My Biggest Secret: I Want to Join the Circus

You'd never guess if you saw me in the grocery store or at school dropping off my kids. If you found yourself waiting next to me in line at the bank, and if you were mildly curious about a middle-aged woman in blue jeans and riding boots, you still wouldn't discover it. Even if the guy in front of us was refinancing his house, and we stood there all afternoon. I don't wear my secret like some cheap perfume. The secret affairs of my heart leave the room when I do. My secret is the stuff of the Duty-Free Shop. Better than Clive Christian No. 1 at $2,300 a bottle. It's so decadent that it might even be French.

So after that grandiose buildup, which is exactly how anyone with my particular brand of secret would have to begin, I give it to you without further adieu.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to join the circus.

I want to be a rosin-back rider, standing on the back of a cantering horse with a flaming plume on his head. I want to dazzle you until you think I am super stupendous and terrific and fabulously awe-inspiring with my handsome trick horse who towers above me in levade on rippling hindquarters center ring. I want to throw my hands in the air, palms upturned, whip dangling from my fingertips, awaiting your applause and offer you a spectacular smile that outshines all of the rhinestones on my gaudy spangled circus costume.

I want you to say, "Look!"

I squeeze myself into a jewel blue unitard and vault on an Iberian Warm Blood horse in front of the VIP stands at the Horse Park on a Saturday afternoon. As the horse canters on the 20-meter circle before the jam packed tents, I sit sidesaddle, one leg draped over the vaulting surcingle handle, toes pointed down so hard it hurts, sweeping the faces of the audience with an outstretched hand, chin held high as Epona's.