An Open Love Letter to My Beloved:

Hello Louisville, I have missed you !!

How I love thee and thy food, thy people and thy memories I pass every day I am home: The corner of Story and Spring where some uninsured kid pinned me and me dog inside my cute little Honda CRX to the telephone pole on the Northwest corner; the Cathedral of the Assumption where my children were not baptized but where they received their other sacraments; Nancy’s Bagel Grounds where we’ve spent nearly every Sunday after Mass; my beloved Limestone Bay Yacht Club where I’ve spent many afternoons and evenings and even some mornings readying for regattas and sailing.

Louisville, I love you and you know it to be so.  I have loved you since the first time I came to visit you when I was in the fifth grade and my Daddy let me tag along to a meeting he had here. I loved you so much, I ended up with the coveted Doe-Anderson internship slot Murray State’s Journalism School gave me.  As soon as I could get a real job at Doe-Anderson, I did and here I’ve been.

Oh Louisville, how I miss you since I have been gone … gone to Boston to support my daughter who is studying at The Boston Ballet School.  I’ve traded my quick trips from Eastward environs down River Road with the river by my side for a hour-long commute from Cape Cod to Boston’s Southend with the Atlantic by my side.  All I can say for the Cape, Louisville, is that I can get oysters in any month, whether it ends in an R or not and sometimes, I even get lucky and the oysters get delivered to me on the beach.

Still, all Wellfleet oysters aside, I love you, Louisville.  I love you.  I miss you.  I can’t say I’d trade oysters year round for a Hot Brown but that’s not a decision I have to make right now. I miss running into Louisville’s best and brightest.  Like, just today, I got a hug from Mary Margaret McGuire, Inspections, Permits and Licensing maven.  Phil Bills, city government newbie and planning guru, waved at me across to the F-Dock at Limestone Bay.  Communications queen, Rande Swann and her husband asked me out for dinner at J. Harrod’s.  I’ll see Mr. Fry on Tuesday and drink way too much iced tea and I’ve got an early dinner at Ghyslain planned for Wednesday; a little visit to Jerry Heston’s place on Thursday (nothing dramatic, nobody worry) and I might get in the car and try to find my way through Cherokee Park before Thunder on Saturday that I’ll spend at 21C.  I haven’t made it though the park on my own since my arrival in 1989, so there’s not much hope.  But, don’t worry, I’ll have a doggy bag from somewhere to sustain me when I get lost.

I love the rich, plush, thick and green spring that did not wait for me since I’ve been gone to Hyannisport to serve as personal assistant to my daughter and her budding ballet career. The beach near our little cottage is a stunning silvery brown in the sun and the ocean and the whitecap are soul filling. But, it’s not green and pink and yellow like my neighborhood’s azaleas, dogwoods and redbuds.

The two of my feet are firmly planted – splitted is more accurate – between the Cape and the ‘ville.  But, it’s hard to replicate 20-some years of memories and friendships and lives and deaths and drunken nights and food buzzes in just a few months.  Louisville, I’m not cheating on you; I’ll be back.

Love,

Holly