On a walk through my parents’ old neighborhood in Lexington, where I sniff deeply of the mown grass to see if I can detect the scent of home.
It’s there, I know it is, though I can’t put my finger on exactly what’s different.
Is it the bluegrass, full of calcium from the limestone-rich soil?
Is it the way the light strikes the lawns and releases an aroma?
Or is it knowing that the bones of my ancestors lie in cemeteries just miles away?
A photo finish was just what we needed yesterday, or at least just what I needed. A chance to lose the self in the moment, the moment being the “most exciting two minutes in sports,” the Kentucky Derby.
In this case, those two minutes were followed by several more minutes of uncertainty as judges studied a photograph of the race’s conclusion, the first time since 1996 that such a move has been necessary. When the ruling came down — Mystik Dan by a nose — the crowd erupted. The 18-1 shot had bested Sierra Leone (9-2) and Forever Young (7-1).
To see those three thoroughbreds thundering to the finish line, looking for all the world like a single unit, was to see grace in motion.
(A 1953 photo finish of the first triple dead heat in harness racing. Photo: Wikipedia)
I returned from Lexington with something I absolutely need no more of, and that would be books.
But who could resist the Annie Dillard compilation (even though I have these books in other forms), the Bread Loaf anthology or This Trembling Land, by a Kentucky author whose father owned the farm where I rode horses as a young girl?
There’s also a workbook (covered in a brown paper from a grocery bag) that dates back to my first-grade class. These are the kind of goodies that can still be found in what was once my parents’ and is now my brother’s home. I think of them as treasures from the vault.
When I try to name it I come up short. Is it depth that I feel here in my hometown? Is it community?
In so many ways, I don’t know this place. Like any healthy city, it keeps growing and changing. And for most of my life, I’ve done my growing and changing somewhere else.
But when I visit Lexington, when I stroll down Central Avenue or Ashland or South Hanover, I’m walking through layers of personal and family history.
If I lived here, these layers might weigh me down. But since I don’t, they ground me.
In Kentucky for the weekend, I take in a sold-out concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts, including a spirited performance of the Mozart Requiem. The stage was packed with the orchestra and combined choirs of the University of Kentucky.
The last time I was at this venue I was on the stage. Last night I was (gratefully) in the audience. And what an audience it was: attentive, respectful, spirited, just what the excellent music deserved. When the final notes sounded, the audience leapt to its feet for a standing ovation.
Though I love attending musical events in the D.C. area, I especially enjoyed last night’s performance. There was a communal feeling to it, a sense of togetherness among musicians and listeners, as we all fell under the spell of the Lacrimosa, said to contain the last eight bars of music Mozart wrote.
Over the weekend, a day bracketed by rituals. One ancient, the other “only” 149 years old.
I woke up at 6 a.m., early enough to catch much of the coronation of King Charles III. The choirs, the sixth-century prayer book, the procession, the golden carriage. A glimpse into the Middle Ages.
And then, at 6 p.m., the Kentucky Derby, with its come-from-behind, 15-1 shot Mage. More rituals: the call to post, the starting bell, the breathless commentary of the Run for the Roses.
We measure our lives by rituals and routines, but I’ve seldom experienced such an oddly juxtaposed and striking pair of them.
(Photo of King Edward’s crown courtesy Wikipedia)
On this earth day I’m thinking about the places I love best on this planet: my home in Virginia, starting with the house and yard and moving beyond to woodland paths and trails, the spokes of a wheel of caring.
My hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, with its old brick homes and its new distillery district; with its rolling grasslands, shaggy limestone cliffs, white fences and horse farms.
Other places I have lived and loved: New York City, which inspired and thrilled me in my youth and revives me still. Chicago, which I heard about all my young life and where I went to college. Petit Jean Mountain in Arkansas, with its friendly people and its views that go on forever. And Groton, Massachusetts, small town extraordinaire, where I gave birth to our first child.
On Earth Day we honor this, our only planet, and think about ways to protect and promote its health and longterm viability. But all this protection and promotion starts with love. It’s love that emboldens us, that helps us make the tough choices, do the hard things. Unless we truly care about the earth, what incentive do we have to safeguard it?
(Above: Joe Pye weed blooms in a Kentucky meadow on a perfect August morning, 2021.)
Since witnessing sunrise on the beach last week I’ve been thinking how nice it is to have a view of the horizon. It doesn’t have to be the Atlantic through a scrim of dune grass. I’d welcome any view that took me out of tangled green.
Be careful what you wish for, though, I tell myself. Spending time in bare, flat places makes me realize how soothing is the company of trees, how subtle but important is the rise and fall of the land on which we find ourselves.
How lovely it would be to have it both ways, to have the openness of the horizon and the coziness of trees — the greensward and the den, the faraway and the close-at-hand. It just occurred to me that I grew up in such a place, the natural savannah land of central Kentucky, the Bluegrass. No wonder I want it all.
(The sun slants low over the Osage orange trees on Pisgah Pike in Woodford County, Kentucky.)
When she was young, my daughter Celia once asked me if the past was lived only in black-and-white. It was a good question, I thought, since that’s the way she’d seen it depicted in old photographs.
But as those of us who’ve lived in the past (at least her past) can attest, it happens in color.
I spent a few hours in the black-and-white past last night, perusing a book of photographs of Lexington, Kentucky. Many of the snapshots were taken in the 1930s, when my parents were children. There were the storefronts (including Leet’s, owned by my great uncle), the interurbans (street cars that went into surrounding small towns) and the intersections (Main and Lime) of their youth.
While the photos were sepia-toned, I reminded myself that Mom and Dad saw these sights … in color.
When I was strolling on the beach recently a fellow walker greeted me with “Go, Hoosiers!” I almost cheered him on. There are plenty of Hoosiers in my family and I went to college in Indiana for two years. Then I realized what he was up to. I’d almost forgotten that I was wearing my Kentucky T-shirt that day. He was asserting dominance.
There’s been no forgetting my home state these last few days. As more tragic reports flow from the flooding in Whitesburg and Hazard and other Appalachian towns, it’s hard not to think about the dire straits in which my fellow Kentuckians find themselves.
These people had so little to begin with. They live on steep mountain roads with creeks in their backyards. The rains that triggered floods and mudslides are supposed to happen once or twice in a thousand years. People weren’t expecting creeks to become raging torrents that lifted up refrigerators and cars and, worst of all, swept away children and parents and brothers and sisters.
More rain fell last night in Kentucky … and more tears, too.
(On dryer ground: a photo taken last year in central Kentucky.)
