Maggie and the pit ponies

Margaret, called Maggie, turned sixty today and as she tidies the already clean house, fretting about till satisfied finally she sits, smoothing a wisp of graying hair fallen across her forehead. Sighing, she turns pensive as often and is overwhelmed by the same litany of thoughts the ones by which she assures herself- he isn't such a bad man not like others I've known he isn't deliberatly cruel, he's a hard worker and doesn't beat me and I'm reasonably sure he's been faithful.. It's just that he's in love with the bottle often seemingly more than he is with me. And then his slurred words echo As an afterthought to her ponderances. The same pathetic question, "Why don't you leave me"? "Why do you stay "? And she knows that the answer lies in a simple story told her by her grandfather some thirty years before. A story from the coal minining hills in the Old Country. This was before mechanization her grandfather told her, and so horses were used for the heaviest work, such as hauling coal wagons. They worked the mines from dawn to dusk and at night were put in their stalls. All their lives they knew nothing but work, darkness, and confinement. But, and here is the gist of the story- each year, always on the first of May, despite the weather- (whether it rained or the sun was shining brightly). the horses were allowed one day of freedom they'd be taken to a nearby field to trot and cavort and breathe the balmy spring air. And Maggie can picture them. kicking up clods of dirt with their hooves, snorting in the freshness of freedom. And she understands the bitter sweetness, the heady rush of the brief reprieve but with the certainty that tommorrow another year will begin in the dark, dank bowels of hell. But more, she understands that this is really a fable, one from which she's gleaned a lesson. and that these tough Darmoor, Shetland and Welsh Mountain ponies have taught her and shown her the answer to her husband's questions. That, after all that she's been through before meeting him an existence in the ugly mine of her crazy life- of hunger, of never enough, of struggling and scraping to get by... Now, with him, even with his shortcomings she will gladly have her day of spring although she can never tell- whether the sun will shine brightly or the rain pour down.