On Derby Day (May 1), I made it home from my Saturday errands in the late afternoon. I fed the dogs, but although it was a beautiful central New York afternoon, I didn’t take them on a longer walk. I went inside, and turned on the TV. I watched the Kentucky Derby – a race full of slop and rain and mud – and I remembered my dad.

May 2 was my dad’s birthday. He would have been 83 years old. He died on Friday, March 23, 2007, just six weeks before his 80th birthday.

My dad was a difficult man to live with and a difficult man to love. He was a diamond seller by day, but for all of his life he was first and last a horseman. He was a lifetime member of the Limestone Creek Hunt Club. For most of my pre-teen years, he had a second job as the steward at Vernon Downs, a local harness racing track, where he started every race (before they had electric, autostart gates.) Later, when my dad was in his 70s and before the dementia made it difficult for him to focus, he partnered with his old track cronies to train their horses for them.

I don’t think he ever got his trainer’s license in NY state, but even 15 years ago, you could co-train a horse at a NY track as long as a licensed trainer was also listed on the entry. Dad owned and resold thoroughbred crosses as heavy hunters – big horses designed to carry big men in the cross country over fences sport of foxhunting. But he always kept an interest in and owned a few standardbreds, and he raced a few trotters and pacers (mostly pacers.) I have memories of meeting my dad at the track to watch one of his first co-trained fillies run. My brother Jeff came in from out-of-state and dad teased me that Jeff beat me to the track even though he’d had a 15-hour drive and I was only an hour away.

I used to joke that I grew up on the backstretch – not really true, since I was probably only at the track a dozen times between age 5 and age 10. But I have very clear memories of those barns and the track atmosphere. My first pony was a stable pony bought from a trainer at the track (as was my first goat – but that’s another story.) When I was very young – five or six years old – I was discovered hand-feeding a tough horse named Night Flight, a horse with a reputation as a bad actor in the barn. But he was gently with me, and later when he came to Fayetteville to live in our off-track barn, Night Flight and I became good friends. The stable help found him difficult, but I could groom him and muck his stall without arguments (it might have been the apples I always carried.) At any rate, Night Flight helped me discover that working with animals might just be my secret superpower.

When I was a kid, Kentucky Derby Day was an event in the Steer house. My dad worked at the jewelry store on Saturdays, but he was always home in time to watch the Derby, and then the Preakness, and finally the Belmont Stakes. I used to be able to name all of the Triple Crown winners and all of their jockeys. Watching the Derby (or any race) with my dad was a ritual. We’d check the racing form, watch the horses parade to the paddock, check the jockeys’ and trainers’ records. Was the horse a mudder? Was he carrying extra weight? If the horse was a filly, could she handle the distance? Would a fast horse break away too soon and then fade in the backstretch?

The night before the Derby, everyone had to pick a horse. No betting, of course, but always a spirited discussion of who we picked, and why, and congratulations if our horse was in the money.

And even with him gone, I still watch the Kentucky Derby. For my dad. Maybe with my dad, in one of the only ways we could ever share anything without a fight. When the first notes of “My Old Kentucky Home” rise up to accompany the post parade, I remember derby days from years past, and somehow all the other interactions with my father fade when I remember how he picked his horses, evaluated his jockeys, and watched the race.

This race helped me remember a happier time with you. Happy Birthday, Dad.