Tee Time

For those that know the real me vs the virtual me, you know that at one point in my life there was a golf cart just for me at my front door and I played a lot of golf. Not always good golf, but I played.

Golf and I have a history. A kind of bittersweet history in fact.

So I will share….

I met my husband because of golf. He was a golf course superintendent at Oakmont and I was a waitress in the best little joint in Oakmont. He was one of my customers. He and the other Oakmont superintendents used to come in for lunch every day. Oakmont is a golf obsessed town. If you don’t follow golf you wouldn’t know that the ladies US Open wraps up there today. Many memories of the 93 US Open, waitressing and serving many of the players, watching the little town become taken over with golfers and spectators. It was a fun time.

After we were married I realized that if I wanted to see my husband at all I needed to learn how to golf. Golf wasn’t a part of my childhood like it was a part of his growing up. I remember in college my dad went out to play golf with my brother in law in hiking boots and jeans. Yes, we were not golfers in the Fish household.

My husband taught me the basics and let me tell you, going out to play 18 with the golf course superintendent and knowing he was watching me put divets all over the course was certainly difficult. More so for him than me.

My first pair of golf shoes I won off my husband when he bet me that I couldn’t hit the ball from the fairway across a BIG pond onto the green. I did it. And I had my first pair of pretty golf shoes. I had arrived, at least in the fashion sense of golf.

When we moved to Elizabeth, PA and lived on the course that he ran things changed. We lived on the golf course. The driving range was practically in my front yard. The sound of the ball hitting the sweet spot of the driver woke me up many mornings before I was willing to be awake. It was in Elizabeth, at Riverview Golf Course, that I began to play a lot more and play a lot better. Now if my husband were to read this he would still say I was bad. Well, that’s another story…

Being a golf widow, to a husband who likes to golf and plays all the time is difficult. Being a golf widow to a husband who not only played every day but ran the course? Tougher. Lots of time waiting for the sun to go down and his golf cart to pull up to the house. I soon began to realize that if I wanted to see him I had to get out there and play. So the answer was lessons with the pro, Chad.

There was a group of four women, and while we had a blast teasing each other and often feeling as if we would never learn the game at all, we gradually got better. I really loved those Thursday night lessons. Miss them now in fact..

And then we decided to have children. And that didn’t work as you will know from reading my earlier posts. Many frustrating nights after work, after getting bad news from the fertility clinic, were spent with me out on the range either whacking balls off the tee with my driver or cleaning up the range with my irons. At the end of the day there were a lot of balls out there on the range. So I’d take my dogs and my 5 and 7 iron and just go at it.

The first time I did this I don’t think I could move the next day. That’s how many balls I hit. Hitting the balls was a distraction and exercise in venting my frustration with my life. Each ball was a baby I couldn’t have and some days it was a baby I lost.

And I began to understand a little bit more about the connection between life and golf.

And then there was the night after my last miscarriage that I realized I was never going to be a mother. I came home from the doctors and went to bed and stayed there for a long time, days in fact, wallowing in my sadness. And then I got up. I was in my pajamas. I hadn’t showered in days. I got out my clubs and got in my cart and went out on the course to play 18. My husband found me, probably because someone told him his crazy wife was out on number 6 tee in her pajamas. We finished that 18 holes together and a sad 18 turned into a fun 18 as he wagered me making dinner. Of course he won and I made dinner.

After that night I let the baby thing go. I began to play golf and slowly I didn’t whiff as much. My golf glove was no longer shiny white and tight, but gray and crinkled from wear. And the time came for me to be fitted for my own set of clubs. Real Clubs. TaylorMade clubs. It was like getting a brand new car. I actually had a set of clubs that could be hooked on the back of the cart with my husband’s and fit in. And better yet, I knew how to use those clubs. Not as well as I wanted to or he wanted me to, but I was set to learn and focused on doing so. The driving range clean up started to become a regular activity of my evening while I waited for my husband to come home from work.

After a month of playing with my shiny new clubs and seeing improvement in my game it all stopped. I was pregnant. All those months of no fertility clinics, no daily discouragement and no self pity and sadness had taken me to a place where I could let go. I let go and took up a game that demanded my attention, my daily focus. Instead of waiting for a nurse to call me and tell me “no, not this month” I was out on the course determined to master this game of golf.

So in letting go of the baby thing, I gained the golf thing. But now that the baby thing was a reality I had to let go of golf. I was a high risk pregnancy. I was told no golf. Those shiny new clubs got dusty. They just stayed in the closet even after we had Sam and moved. My husband was no longer in the golf business so he didn’t play as much either. We didn’t have golf carts at our front door, his and hers. And we didn’t belong to a course. We hit the driving range on occasion and it was nice to know I could still hit the ball, but it wasn’t the same as it used to be. But nothing is after you have kids.

Now while I find myself at a point in my life when I am frustrated and sad about a lot of things, I have decided to dust off my clubs and get back in the game. I was approached by someone at the pool last week to play in a tournament on August 5th. I didn’t hesitate to say yes. It was like my inner golfer emerged with exuberance.

Of course I warned her that my game was rusty and aside form the occasional driving range experience I hadn’t played 18 in over 5 years. She laughed. I got out my clubs and hit the driving range.

Yes, me at the driving range with the boys on a Saturday morning yesterday was probably not the best idea. With boys running out onto the range to “go get mommy some balls” and grabbing my clubs and trying to putt on gravel, it was a disaster on many levels and a challenge to do. But I did it. I hit two buckets of balls. It felt good to know that I could hit it and still hit it pretty darn far for a mommy who has been out of the game too long.

So today we will once again venture to the driving range. I’ll fill up the buckets. Put on my glove. Tee up the ball. Give the boys some matchbox cars or a sand shovel for the sand pit. And I’ll whack away all the things I am frustrated with in my life.

If I know one thing about golf it is the sweet satisfaction when my driver hits the ball right where it is supposed to and my swing follows through and the ball just takes flight. And I stand there with a smile on my face as I watch it fall right where I wanted it to go.

If I keep doing this perhaps all the things wrong in my life, all the things I want and cannot have will either become mine or slip away without as much sadness.

Golf therapy.

Join me…..

And here’s a freebie just for today….my new “Cloud Alpha”..Personal Use/S4H only! And let me know you were here!

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