Mounted Warriors

A few weeks ago, Richard and I were sitting in our kitchen enjoying a cup of tea together. I'm sure we were discussing all manner of enlightened and worldly topics, because, you know, we live in England now and we have to work overtime at being scathingly brilliant and witty. Anyway, the following exchange was afloat somewhere in this scholarly conversation -- which, in all likelihood, was probably about New York City real estate and/or KitchenAid mixers.

Richard looked at me and said:

I responded:

I suddenly realized that Richard expected me to say more on the topic of his mother's birthday. But what?

This was getting awkward.

My sudden realization of what was expected of me, and my relief that it wasn't "Mark, plan my mother's surprise birthday party" meant that I may have seemed oddly eager to make a card for Richard's mom. 

Rosemary and I had met twice before, but I didn't glean enough information from those visits to know what kind of drawing my de facto mother-in-law would appreciate. I asked Richard about her interests, but we quickly decided to avoid the minefield of my making her a card that catered to her fondness for theological study.

Fortunately, a topic that was perfectly benign and uncontroversial came to my mind:

Done. I had my inspiration.

A couple of days later, Richard's mother received this in the mail: