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80-1 … 91-1

80-1 … 91-1

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When I wrote Saturday’s post, which only alluded to the Derby, I didn’t know what a Derby it would be. Didn’t know that friends and family would be calling and texting to share their amazement. Didn’t know that Rich Strike, the horse with the second-longest odds ever, would win the race. 

What I had forgotten until my brother reminded me yesterday was that the horse who won with the longest odds ever was Donerail, 91-1, named for Donerail Station in Scott County, Kentucky. It’s a horse I’ve heard about since I was a child, a horse Mom would have bet on, for sure, if only she had been alive and of betting age at the time (1913). 

As the descendants of both Donnellys and Scotts, as the proud daughter of a long-shot bettor, as a fan of hopeless causes everywhere, Rich Strike, I salute you!

A Diller, A Dollar

A Diller, A Dollar

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When my children were young, I used to read them this Mother Goose rhyme:

 “A diller, a dollar, a 10 o’clock scholar. What makes you come so soon? You used to come at 10 o’clock, and now you come at noon.”

I feel like this blog is becoming the 10 o’clock scholar — if I hurry, that is. If I don’t, it will be the 11 o’clock scholar. 

The non 9-to-5 world, of which I have recently become a member, is good for leisurely mornings. Which is not to say I don’t have plenty of to-dos. It’s just that they can less hurriedly be to-done.

(These ducks don’t seem to be in much of a hurry either.)

Russian Rhumba

Russian Rhumba

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We lost Dad eight years ago today. He was spared the pandemic, the University of Kentucky’s Thursday night loss to the St. Peter Peacocks in the first round of NCAA basketball, and now, the worst street fighting in Europe since World War II. 

I wondered this morning, what he would say about Ukraine? I imagine he would think we should be doing more, but he would also recognize the difficulty and delicacy of the U.S. position.

I do know he would be retelling one of his favorite WWII stories, about the time he visited Mirgorod as part of the shuttle bombing missions known as Operation Frantic. 

Dad was in the second of those runs, which departed England on June 21, 1944, part of a task force that included 114 B-17 bombers and 70 P-51 fighters, which Dad (and many others) called “little friends.” I probably owe my existence to these little friends since their addition to the war halted the unsustainable losses of the heavy bombers and their crews. 

Dad’s plane, part of the 95th Bomb Group, landed in Mirgorod, which, as Dad later wrote in an article he called “Russian Rhumba” published in a bomb group newsletter, proved to be a good decision. The 43 B-17s that landed in Poltava were destroyed in an overnight raid by the Luftwaffe, and, says Dad, “it didn’t take a Ph.D. in foreign affairs from Harvard to see the outrageous deception of our Russian allies.” 

Dad ended up flying deeper into the Ukrainian section of the Soviet Union, landing in what was then known as Kharkov and spending a few days with Russian soldiers. One of them “wanted to exchange firearms with me,” Dad wrote. “I was wearing a G.I. 45 and he was wearing a Russian issue. Needless to say, I had to say nyet to that proposal.”

Reading this story, so full of “Dad’isms” that make me smile and cry at the same time, is a good thing to do today, when our hearts reach out to the descendants of those people my father met so many years ago.

The Lexingtonians

The Lexingtonians

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Yesterday’s memorial service paid tribute to a husband, son, brother, uncle, cousin and friend. But most of all, it paid tribute to an artist.

My cousin Pat was a painter, musician and filmmaker. He was, as many recalled, a man who created the life he wanted to live … and managed to live it in the town where he was born.

I think many of us in the audience thought about our own lives, weighed them against his, measured the tradeoffs, the staying put versus the leaving.  

My cousin Brian, Pat’s brother, summed it up best when he spoke: “Today I’m not just proud to be a brother, I’m proud to be a Lexingtonian.”

And though the family members in attendance now reside in Brussels, Paris, California, New York, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio,  Maryland and D.C.,  yesterday we were all Lexingtonians. 

The Coffee Table

The Coffee Table

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When my children were young I remember how pleasant it was at the end of the day to pick up toys and tidy up the house. I knew it wouldn’t last more than an hour or so after they woke up the next day, but for a few blissful hours I could float around in a state of order. 

Now that there are toddlers in my life again, I’m remembering what it felt like to live, even thrive, in the midst of complete pandemonium. There’s a letting go that is probably healthy, though it may not feel that way at the time. 

