Nancy Shulins - Falling for Eli: How I Lost Heart, Then Gained Hope Through the Love of a Singular Horse

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Table of Contents

PRAISE FOR Falling for Eli:

Falling for Eli is a deeply touching memoir, a refreshing and lyrical homage to love and new definitions of motherhood. Shulins is a smart, funny guide on this voyage of discovery and rediscovery, and her 1,200-pound baby Eli will steal your heart.

Scott Kraft, Senior Editor, Los Angeles Times

Love comes in all sizes and shapes, and Nancy Shulins opens our hearts to endless possibilities with her endearing, beautifully woven story of life with Eli. This book is sure to become a classic, and well always want to know what Eli will do next.

Dolores Barclay, author, and Arts Editor, The Associated Press

ALSO BY NANCY SHULINS:

Every Day I Love You More (Just Not Today):
Lessons in Loving One Person for Life

For Christee: gifted trainer,
patient teacher, loyal friend.
If not for you, this equestrian would
undoubtedly be a pedestrian.

AUTHORS NOTE

THIS IS A TRUE STORY. I have depicted the events, conversations, and people involved based on my best recollections of them, though I have changed some of the names and identifying details to protect privacy. Although conflict is part of the story, as it is part of life, the perspective that comes with the passing of time has led me to the realization that everyone in these pages has given me something of value. All have been my teachers, and for that, I am thankful.

PROLOGUE

AUTUMN 1996

I CAN STILL PICTURE THE CARROT CAKE, a rich triple-decker affair studded with raisins and crowned with glossy clouds of whipped cream. I close my eyes and Im back in my neighbors living room up the block on a spectacular Indian summer afternoon, surrounded by girlfriends in blazers and boots. Business casual, someone had said, still afresh concept back then.

Before me, a pile of presents teeters precariously. As I work my way through them, my friend Alex snatches each bow and sticks it to a paper plate Im made to wear on my head for good luck.

Gift-wise, theyre all here, all the classics: The colorful plastic pail filled with bath towels and sponges; the stylish tote bag stocked with wipes, swabs, and creams. There are soft, fleecy things, padded things, clever things with Velcro straps, things I have lusted after for a very long time.

One minute Im laughing, the next Im in tears, over everything from the cake to the gifts, thanking my friends repeatedly for having done this for me, for understanding how much this ritual means.

Were all a bit loopedchampagne in broad daylight will do thatand though Im happy to wear the ridiculous ribbon hat, I draw the line at letting them measure my stomach.

This isnt the party I pictured all the years I secretly dreamed of this day, little fantasies that helped me endure every painful procedure that got me to where I am now. Someday, Id tell myself, while being biopsied, inseminated, or injected with dye, this part will be over, and my friends and I will celebrate over mini-cupcakes in a room filled with spray roses and alphabet blocks.

This late in the game, though, only the friends are the same. Theyre the women who held their breath and my hand while I struggled to achieve what had come so effortlessly for them: Katie, with her four children; Nancy with three; Claire and Alex, with two apiece; Amy with one.

Their babies grew to be babysitters while I ran my obstacle course again and again, racing from injection to injection, ultrasound to ultrasound, miscarriage to miscarriage, until now.

I savor each bite and linger over each gift, but as November afternoons tend to do, this one comes to an end much too soon. I blot my eyes with a Winnie the Pooh napkin and propose a final toast: To new life and old friends.

Then I walk home with my treasures, asking myself: Is this real?

And the answer comes back: Yes and no.

Like the pictures that change when you tilt the card theyve been printed on, I have only to shift my viewing angle ever so slightly for the diaper pail to morph into a feed bucket, the changing pad into a saddle pad.

And with that, my baby shower reverts to a bridle shower.

Because it isnt a boy or a girl. Its a gelding.

My very own 1,254-pound bundle of joy.

one

SPRING 1995

LETTING GO OF A DREAM IS A PROCESS, a series of openings and closings of the hand, as you watch the magic dust youve been cradling so carefully trickle away in thin streams. Its a progression, one that cannot be rushed. The key is to practice losing a bit at a time, lest you fall apart when you see its all gone.

I spilled the first of my dust in my doctors office on a sunny spring morning in 1995, after yet another ultrasound failed to locate a heartbeat where just a week earlier there had been two.

I let loose another trickle a couple of months later, after an obligatory meeting with the head of the egg-donor program at Yale. My doctor wanted me to hear all the options and so, like a dutiful daughter, I went. But my husband and I were already in debt after years of infertility treatments, and the cost of a donor egg, plus in vitro fertilization, was well beyond our reach.

Even if we could have afforded it, I felt too gun-shy to undergo yet another procedure with no guarantee of results. If my goal was a babyany babydidnt it make more sense to start with one already born? A friends sister had recently adopted a beautiful Chinese baby girl. Neither the cost nor the red tape involved had discouraged me from elaborate fantasies of following suit.

My husband, however, was another story. My wonderful husband, whod been ambivalent about kids from the start, had made it clear all along that adoption was a bridge too far. I couldnt fault him. As it was, Mark had been unfailingly supportive and sympathetic, administering my nightly shots, producing semen even before his morning coffee, and comforting me over each failed attempt.

The sad truth is that wed come a little late to the baby business. I was thirty-six; Mark, a year older. For the first four years of our marriage, wed focused on our careers and each other. I never expected my priorities to shift as abruptly and drastically as they did, in a manner that was less rational decision than biological imperative.

Living in Fairfield County, Connecticut, was like living in a fertility theme park. I was surrounded by pregnant women and women with babies. Watching Mark with his three brothers children only inflamed my ever-increasing baby lust. As an uncle, he was a naturalgentle, playful, and inventive. Anyone could see how great a father he would be.

But by the time I was ready to consider adopting other peoples babies, the bulk of our married agenda had been dictated by our struggle to reproduce. There has to be more to life than that, Mark said.

Although I was far from convinced, it was clearly time to find out. To be fair, the plus side of my ledger was not exactly empty. In addition to my marriage, I had a demanding and fulfilling job writing national features for the Associated Press in New York City, where Mark worked as a supervising editor. I had Jake, my beautiful Labrador retriever. Born the very day of my first miscarriage, hed been my constant companion and gentle web-footed nurse ever since.

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