Where are all the horses?

Years ago I was visiting my relatives at a family reunion.

We were all gathered inside at my aunt’s house. It was winter outside and there was snow covering the ground with cars traveling to and fro on the two-lane street in front of her home.

As we were all hanging around the kitchen, talking and having food & drinks, my little four-year-old nephew was staring out the living room window at the front yard. I could hear him saying, “Where are all the horses?” It was almost like he was saying it to himself but everyone could hear him and my aunt asked him what he was doing over there. He turned to all of us and repeated his question, “Where are all the horses?”

All the adults kind of chuckled under their breaths and my aunt explained to my nephew that we don’t live in the country where horses live. He responded with, Yeah, but where are all the horses?” and went back to staring out the window.

Somehow I picked up on the actual scenario my nephew was really asking about. He was remembering times-gone-by, when there were no cars and horses were the mode of transportation for everyone. I had heard and read about children remembering past lives and past identities but this was the first time I had ever seen real evidence of that phenomena.

I slipped away from the group and went over to the window with my nephew and kneeled down to his vantage point of the scene outside. I quietly spoke to him, “I heard your question about where all the horses are. Well, these days we don’t really use horses when we live near cities like here at your house. We mainly use cars for transportation here.”

He looked at me, gave a sigh of relief that someone finally explained what we really going on, and replied, “Oh… okay.”

He left the window and went back to playing with his cousins.
~BP