“Get a life… Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone… Write a letter.”
– Anna Quindlen, Pulitzer Prize winning author, in a Villanova University commencement speech
– Courtesy of my friend, Jim Gordon
With apologies in advance for a rambling post that may, eventually, be one of my literary worst, but that comes from the heart.
Sue me.
I truly love Masters week. Phil missed the cut, Jack stopped playing years ago, but I don’t care. I still love it. It is good to see Freddie near the top of the Leaderboard yet again, but I can’t stomach the idea of him breaking Jack’s record as the oldest to win a major. Yet here I sit at 10:03 PM, watching the replay, just feeling like it’d be wrong to be doing anything else.
Middle is asleep, after icing an ankle, resting up for two baseball games tomorrow. Younger is working to go to sleep, so I pause the DVR every ten minutes or so to go up and “check on her.” Eldest just got home from a lucrative babysitting gig. And as they settle in, I am enjoying the memories that accompany the second week of April every year.
“What memories?” I wish you would ask.
1986, returning from an extra-inning softball game with a few buddies, only to flip on the TV to find Jack walking up the 18th fairway, with tears in his eyes. (Shoulda. Stayed. Home!) 1998, when the first words out of Jim Nantz’s mouth when the telecast came on the air were something like, “You are not going to believe what you are about to see…” as the 58-year-old Nicklaus mounted what would be his last Sunday charge. In 1998, there was extra context, as I grudgingly left the telecast to meet my friend, Jim Gordon (who provided me the quote referenced above) to grant a Make-A-Wish kid what would be her last chance to really live a dream. Jack’s surge suddenly seemed pretty insignificant — albeit no less thrilling.
2004, when I jumped about six times as high as Phil did when his putt to win settled in to the hole, and Jonnie Mac’s dog looked up at me like, “Dude, you just jumped over me…”
Like hunting used to be, like golf still should be and like life is meant to be, Masters week is about the people that it brings to mind, or that it brings me in to contact with. There have been traditions, and there will be new ones. There is something fundamentally wrong with the fact that I wasn’t perched somewhere, with a beverage and a buddy or two, this afternoon, watching in HD this event that reminds me of people I love. This working for a living is sometimes a real buzz kill.
But being with, or reminded of people we love — that’s key, really. People with whom we keep — or get back in touch with. People to miss. To write letters to and to look forward to contact from.
The people for whom we’ve made a difference, and who have made a difference for us.
I like Masters week. Every year, it reminds me of good people and thoughts — and it provides me a boost. It makes a difference for me.
Dopey, huh?
Sue me.
Leave a Reply