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 mezair 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.

From beneath all of that mascara, I see two little girls squeezed up against the rail. They have bows in their hair, bows on their floral summer dresses, and they are holding hands. Their eyes are as big as saucers as they watch horse and woman sail past. The Warm Blood and I hurtle forward, and there's no looking back. At their age, I barely opened my mouth. I was the Amazing Invisible Girl. The Death Defying Crucible of Silence. Trained for my Totally Understated Super Solo Performance by the very ones who said they loved me.

But in the case of this glorious diva on horseback, my mouth would have been hanging wide open just like theirs are too.

I want you to know.

At the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, beneath a sky laden with helium balloons, I perform a shoulder stand on the back of the vaulting horse. The arena speakers blare Prokofiev--Romeo and Juliet. Although at 45, I'm far past the star-crossed lover stage of my life.

Watching from the stands, as I sit backwards on the horse's arched neck, is my slightly bemused husband with whom I've shared six of the best years I've ever had. In my life. Period. I can pick him out of the crowd with his sea blue eyes and signature Stetson. He's kicked back on the top bleacher with my kids, who truly don't remember life without him. I don't tell them that there's a lot I'd rather not remember or ever think about again. At nine and ten, they like to tell me, much to my delight, that I'm not like any of the other moms.