Life Can Be a Chukker

by Candace Wade

Liv Fun: Vol 6 – Issue 4

I ride, at age 63, in spite of two hip replacements. I quest for opportunities to mount horses. Then I write about them. This vocation may be “finger nails on the chalkboard” for those whose primary goal past a certain age is to work on their legacy. (Manson, 2015) An exclusive pursuit of “making my legacy endure” feels forlorn to me. I don’t feel that I am done creating myself. I’d rather hit myself over the head with a brick.

My credo is to keep my juices flowing by challenging (or, in some cases, scaring the hell out of) myself. I do it on horseback.

Who Is This Woman? 

I sprouted in the suburbs of Los Angeles during the “baby boom” ’50s. I was 45 when my husband and I transplanted from San Francisco (with all the urbanity that implies) to rural Middle Tennessee (with all the stereotypes that implies). The bucolic adventure captured my imagination. Yet, if I was going to give up authentic Chinese food, I thought I should replace it with … not fried okra, but an indigenous activity.

Maybe I’ll learn to ride horses.

Just How Does One Become a Horse Slut?

I didn’t (and don’t) own a horse. I found that I would (and still will) do almost anything to throw my leg over a saddle. That includes driving great distances — on a road that looks like a goat path; paying tidy sums for lessons; offering to muck out stalls and, maybe, to sweep spider webs out of hay lofts. That’s my definition of a horse slut.

After years of sporadic saddle time under my stretchy jeans, I tested my less-than-Olympic-level skills in horse-focused active travel — a haunted Halloween trail ride on forest paths and cobbled-streets of tiny towns in County Offaly, Ireland …

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Liv Fun

by Leisure Care
Winter 2017
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Life Can Be a Chukker
by Candace Wade

I ride, at age 63, in spite of two hip replacements. I quest for opportunities to mount horses. Then I write about them. This vocation may be “finger nails on the chalkboard” for those whose primary goal past a certain age is to work on their legacy. My credo is to keep my juices flowing by challenging myself. I do it on horseback.

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Dividing the Spoils
by Skye Moody

Is that thunder I hear, or me pounding my head against a doorframe? Crack. Crack. Crack. Until my niece pulls me away, and by then I’ve bequeathed myself a football player’s concussion. I don’t remember driving home. Later that evening, my younger sister phones to apologize for what she said, cruel words that triggered the head-banging.

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How to Live to 120
by Nancy Gertz

At the age of 97, Irving Silverman is emphatic that he’s not done with living. It’s going to take much longer to finish “giving back,” he proclaims. I had the pleasure of interviewing Irving after a recent profile in the Boston Globe featured his new book, Aging Wisely … Wisdom of Our Elders, a compelling collection of essays by 75 seniors and selected experts in aging.

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