Take the coffee table. I’m sitting beside it right now, and though most of the weekend’s disorder has been put to rights, I haven’t yet re-stacked the magazines. I can still see Bernadette’s sweet face as she palmed the slick covers and slid them off one by one. What power! What glee! 

There’s a reason why the magazines are still jumbled. The better to imagine those sweet kiddos, their arms around my neck, their heads on my shoulder. 

The Big Picture

The Big Picture

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As the sky slowly lightens on this Valentine’s Day, I think of all the ones who are dear to me.

The little ones and the big ones, the old ones and the young ones (including a great niece born on Saturday!), the human ones and the furred and feathered ones, the ones who are no longer with us, too.

Happy is the day set aside for love and chocolate, so today I resolve to keep the big picture in mind. 

And that is, and always will be, love.

The Morning After

The Morning After

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It’s difficult to get the blog up and going the day after a big birthday celebration. Heading into its teenage years it’s needing a lot of sleep — and getting rather surly about picking up after itself, too. 

So I’ve spent the morning cleaning up confetti and collecting empty champagne bottles.

These are crucial years ahead, years requiring firmness and guidance. I don’t want the blog skidding off the rails. 

I’ve done this three times before, I tell myself. I can do it again. 😊

 (Photo: Pippx, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. And just for the record, I think this is the first time I’ve used an emoji in the blog. I won’t make a habit of it.)

Farewell to the Office

Farewell to the Office

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Long ago, a family of three moved into a house that was far too large for them. In fact, even to say it was a family of three was pushing it. This was a mom, a dad and a six-month-old baby. The house, while not palatial, seemed so to us at the time. We rattled around in the four bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths. We parked a playpen in the living room, and put our dining room furniture in the, uh, dining room.

Except the dining room was barely big enough for a party of six, which we learned our first Thanksgiving when we had to turn the table diagonally to fit everyone in.

Meanwhile, the family of three became a family of four and then five. The dining room filled with toys, the hutch moved into the living room, and at some point it became official: the dining room was now … the playroom.

It remained that way for a decade or so, when I vacated the upstairs office I’d happily occupied to give each daughter a room of her own and moved down to this room, which absorbed two tall bookshelves and a “desk” (a hollow door laid across two filing cabinets). The office it has been these many years, also an ersatz den with a comfy couch — and a doggie haven.

Today, we move all the furniture and rip out the carpet. Tomorrow, a team of experts (my sister and brother) will help lay new flooring. The desk will be gone, and a new dining table moved in. The office is dead … long live the dining room!

Welcome Fog

Welcome Fog

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I woke up to a meteorological marvel, at least in these parts, something we seldom see around here. Morning fog is a soft way to begin the day; it blurs the edges of the world. It may also be giving the groundhog the conditions it needs to predict an early spring, but I won’t count on that.

For now, I’m content to look out my study window at birds perching on the chicken wire, awaiting their turn at the feeder. At the squirrels, hatching their next plan to commandeer the suet block. At the red fox, skulking behind the covered garden bench at the far end of the yard.

Every time I glimpse that bench, which is often, I think for a moment that I’m seeing the tiny playhouse we had when the children were small. It has the same outline, the same lightness against the dark green backdrop of the fencerow. 

But that place was torn down long ago, my girls are all grown up with families of their own. And I’m welcoming the fog, which promises a soft beginning to this new day.

Mom in Manhattan

Mom in Manhattan

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It is February 1, 2022, what would have been Mom’s 96th birthday. On this day, as on several previous February 1sts, I cede this space to the person who inspired me first, and inspires me still. In this post, written in 1994, Mom describes a snowy Manhattan and muses on what the city meant to her.

I have been snowbound in New York now for several days. I look out the window on 27th Street and watch the snow pile up. Hardy New Yorkers trudge through the ever-deepening snow. 

At home in Lexington when it snows, we rarely see a car drive down Colonial Drive and almost never see anyone venture out on foot. Here it is so different. The attitude is “nothing will stop us, even 18 inches of snow.” That must be a part of the chemistry that makes New York City what it is. 

I wish I had lived my life in New York City. It excites me as no other place has. There’s never been a time when I was ready to leave. And each time I have left, there’s been a little bit of myself that’s stayed behind.

(Photo: Vincent Paul, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)