When I was a child, travelling in the car with my parents en route to our holiday destination, my mother used to say ‘if you see a white horse, hold your breath, make a wish, but don’t tell anyone what it is you’re hoping for’. So I hoped first for a white horse to appear, then when one eventually did, what I hoped for in secret was very simple – just for fun on the holiday, without being teased too much by my big brother.
For years, I remembered to make a wish on a white horse, and, although I soon forgot the part about holding my breath, it still felt like making a wish helped make those hopes come true. I wondered if everyone knew about making a wish when you see a white horse, or whether it was just a tradition in our family. But I didn’t ask, tell anybody else about wishing on white horses or what I hoped for when I made those wishes.
I eventually married a lovely man, who already had children from his first marriage, and the first time we had them to stay with us in the summer holidays, I looked eagerly for a white horse so that I could make a wish very similar to the one I used to make when I was younger. I just hoped that we would all get along, that the Scottish weather would be kind and that we would all have a lovely time together.
Simple wishes, maybe, but the kids loved the holiday and so did we, so we began a new family custom which saw us all return to the same place every summer. And every year, to my delight, there was a white horse in a field by the side of the road, so that I could repeat my wishes for family harmony and happiness.
Decades later, I was reminiscing with my mother about what she’d told me when I was young. She reminded me that as a child I’d been very talkative (I still am) – so much so, she said, that she’d come up with the idea of getting me to hold my breath, purely to keep me quiet for a few moments.
At the time she was telling me this, I just laughed it off. But inside, I was upset that by telling me, she’d spoiled the simple pleasure I still felt in making a wish on a white horse, and it felt as if the hopes I'd treasured were also somehow less...special? Valued? Heard? I couldn’t quite put it into words, but the feeling was almost like a betrayal.
I stopped wishing on white horses.
But after a while, I decided that whatever my mum had said and done when I was young should not control my reactions as an adult, and that what she said to me as an adult, I should not allow to upset me. My relationship with my mother has not always been easy. My brother struggles with their connection too. But she’s a very old lady now – a centenarian, who is not going to change her ways. I just hope that in the time that’s left for her, we can all find some family harmony. That’s not too big a thing to hope for, is it?