chore list each day that could keep Sophia busy for weeks. No fresh vegetables or fruit, only pasta and cans in the cupboards, Lori never cooked a meal, left Sophia to go out to eat. Lori doesn’t eat much herself, living on Kale salads and a can of beans, whenever we are invited to her house for dinner; I bring a main entre as she never had much food prepared. So perhaps it wasn’t intentional. Sophie told us Lori trusted her to help teach her riding students but she was not allowed to ride herself.

Sophia moved into our home a month later on Christmas day. We had no Christmas tree and though I made a nice dinner it was not at all extravagant. We didn’t know how much Christmas meant to Sophia and besides, we had just met her. I was much warmer to her than Jim was. Sophia did not show her disappointment. We knew this was a much better situation than the one she had been in. I cook dinner almost every night and we eat with the volunteers like a family. During the next year we heard many times about her love of Christmas all of the foods her family prepared for Dutch Christmas; Day One and Day Two. We heard about her sister, her mother and her dog that was not nearly as special as Cal but she talked about him anyway.

Jim probed her about her life, the same as he did with all of the volunteers. His main interest since he was 12 had been girls and then women so naturally he asked about her boyfriends. She had had one male interest of which we learned little. When guests came, good looking strong and healthy men her age, sat by the bonfire and toasted marshmallows, she would join in but did not integrate with them. She told us her dream was to have a ranch out west in cowboy country. At the end of her time with us she hoped to go work at a ranch in Arizona where she had spent time living with an older woman whom she called her American Grandmother. I supposed I was another American Grandma and Jim, the Grandpa. Sophia seemed to have no interest in any men or women for that matter, she appeared asexual and childlike. Jim tried to interest her in a dating website called dateacowboy.com. She wanted a "Ranch" life, “so, marry a cowboy!” He said. We helped her make a profile, but she never wrote back to any of the cowboys. I read the profiles of the cowboys and I couldn’t blame her.

One night, her head tilted to the right, her eyes lowered, she confided in us that at 13 she was put on hormones to stop her from growing more. Already 6’2, her body was planning on reaching a height of 8’. I imagined her exiled from human sized homes where she would have to duck down to go through doorways, living in a sort of cave all by herself, wearing ill-fitting cloths that she sewed herself. We had noticed how easily she folded the large southwestern towels we gave our guests to use after they went in the hot tub. She didn’t have to put them on a table like we did; she could just reach her arms out the full length of the towel and fold. She said she had just stopped taking hormones a year ago at 23 years old. Jim and I decided that she had skipped puberty and gone right to womanhood, thus her lack of experience and interest in men. She told us, the same thing had happened to her mother, if not for the drugs she also would have been 8' tall, so mother and daughter are joined by this secret set of genes. Already at 6'4 she can barely find cloths that fit her, she just fits through doorways, if the Doctors hadn't stepped in, I don’t like to use this word, but, she would have been a freak. Jim and I speculated that the growth drugs had not only limited her vertical growth, but had kept her in a suspended childlike stage, delaying her sexual development.

One night at dinner, Jim as usual questioning her about her studies at New Paltz University where she had studied Tourism, he asked her what she will do next. We were intrigued to find out that she needed to do an internship with a tourism business.

Jim said “What about doing it here? We’re a tourism business.”

“Well, I could ask my advisor.” She said.

I thought, Brilliant Jim! We’ll be able to go away for two months like we did last year! Why hadn’t I had the guts to ask that question? It felt like a bold request, but it did fit with what she needed to do.

Over the course of the next two months, I taught Sophia everything about our business. I was a proper professor for Sophia’s internship. Though we had a farm, we did not make money from growing food or raising animals. We were at the first wave of eco-tourism. Our Farm was just a 2 hour drive from NYC. I remember the first time I came back to the city after months of living in the mountains. I saw all of the garbage on the streets and yearned for some trees to hide behind so I could pee. When I first moved onto the farm, I was fascinated by the horses. I loved it when at 10PM, buckets in hand and a dog in tow we went in search of the horses which a neighbor had called to tell us had wandered past his window on Catalpa Lane. Though city people wanted their nature fix, they also wanted style, country, Pinterest style and amenities, a hot tub, a steam shower, a designed kitchen. I knew how to word the descriptions of our farm, I knew what pictures to post and I had the patience to do it all.

CABIN ON 28 ACRE HORSE FARM, 2HOURS FROM NYC with Therapeutic Hot Tub

Guests arrived excited to meet us and to spend time on a farm, looking out at the horse pasture, taking a walk with their dog unleashed, or with their children, not worried about cars or dangerous people. We had started 12 years ago with one apartment, then a Yurt, then a Cabin, until we had 6 accommodations including a camp site made up of a boat a tent and a trailer. We had talked about doing a teepee and a tree house. The business was thriving. I had done all of planning and funded the projects and Jim had done all of the building. Neither one of us could have done it I without the other.

Sophia came into her own as manager of our Farm. She got over her shyness with the guests, she took care of the administrative work, the bookings, the emails. She was determined to help us get the sought after title of Superhost from Airbnb. We had missed it because of one cancellation and some poor reviews at the start of hosting. When our hot tub broke and we had to make excuses to the guests until the new one arrived; I began to offer them the oatmeal raisin cookies I made for Jim. Sophia began to put a plate of cookies in each guest house. She asked me to teach her the recipe.

Oatmeal raisin cookies with extra sugar and extra butter, just the way Jim liked them, she named ‘the secret weapon’. She wanted to get us the status of ‘Superhost’, even after the new hot tub arrived she continued to bake the cookies each Friday. I taught Sophia the recipe which I had to quantify since I never used an exact recipe for anything. I began with the recipe on the box of Quaker Oats. Each night for a week Sophia and I baked and chattered away, perfecting the oatmeal raisin recipe, Jim as the judge. Each time it was always more butter, more sugar. Each night a plate of freshly baked cookies was delivered to his/my room where he lay in bed watching television. The first night I brought the plate up, after that Sophia asked if she could bring him the plate. I see now that those cookies heralded the beginning of a strange bond between them.