The Nine Lessons (15 page)
I wasn’t allowed to hit one of his precious black balls until I proved that I could mimic his long, arching motion. After several minutes of practice I was finally permitted to tee one up. I dug a long tee from my pocket, capped it with a black ball in my palm, and then carefully poked the tandem into a well-packed patch of snow. My father was watching me intently, so I cautiously took another couple of swings to ensure I still had my rhythm, and then I lined up my feet, took aim, and swung as hard as I could. Regrettably, when the club struck the ball the muscles in my forearms tightened in the cold, causing me to slap the ball instead of punching the club-head all the way through the swing. The black orb got very little altitude, hovering just above the ground as it hooked sharply left and sailed deep into the trees.
“One down, three to go,” mumbled my dad as I grabbed another black ball from my bag. “You’ve
got
to follow through,” he reminded. “Even if it seems hard, you’ve got to force your body to do it.”
My second stroke was much better. The ball flirted with the right boundary but stayed in play. Although the snow was fairly deep, the top layer had formed an icy crust that prevented the ball from sinking out of sight. London’s shot flew straight at the snowy flagstick, coming to rest just forty or fifty yards shy of where the green lay buried in a shroud of white. Once we were both within range to putt dad bent down and formed a small cup in the snow around the flag’s yellow pole. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked.
On the second hole I did fine, but on the third I lost another two balls down a steep ravine, leaving me with just one more for what was looking like a very short round.
The fourth hole had a large water hazard in the middle of it, and I stepped up to the tee and sent my ball right for it. “I hit it straight!” I shouted as I watched the ball soar toward the hazard.
“Nice follow-through,” commented my dad just as the ball landed in the middle of the large pond.
The surface of the pond was frozen solid and glistened in the light of day. The wind had blown snow into deep drifts along its western bank, but the surface of the pond itself was as clean and clear as a skating rink. When we got up to the shore we immediately spotted my ball right out in the middle of the ice.
London pulled his hat farther down over his ears to protect them from the wind that was picking up. “Well, at least it went straight. Nice shot, but let’s call it a day. That ball is as good as gone.”
“What? It’s right there. It’s playable.”
“I don’t think it’s safe, Augusta. We should just leave it lie.”
Apparently even fathers of twenty-seven-year-old men can be overprotective of their children, but I saw no danger, so I grabbed my seven-iron and slid down onto the ice. It was slippery, but I was able to shuffle my way to the middle of the pond and lined up my next shot.
When I swung at the small dark sphere my whole mind was focused on one thing:
Follow through
. The club-head dropped smoothly from the top of my backswing, smacked the ball solidly, and then continued along its path in a full arc over my left shoulder. It felt good, it sounded good, and the flight of the ball was near perfect.
“Holy cow!” I shouted, maintaining my postswing form as I watched it fly. “That’s two in a row!”
“Good things happen when you follow through,” said London.
As I stood there squinting, trying to follow the path of the black ball as it skirted atop the icy crust of snow in the distance, I heard a terrible sound, like lightning crashing all around me. The ice in the center of the pond must’ve been thinner than what I’d tested on the shoreline, because in the flash of a moment that it took for me to look down for the source of the sound I dropped like a rock into the water.
A split second later I was relieved to learn that the pond was only waist deep. Dad was shouting at me to get out as fast as I could, but my feet were glued to the bottom of the pond. “I’m stuck!” I shouted back. “I can’t get my snowshoes out of the mud!”
London shuffled quickly down onto the ice, being careful to stay on the thicker parts near the shore so as not to end up in the same predicament as me. “Well, unless you want hypothermia to set in I suggest you unstrap those bloody things and get the heck out of there!”
Undoing the straps that connected my snowshoes to my boots required that I squat in the icy water up to my chin. When my chest plunged beneath the surface I had to force myself to breathe very rapidly, huffing and panting to fill my lungs. The straps on my left boot came off quickly, but for all my effort I couldn’t undo the one on the right. In a last-ditch effort I squatted again and untied my boot, then tugged as hard as I could until my heel finally came free of its hold. As soon as my foot was loose I jumped up out of the water, sprawling out on my hands and knees for balance on the slippery surface. I shimmied my way across the cold ice until it was safe to stand and then scurried the rest of the way over to my father, wearing a boot on one foot and a wool sock on the other.
“Take off your clothes!” he yelled. “Everything but your socks!”
“You’re crazy!” I replied, shivering wildly.
“Take off your bloody clothes, Augusta, or I’ll rip them off you myself!”
By that point I was too cold to argue, so for the first (and only) time in a public place, I stripped down to my bare-white birthday suit, leaving just my wet wool socks on to protect my feet from the ground. As soon as my clothes were gone London wrapped me up in his own parka and we went as fast as we could to his car, leaving all of our golf equipment, and my frozen clothes, near the shore of the pond.
