Brilliant Women

Nobody asked but …

I was born into lines of brilliant women.  My great-great grandmother went to court in the 19th Century to challenge the presumption that only primogeniture applied, 7 decades before women’s suffrage came to Kentucky.  My great grandmother, an Acadian, made a childhood trek in the 19th Century from Petit-Rocher, Nouvelle Brunswick to Milton, MA.  My paternal grandmother, from Liberty, KY, had awesome social skills, along with her daughter — if a great celebrity visited the Bluegrass, they would be sitting in a place of honor on the dais.  One time, my grandmother got a ride in the POTUS’ car in a pre-Dallas motorcade.  My maternal grandmother was the kindest person I have ever known, but she could navigate Boston, MA, as though it were a playground.  I got my lack of fear of urban transit from her.  I got my love of big cities from her.  My mother was a poet and a grandly independent woman.  Both of my daughters are geniuses — one a computer scientist and the other a hydrologist with 3 degrees.  One of my granddaughters is a brilliant flutist and straight-A student.  My second granddaughter, just now a teen, is a wondrous wit, a scoring machine at basketball, a thespian, and a blistering finisher in cross-country running.  The youngest granddaughter, eleven, also a thespian, has the greatest sense of humor of all, the social skills of her great-great grandmother, and a natural overflowing confidence.  My great-granddaughter, five, is brimming with charm and brightness.  Why would any good man wish that they were trapped in a class that was deemed second-rate?

— Kilgore Forelle