★ 2023-08-03
Donley-Hayes reflects on her late friend and their lifelong relationship forged by their mutual love of horses.
“For Lash’s thirty-sixth, and final, birthday, I gave her a bullet-point list chronicling our lives together.” So begins the author’s memoir, a love letter to two of the dearest things in her life: Leslie (who changed her name to Ashley, then shortened it to Lash), whom the author calls “my best friend, confidant, sister I never had and true soul mate,” and horses. Physically, the two friends were opposites—Donley-Hayes describes herself as “obese,” while Lash was tall and lanky. Their relationship “evolved from summertime playmates to genuine friends, spending our summers riding or dreaming about horses, ogling boys, or weekends at Geauga Lake…” Their time together, tragically cut short by Lash’s death from breast cancer, was emotionally fraught, culminating in the author’s nightmares about preparing her dearest friend’s body for her casket. The constant in their lives was horses, which offer tailor-made life lessons that Donley-Hayes does not belabor. She and Lash shared the mantra “If you’re going to ride, you’re going to fall.” She continues, “We rode, and we fell. Always, we would get back on. We were there for each other in the days and weeks after those falls, when we first stuck foot in stirrup and climbed aboard again, small victories over the quivering infinite undercurrent of fear.” Donley-Hayes’ grappling with profound feelings of love, friendship, and loss will certainly resonate with those who share similar bonds in their lives. Those who love horses will easily identify with the author’s passion: “Woven throughout my entire life with Lash,” Donley-Hayes evocatively writes, “are horses, soft and strong and constant, different horses striding in and striding out through the years, a shimmering, sentient carousel, breathing, pulsing, rhythmic.”
A moving, horse-loving memoir that will speak even to non-riders.
