From Two to Sixty-Two excerpt The intro:

The Horse He Rode In On:
From Two to Sixty-two

By

Dee Jordan







The scent of Bourbon, Youth Dew and cigarette smoke permeated the air. I was playing with my toy horses under the curved part of the huge Formica bar that served as our dining table. It was mint green lined with shiny aluminum. My whinnying and snorting annoyed my parents.
My mom and dad had given me a coloring book to keep me busy. Unable to get a baby sitter for that night when they had guests, they figured it would occupy me for at least thirty minutes. I would turn three in five more days, and I already colored within the lines. Soon I got bored and tried talking to the grown-ups. My dad drew a horse’s head on a napkin and handed it to me. They counted on my persistence to make it look like a horse, my favorite thing in the whole world. There I was in my Shirley Temple dark curls with red jeans and black cowboy boots. I came back in about ten minutes with an exact replica of that horse’s head and handed it to my dad.
“Dee, you need to find something else to color,” said my dad who seemed frustrated that I’d returned with that drawing so soon.
“Why Dee, you’re an artist. Look at that, it’s so lifelike,” said Mrs. Palmer.
Mama frowned, “Dee, we told you the grown-ups are visiting and for you to stay in your room. Now get back in there before I give you a whipping.”
The odd thing about it was that fifty-nine years later—I vividly remembered this as if it were yesterday.
My parents could never acknowledge my artistic ability or how much I loved horses. There were many horses in my life as a child, but although my parents owned a movie camera, there were none of me with any of my horses in them. Even in their photos, I’m only in the background out of focus behind their friends at their parties.
Thus went my young life.
My love for horses and my ability to draw them made the feeling of loneliness bearable. Whenever we rode anywhere in the car, I’d imagine myself on a horse galloping along beside the car, jumping ditches, brush and fallen logs, which kept me preoccupied.

Thanks to those fine old movies, the day of my birthday, I rode a stick horse around the back yard in my panties and undershirt. I remembered this because I watched the movies over and over. The next scene in the movie showed me in my lacy party dress with white shoes and socks, like getting ready for Easter, and I didn’t remember that part at all, but what I recall about that day was a man leading a horse up to the back yard. I knew my dream was coming true—I was getting a horse for my birthday! Excitement couldn’t begin to explain how I felt.
Then my daddy said, “Whose horse is this?”
“Mine!” rang out two voices. Of course one was mine, but the other was my friend Jeanne DeWitt. She squinted her dark eyes to see who had answered when it was indeed her pony. From that day on, we became best friends. She was as horse crazy as I was.