Hope is the thing with hooves: Rich Strike’s Derby triumph

Last weekend, a confluence of very public and intensely personal circumstances met when the 148th running of the Kentucky Derby coincided with the 14th-anniversary of my husband’s death — while I was at my boyfriend’s house (yes, 78-year-old widows do have boyfriends). I am a sucker for pageantry, and through the years, my husband Bill indulged my odd proclivity by mixing gin and tonics and watching the race with me. My Derby fascination, however, began long before I met him. As a Polish-Catholic kid in New England, I began watching it in my teens on my parents’ black and white TV, probably to catch a glimpse into an elegant world of julips in silver cups and women in tasteful sheaths and white gloves.