We opted to leave my car parked where it was so that I didn’t have to drive home in my current condition. Once the heat got going enough for my teeth to stop clanging together, Dad admitted that he’d lied earlier when he said that he didn’t have another golf-life lesson in mind related to the instruction he’d given me on my swing. “If you’re going to do something in this life, do it all the way. Your mum used to say that anything worth starting is worth finishing, and I agree 100 percent. If you don’t follow through in golf, the results are terrible, and the same thing goes for life. Don’t get into something and then—”
In my numb state, and with nothing more than my father’s parka to hide my nakedness, I was less than thrilled with the idea of listening to London pontificate, so I cut his ramblings short. “I got it!” I said, raising my voice more than I intended. “Follow through in golf and follow through in life. Understood. And for the record, in life I think I already follow through pretty darn well.”
London went silent, hurt by my outburst. “If you really understood about following through,” he said at length, “then you would’ve shown up this morning on your own, snow or not. You made a commitment for one lesson each month, no exceptions.”
I stared at him incredulously. “Is that what this is all about? That I didn’t show up to play golf in the aftermath of a blizzard? Fine,” I said sarcastically. “I screwed up. You’re right and I’m wrong, and I’ll try harder next time to follow through with my commitments. Is that what you want me to say?”
He was quiet again for several moments. His face turned red and the veins in his neck stretched tight as a drum.
There’s the old London,
I thought to myself.
I knew his newfound congeniality wouldn’t last.
But then he threw me a curve. “I’m sorry, Augusta,” he said softly. “I shouldn’t have said that.” My jaw hit the floor. London Witte was apologizing… to me! “In truth,” he continued, “the lesson had nothing to do with you not showing up this morning. That was just a lucky coincidence. I wanted to illustrate how important following through will be for you as a parent.”
I pulled my wet socks off and slid my feet up closer to the heater beneath the dash. “I’m just reacting poorly from the cold,” I sighed. “Go ahead and tell me whatever it is you want to tell me.”
“Really?”
I shrugged. “Why not. But make it quick, we’re almost home.”
London flipped on his blinker and turned into my neighborhood. “Right. Well then, here’s the abbreviated version. As a parent, you’ve got to do what you say you’re going to do so your child knows he can trust you. For example, if you tell him there will be a punishment if he disobeys, then you’ve got to stick to your guns and give the punishment, even if you’d rather not. Otherwise he won’t learn that there are consequences. Or, if you tell him you’ll be at his baseball game or school play, or whatever else you say you’re going to be at, then you’d darn well better be there or he’ll lose confidence in you.” He paused and looked at me. “That’s it. Nothing earth-shattering, I know, but it’s sound advice nonetheless. Follow through—the golf course never lies.”
As we pulled into the driveway, I felt a surge of resentment swelling up inside over what London had just said. I knew he meant well, but the hypocrisy of his words left a bitter taste in my mouth. Past experiences—
painful
experiences—with London were so far removed from what he was now trying to preach to me that I couldn’t let it slide. “I understand completely,” I said, mocking. “It’s like when a father cuts his son from a golf team for no apparent reason—he can’t then reinstate him on the team, because then the son might lose faith in his father’s good word. Right? He’s got to follow through or else he’s a bad parent.” There were many things in my past that I resented about my father. Some I’d let go of or forgotten over the years, but one that I would never forget—or forgive—was my final experience playing golf as an adolescent.
London looked right at me but did not respond.
Looking into his dark eyes, my mind drifted back to years gone by. Although I knew I wasn’t any good at the sport, as a young man I wanted desperately to
become
good at it, if only to make “Coach” proud. So I kept trying, kept persisting, and kept faithfully believing that I would get better. It never happened. When I entered high school as a freshman I was still clinging to a small but fading hope that I was on the brink of something great, that my inner golfer was about to burst forth. In anticipation of that pending miracle I joined the high school golf team, which my father had coached for years. They were short on players that year, so no one even had to try out.
Everyone
made the team, even those that had never held a club before.
Everyone, that is, except me.
My father cut me from the squad right before the start of our first match. “It just isn’t in you, lad,” he said. “Maybe you’ll have other things to be good at. But not this.” He patted me dismissively on the shoulder and sent me away, while my friends stayed to compete under London’s tutelage. As hard as that was for me to swallow, it at least confirmed my growing belief that I would never measure up to London’s expectations. He wanted a son who could make him proud on the links, and I simply couldn’t.
As I left the golf course that day I promised myself that I would never touch a golf club again, and until my wife got pregnant and my father bargained memories of my mother that he’d kept secret, I kept that promise. “Why did you cut me from the team?” I asked, trying to keep my anger at bay. “I’ve never understood. Why did you have to ‘follow through’ on
that
? Was I really such an embarrassment?”
London looked away, focusing instead on his hands gripping the steering wheel. “There were reasons,” he said. “I’ve wanted to explain it for a long time, but I’d like to wait just a while longer.” He turned to look at me again. “As soon as your baby is born. I’ll explain it then. Is that fair?”
I was still upset, but I forced a nod. “It’s already been thirteen years… what’s another couple of months in the grand scheme of things?”
“Good,” he said. “Not to change the subject on you, but I was wondering if there were any other lessons you might have learned out there today on your own.”
