I know, I know, it’s been a while. Good to see you again. It’s been a depressing year, but I’m back maybe not regularly. I’m working on it. What follows is another of those Girlie On the Edge six-sentence blog challenge posts. The challenge word is Rodeo.

My youngest son and I took Grandma to her last rodeo; she must have been 97 or 98.

Life had been tough, one baby had died at two weeks, her son had died young and her daughter was dying an inch at a time—so she didn’t laugh much; didn’t cry either.

You know, a rodeo’s a rodeo and she’d seen many, but then they trotted out the wild cow race.

For those of you who don’t know, a wild cow race involves organizing a few teams of racers, letting a bunch of cows loose, and then chasing them down with saddles and bridles, saddling them, bridling them, and riding them (one team member) back to the starting point.

You can imagine the potential for mayhem with a bunch of old range cows—the stubborn refusal to be caught, the foot-setting refusal to lead, the running up and down the arena, the bucking, the spills, and so on.

Half-way through the race, I looked over at Grandma, a woman I hadn’t seen laugh in years, and tears were running down her cheeks, she was holding her sides, laughing like it was the last day of her life and she was going to get the most out of it.