Here Comes Peter Cottontail…Around the Far Turn.

Tears might be in vogue on Capitol Hill, but till the same can be said of Morgan County, best to stifle open emotional displays. As any closet weeper knows, movies are excellent places for a cleansing cry and by taking long drags on a straw; you can quickly regulate breathing to a pre-sob rate.

Certain films get to me over and over at the same spot. George Bailey being saved from evil Mr. Potter. The nuns singing “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” with Julie Andrews striding down the cathedral aisle. Or any part of “Toy Story” where that blank-staring Woody doll is tossed around to Randy Newman singing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” 

So recently, it wasn’t too surprising I cried watching “Secretariat.” The odd part was the timing of my tears. Waterworks didn’t flow when the horse’s owner’s father died, when finances got tough or when Big Red won the Belmont. It was the colt’s birth. I became as the girl I was that first Saturday in May when Secretariat charged down the Derby homestretch. With two spires looming above, he overtook Sham by two lengths. Then I remembered watching the same charging chestnut colt transform into a superhorse winning the Belmont by 31 lengths. Movie magic in that darken stall captured the birth of greatness. Unlike the characters in the story, I knew this humble equine babe with his blaze and three white socks breathed horseracing immortality. 

 This Lenten season, life has swept along at such a pace I’ve barely paused for reflection. I gave up sweets as has been my custom for decades, but for some reason this year having chocolate was more a choice than a shall not. Fifteen minutes ago, I ate a peanut butter cup because I wanted to. The one I consumed five minutes later was because the first one tasted so good.

In 1973 something stirred in our spirits as we witnessed horseflesh resolutely picking off all pretenders — one by one. Running purity. A thundering force. His incredible beauty an afterthought. A glossy red vapor overshadowed by his all consuming desire to run the race set before him.

As a person who believes the cross much more than a trendy symbol to dangle from an earlobe, each day could be so much more than frying up hamburger, scrolling through Facebook or inspecting the backs of my thighs for cellulite. (Or lately the fronts of them as well.)

You see, I know the rest of the story. A story of sloppy tracks, cursing jockeys, colorful trainers with even more colorful pasts and blankets of flowers where a triple crown awaits. Humans may not run a mile and a quarter in one minute and 59 seconds but we were created for greatness. This Sunday marks the day the starting gate ripped open for men fashioned from clay. To strain with all our being, living and loving and making this world better not by focusing on ourselves but training our sights on the one who waits in the winner’s circle.

What’s holding me back? Still unable to work up any appetite for oats, maybe I could fashion an Easter bonnet out of blue and white checked silk. With a smithy’s help finding the right pair of shoes, it just might work.

 **Hadn’t watched this in many years. Truly awesome to watch him come all the way around the pack. Is it possible to have a crush on a racehorse? And be considered normal?