BC. AC. Before Cheltenham. After Cheltenham. That’s 2020.

I left for my annual jaunt to my most favourite place March 7th. I returned March 14th. Nothing was the same. I went trepidly, concerned but ultimately undeterred by this far-off flu thing called, coronavirus.

I returned, after it was declared a pandemic, after Italy had come undone, after a headline declaring no flights from the EU to the US, knowing that life was about to take a dramatic turn.

Not really a turn, more like a screeching halt. I’ll never forget the look in the eyes of my fellow travellers, trying to get home from Heathrow and Washington Dulles on that terrible day of March 14th. I’ve never been to war, but it felt as close to war as I could imagine.

Weary, forlorn, let’s face it, scared as every cough ran ridges up our spines, every surface stopped us like tasers in a street fight. We got home. And, it seems, we haven’t left.

Eight exciting prospects ready for a spring raid on the steeplechase season quickly turned to eight liabilities, burning through money without a chance of recoupment. As a friend said to me, “There isn’t meant to be a kink in the hose.” This was more than a kink, like your ear buds after going through the dryer. The spring steeplechase meets fell off the wall like tin cans in a shooting gallery, one by disastrous one, until there were none. Two meets managed to run in June. Hot weather. Hard ground. Big fields. Reduced purses. Like painting over rust.

My son Miles went on spring break from fifth grade, his last day was March 13th. Two weeks of frivolity and freedom turned into two weeks of uncertainty, which quickly turned into months of lockdown. We were introduced to something called Zoom. I lost my computer, my office, my time to my son and online school. I turned 50 over Zoom.

The Florida two-year-old sales, the Masters, the Kentucky Derby, Keeneland, the Preakness… more tin cans clanking off the back railing. Saratoga, my other favorite place, seemed so far away, surely, we’ll be there. It didn’t take long for the realisation that Saratoga, our summer sojourn, was gone too.

Races went ahead, essential people only. As the press, I was deemed essential (oh, finally recognition!) but opted to stay home. The sales were postponed, Fasig-Tipton’s 100th anniversary hats still in unopened cardboard boxes, just like The Saratoga Special’s 20th anniversary ones. I’ve never used the word surreal so often. Sitting at home in August watching Saratoga from afar, surreal, was the most positive word I could muster. Tiz The Law won the Travers in isolation, literally, isolation.

I wrote a column about my favourite songwriter, John Prine, dead from Covid. I wrote another one about a Belmont Park hotwalker, Martin Zapata, dead of Covid. And another, James R. Wyatt Jr., the father of a friend, a retired jump jockey, part-time gardener, dead of Covid.

Stumbled through

We stumbled through the summer, clung to moments of hope and glimmers of salvation as numbers dropped and things began to open up. We got our first haircuts. Stopped washing down the groceries. Had cocktails on our porches.

The September sales, reconfigured and repositioned, came and went. The Breeders’ Cup, too. Authentic put it all to bed on a speed-favouring track that left most underwhelmed.

A patched-together fall steeplechase circuit, no stakes, races for average horses and fledgling jockeys. Miles went back to school, outdoor classes, masks and sequestered pods of students. The kids, once again, showing the resiliency that us adults can’t seem to invent any more.

The election further divided the country as we watched CNN for days upon days, the numbers going from red to blue, Trump losing but clinging to winner’s enclosure while his sycophants ignored the placing judges’ declaration that Joe Biden was, indeed, the winner.

The political divide increasing, somehow, we’ve turned abortion, gay marriage, gun violence, climate change and now a pandemic into partisan politics.

Now, it’s December. The number of cases, deaths, continue to rise as vaccines begin to hit the market or at least to the first-line workers and most vulnerable. A strange, and sure, I’ll use it again, a surreal, Christmas is upon us.

The first snow of a long year falls outside the windows. Miles bundles up and flings open the door. “What are you going to do, bud?” He turns, “I don’t know, I’ve just got to get out of here.” He speaks for all of us.