At last count, my daughter owned 47 horses. They include a white Arabian stallion, a Morgan, a dozen race horses, a Palomino quarter horse, several foals and roping and saddle horses and a matched pair of Black Stallions. Most were in good shape, though some betrayed the nicks, scratches and occasional broken legs, ears and tails that result from intense love. Before handing over our house as a sublet several years ago, my daughter and I counted and arranged her model horses on the shelves of her closet so that each faced the door, poised to greet her when she returned in five months.

Would she adore them still, I wondered? At the time, she was twelve going on twenty. Or so it seemed as her body lengthened and her thoughts shifted and she began to put away the “childish things” that every child has done since before St. Paul coined the phrase. I know. When I was a girl, I had a similar collection. More than the Suzy Home Maker oven or the bicycle or the Barbie and her sports car, model horses were the toys I most loved.

My (now ex)husband and I began buying plastic horses for my daughter before she started school. Her favorites were made by Breyer, which, since the 1950s, has created thousands of variations. Horses trotting, horses grazing, horses rearing. The models were initially manufactured as decorations for mantel clocks, but as toys retail today for $20 or more. The stable, as we began to call it, was no small investment. We even acquired an actual stable, thanks to generous grandparents. As many stables belonging to little girls must, the structure was immediately named “Shadowfax Stables” after the wild white stallion that carries the wizard Gandalf through Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

My daughter could be convinced to accept cheaper brands as long as the models were realistic (no pink manes or glitter) without being macabre (no animal-hair horses from China). Each acquisition involved days of careful selection. She would mull and weigh equine qualities. Would she choose “Secretariat,” with his chestnut gleam and history of race wins? Or would she, a connoisseur of the exotic, settle on “The Shire,” anonymous, but impressive for its feathered hocks and powerful rump? Usually, a particular model’s packaged history was less important to her than the utility of its pose. She could be cajoled into “Cincinnati” (General Ulysses S. Grant’s favorite mount), since he was firmly standing. But no amount of story-telling could convince her to choose “Bucephalus,” the mount that carried Alexander the Great to empire, since he was rearing with ears flattened menacingly to his skull. Playability was key, not renown. To love a horse, my daughter had to be able to place it within the long and intricate narratives she constructed as she whispered to herself on the fields of her room.

With certain friends, play dates began with the arrival of a pillow case jutting with noses and hooves. The girls mixed and matched herds or even lent them. To this day, a mysterious carriage lies under a futon in my daughter’s room. We have too many quarter horses. Someone else’s “Seattle Slew” is in permanent recovery on a book shelf, with a Barbaro-like leg unhappily splinted with Crazy Glue. Occasionally, the murmur of play would be pierced by shrieks of delight, as girls galloped out of the house and into the yard with their mounts grasped in their hands. More than once, I peeked in as they experimented with sexual subplots. Always, the intricacy of relationships was the place where the girls explored, with the alliances between Starlight and Flash and “Flame the Island Stallion” forged and severed and forged anew.

When she was a little older, my daughter's interests turned to real horses. She wanted riding lessons. Again, I remembered this from my childhood. Once a week, my father drove me to the only ring near my suburban Chicago home. I can still name my mounts: piebald Chester and Moonlight Serenade and Smoky, who once tossed me into the fence I had meant to jump. Then I made him jump the fence clean. I can still feel the grit of ring dust in my teeth and the feeling of absolute terror, then absolute joy when I turned him to do it again and again. On one Canadian vacation, my father, brother and I rented three horses and rode guideless on the Alberta plain, as fast as we could. I still remember the name of the horse my father rode: Thumper. With a backdrop of snow-capped peaks, we rode like Mongols toward Venetian treasure. I never laughed so hard.

Horses taught me fear and the mastery of fear, dread and the mastery of dread. And joy. Utter, pure joy. On horseback, I controlled power, lift and speed, like a jet pilot, with my instruments a leather strap, a saddle and the bit. I was bigger than my body. I could go faster and jump higher than I could alone. Like all animals, horses can be dumb or canny, loving or mean. I was dumped, bit, waited for, nuzzled, stepped on, ignored, played with and tolerated. I learned to cope. I learned to ride through weakness. Through horses, I glimpsed freedom like a light at the end of my childhood.

Much has been written about the supposed sexual bond between girls and horses. I’ve always thought this chauvinistic and lacking in imagination. What horses taught me was something larger and more powerful. Within me was the ability to shape and use the world; fear was a city, knowable, and it could be traversed for great rewards on the other side.