I thought for a moment while rubbing my toes, which were prickling from an increase in blood flow. “I think so,” I said. “You can’t always force your children to listen to you. Sometimes they will want to venture off and take shots that seem ill advised. And as hard as it may be to let them, sometimes you just have to allow kids to make their own dumb choices and then face the consequences, even if you know they’re walking on thin ice. How’s that?”
“I think you’ll make a fine golf instructor some day.”
Our seventh golf lesson was officially over.
As you walk down the fairways of life you must stop to smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.
—Ben Hogan
A
ugust 7, 1978
—Dr. Moody has still not released Jessalynn from the hospital, but is running further tests. They are fairly certain that the cancer, which had been in remission, is back now in full force. They are not sure if it has spread. Augusta longs to have his mother at home. I am doing my best to be the primary caregiver and run the restaurant at the same time, but it is difficult. I pray constantly that Jessalynn’s health will improve… Augusta and I both need her.
August 23, 1978—This morning Augusta bravely got on the bus to attend his first day of kindergarten. In my estimation, he is still too young for school, but maybe getting out and playing with other kids will help take his mind off of his mother.
Jessalynn’s condition appears to be deteriorating, despite everything that the doctors are doing. They confirmed yesterday that the cancer has spread beyond her esophagus into surrounding tissues; precisely how far it has gone is not yet known.
Two days ago she lost the ability to speak. She is now communicating by writing notes on paper. It tears my heart out to see such a majestic woman scribbling with a pencil just to tell her son that she loves him… especially since he can’t read.
August 27, 1978—Augusta’s teacher designated today as “show-and-tell day” for any of the students who have something they’d like to share with their classmates. This morning before I put him on the bus I was sure that he would take his veterinary toys to show the other kids, but instead he opted for a small, framed picture of Jessalynn. The teacher called me after school to ask if everything was okay at home. She said that Augusta told the entire class that he wanted to share a picture of his mother, because she was the best mommy in the world, but that she would be going away soon and was never coming back. A little girl raised her hand and asked why she was leaving and where she was going. Augusta wouldn’t give them any further details, other than to say that where she was going she would be very happy.
August 31, 1978—I can hardly bear to write tonight, for fear that writing will make the events of this day more real. If I thought it would help, I would gladly fall asleep this instant without writing anything at all, and hope that I awoke tomorrow to find out it was just a bad dream. But I cannot sleep… I refuse to sleep tonight, for I know that as soon as my eyelids close I will inevitably be forced to wake up and face a new day without my best friend.
It is two-thirty in the morning, but since I cannot—will not—sleep, I am documenting this day as best I can, so that my final memories of Jessalynn will remain forever clear in my mind…
This afternoon I dropped Augusta off at the hospital after school so he could spend time with Jessalynn while I went to work. When I returned I was stopped by the nurse in the hallway and informed that Jess had taken a turn for the worse. The doctors were unsure how much longer she would last. Inside the hospital room August was curled up asleep on the window seat, and Jessalynn was asleep on the bed. Her breathing was very shallow and she looked pale.
I kissed her gently on the forehead, then got down on the floor beside her and poured my heart out to God, hoping that would help. I pleaded for her recovery above all else, even offering my own life in place of hers, if that would somehow satisfy God’s quota for new souls at the pearly gates. I reluctantly concluded my prayer just as my parents had always taught me. “As always, Thy will be done,” I groaned aloud. I said those words, but I didn’t mean them. In my heart I was screaming, “MY will be done! MY BLOODY WILL! She’s everything to me, and only one of trillions to You, so leave her bloody well alone!” I concluded with a hopeless, “Amen.”
Perhaps I should have spoken in a softer voice, because I woke up Jessalynn. I was still hunched over on the floor when I felt a tug on my hair, urging me up to my feet. Jessalynn was staring at me. Her smile was feeble, but every bit as beautiful as the day we met. I silently wished she were wearing Nikes to commemorate the moment.
Jessalynn reached up inside the large front pouch of the kilt I was still wearing from work and retrieved a golf ball and tee. It was obviously difficult for her simply to lift her arm, but with a twinkle in her eye she grabbed the pen from her nightstand and began writing on the tee and the ball. Her hand trembled under the strain of the chore. She handed them to me when she was done.
The tee had just two little handwritten letters: “L.W.,” for “London Witte.” The ball said simply “Augusta.” Without the luxury of a voice, she pointed to me and then to the tee. Then she pointed to Augusta and to the ball. Finally, with great effort, she placed the ball on top of the tee.
“You want me to teach him to play golf?” I asked. I told her not to worry, that he’d be the best bloody golfer there ever was.
She winced in pain and started to cry, then reached again for my hands. She squeezed them tightly around the ball, smiled once more as bravely as she could, and then slipped away quietly.
I’m at home now, alone with my thoughts, and no one to share them with. Why did this have to happen? Why didn’t the doctors do more? Why would a loving God allow Jessalynn to suffer? Why her? Why, why, why…? A million and one questions, but not a single answer.