I also learned that riding is a rich person’s sport. My family was not rich. I was a child of the suburbs, with small lawns and credit card cares. My love of riding became suffused with an adult awareness that isn’t so pretty: we couldn’t afford to keep me in lessons. Without warning, my father left my mother. Never a rider herself, my mother moved for a time to the city of her bedroom, where she cried day after day. I got a job. The house was sold. I bunked with my sister in the tiny bedroom of a condo. Truthfully, I don’t know where most of my childhood possessions went. Like my daughter’s herd, my horses were too loved to be anyone’s collectible: too many scratches, too many broken bones. I imagine the horses went into the trash.

Fort a time, my daughter rode during the summer. When we travelled, trail rides were arranged. My daughter is timider rider than me. She has never fallen or been thrown, as I have. Yet on horseback, I saw her taking those necessary steps towards adulthood. They came fast, as they must. Instead of happiness, what I feel mostly is melancholy. I am seeing a child slowly vanish. I don’t know what will replace her. Each stage of raising her has been astonishing, full of wonders and mysterious; but she was always right there, beside me, to admire. This fall, she goes to college. Too soon, the process of raising children will have been just a stage for me, something that resides in my past, not unlike the memories of my own childhood.

The page turns softly, but with devastating effect.

Love for a child is like nothing else. It ruined me, frankly, for some of life’s finer things: travel without guilt, splurges with the emergency fund, dangerous flings. That’s one thing"What to Expect..." doesn't warn about. Of course, in return, parenthood gives you more riches than can be listed in any book. Truthfully, I don’t want the adventure to end. I have a selfish reasons for this. Ahead, I perceive a dark terminus. Her maturity is my decline. I am living my best years now.

Several times, I tried to recreate for my daughter my glorious ride in Alberta. On one visit to Manhattan, we discovered that Claremont Stables rents horses and requires no guide to accompany riders on Central Park’s bridal trails. Amazed, we rode our mounts out of their studio-like stalls, then let them take us right on 89^th and down 90th Street to the park. My heart was in my teeth. I worried about every horn blare and drifting plastic bag. But the horses were accustomed to bustle. Mine, Quasar, was white and broke out in hives with too much confinement, a true Manhattanite. Once under the trees, we walked, then tried a gentle trot. By the end of the hour, we cantered at every break in the Sunday crowd, our mounts great steam engines in the autumn chill. It was glorious. My daughter was as happy as I had ever seen her.

Soon afterwards, the Claremont closed, a loss that aches every time I return to Central Park. For awhile, I thought about taking up riding again myself. I would be one of those older ladies who has to limit her time in the saddle due to failing knees. Then I toted up the time needed to drive to a stable and the expense and the worry that my good memories would be tainted by any attempt to turn back the clock. My riding career, like the Claremont horses, is an artifact, perhaps best enjoyed in memory.

Besides, there’s nothing quite like having a horse to yourself on an open plain, with nothing but good judgment in your way. While traveling in Peru several years ago, we had our most thrilling ride. Usually, the Peruvian disdain for safety precautions makes me break out in a sweat. Working there as a journalist in the early 1990s, what I most feared, more than guerrilla or political violence, was being hit by bus and having pedestrians fastidiously cover my lifeless body with pages from the day’s newspaper. But in a resort hotel on the barren southern coast, that heedlessness worked in my favor. We took horses onto the dunes overlooking the Pacific south of Ica. The horses pranced and pulled at their elaborate bridles. The guide informed us that the horses were expecting to run, so we’d better get to it. My daughter had an elegant, aged Paso Fino named Galeno. I rode his more robust son, Tornado. With no more than a verbal urge, Tornado made it clear that his name was well-chosen. On sand as smooth as butter, no fall could possibly harm us. We flew, with the sea sparkling to the west and nothing, absolutely nothing to block our way. It was like riding air, their gait piston smooth. Tears flew out of my eyes. I could not stop laughing. My daughter’s mount could not stand to see his son ahead. His ropey muscles pulled him ahead. Tornado took the challenge.

I glanced at my daughter and drank in her expression: tense, elated, fearful, amazed. The space was without visible end. I was eager for it. Then she called to me to slow down. Model horses and stable ponies don’t race the dunes. She was still more girl than woman. With regret – but without hesitation – I did.