Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

“They may say I can’t sing, but they can never say I didn’t sing.” –Florence Foster Jenkins.

I’m a bachelor this weekend. Beth is in Columbus at a horse show, just killing it, while I languish here in The Land with the dogs. Much of what a summer typically includes has been stolen by the traitorous behavior of my “good hip”. Where my left hip only announced its intention to desert my body when I was active, my right hip demands my attention during all waking hours. I am home taking call for our practice to clear the decks for my September surgery and recovery.

Because I was home and free of any real responsibilities I was able to attend the retirement party for a woman with whom I have worked since my very first day in the OR in Cleveland 31 years ago. Mary Kay was my first scrub nurse, and she went on to run one of the surgery centers where I operate for 18 years or so. All in all it was a lovely affair, held at an Irish pub in homage to Mary Kay’s heritage, and attended by about a hundred folks who also worked with her over the years. As an aside I had a number of funny encounters at the bar. Remember, we are a group of people who generally only see each other in surgical scrubs, and for 2+ years no one has seen anyone’s entire face under our masks. A couple of the youngsters were quite funny when they finally recognized me “wearing clothes”!

At 62, with 32 years as a working doc under my belt, it appears that I have reached a stage where retirement is kind of an expectation. At least on the part of those folks with whom I’ve worked for decades, and especially, I guess, at someone else’s retirement party. Almost all of the folks I’ve known for more than 10 years at the party asked about my own retirement plans. Having the good fortune to have several close friends who have had the good fortune to already be retired, and to have retired well, and having spent many an hour hashing this out with Beth, I’ve come up with a very honest answer, however frustrating to me, at least, it turns out to be.

Retiring FROM what I am doing now isn’t enough; I need to have something that I will retire TO.

Beth, the good looking, smart member of the couple, has made it quite clear that I am not going to be allowed to retire to HER. My wife is not going to be my hobby, my go-to activity. At least not 24/7. Nope, I’m going to have to come up with something that I wake up looking forward to doing each day, and fall asleep at night happy that I did it. I need to come up with some activity that I am passionate about. Funny, all of the men I chatted with last night had a kind of blank look on their faces when I gave them this answer. All of the women had a knowing smile and nodding heads, congratulating Beth on her perspicacity and resolve.

Which got me to thinking about Florence Foster Jenkins and the movie of the same name about her.

Mrs. Jenkins was a socialite in NYC, I believe, who was quite passionate about singing opera. She had the financial wherewithal to produce her own performances in a rather major way. A pivotal scene in the eponymous movie about her takes place at Carnegie Hall, for example. There was only one problem with that, at least as far as it went for the spectators: Mrs. Jenkins was a terrible opera singer. Actually, she was epically, brutally bad at singing opera. Yet, again and again, she went to the well and sang her heart (and her lungs) out in front of an audience.

My instant, deep emotional response to this story is jealousy. Jealousy followed by mad respect. Jealousy because Mrs. Jenkins has a passion, something about which she cares so deeply that she is willing to pursue it to whatever limit her abilities might impose. Respect because she is willing to devote time and resources to this pursuit in spite of the fact that she will never come anywhere near anything that even approaches proficiency, let alone excellence. More than that, she insists on sharing the fruit of her labor publicly, even though she is told time and time again that her particular fruit is inedible. No matter. Florence Foster Jenkins will sing.

Retired or not, everyone should have a passion like this. We should add a tiny disclaimer or two, of course. There are a few things that shouldn’t be done by amateurs or hobbyists, no matter how passionate they may be about them. Neurosurgery comes to mind. Or operating heavy equipment, even if you didn’t take any of those medicines that are advertised on TV where you have to choose between your health or, you know, driving a backhoe. If your passion is harmful to you or those around you it’s probably more psychopathic than passion. As an aside, this is why I have shied away from a deeper dive into wine. Short of that, though, the kind of passion shown by Mrs. Jenkins is to be envied, something to aspire to.

For many years now my own life has been missing this. Outside of my marriage and my family there isn’t really anything I burn for like Mrs. Jenkins burns to sing. The stuff that I might have pursued has either been systematically taken away by injury (golf) or circumstances beyond my control (CrossFit). I do get to watch this magical phenomenon on a daily basis though. Beth had long yearned to ride horses. When our kids had gone off to college she finally had her chance. The barn is her happy place. A funny thing happened for her that makes our collective experience very different from Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins. Somewhere along the way to a “time-filling hobby of a 50-ish homemaker”, Beth actually started to get good. I mean good enough that even a knuckle-dragging ex-CrossFitter spouse could see the difference. Good enough that she outgrew the ability of her horse, necessitating first an effort to breed a successor and then an epic trip to Spain to import her new partner.

Doing the work has never felt like work for her—that might define passion, eh?–and there has been a payoff: she is still getting better at riding. This weekend she achieved what 15 years ago would have been unimaginable: she earned a bronze medal riding at a level that is at least 5 above where she started (and higher than any trainer we can find for her to ride with in the winter when we visit Megan). As if that isn’t enough, she got her first score above 70 (trust me, a big deal) riding Hero to music in the discipline known as Freestyle. Again, a level higher than she ever expected to compete. 61 and still riding her passion to new heights.

I am equal parts awestruck and jealous.

As for me, as I shared with all who asked at the party last night, I will go on in search of that thing that makes me want to put everything aside and just do. That thing that I might “retire to”. That thing—singing for Foster Jenkins, riding for Beth—you think about when you are doing almost everything else. If you are one of the lucky ones who’ve already found yours, I extend to you the same jealousy and mad respect I have for Mrs. Jenkins and my wife. For those of you who are like me, I wish you good fortune in your search, and remind you that the search is worth the effort.

Never, ever, ever let anyone tell you that you cannot sing.

I’ll see you next week…

As she headed out the door and off to the barn Beth looked over her shoulder: “What’s your plan for today?” I replied that it was Sunday, the Sunday at the end of Cape Week. I thought I should sit down and write a bit. The annual trip isn’t really over until I write about it.

Each morning as I sit and contemplate the night before and the day ahead, I peruse the memories on my Facebook feed. Around this time of year they are filled with thoughts about the Crossfit Games, and musings on both the front and back ends of what is universally known around me as Cape Week. To be fair, having drifted away from the Crossfit world these last few years, I only this morning discovered that one of my friendly acquaintances from here in Ohio placed second in the Masters 50-54 competition. In years past I would have watched every second of his quest. Now all that remains for me in August is what has been part of August for 31 years now:

What remains of Cape Week.

As I predicted 6 years ago when I wrote about Cape Week on the way home after Year 25, change has come for Cape Week. Have you been reading Random Thoughts for long? If so, then you know the story of Cape Week and I ask for your forbearance as I tell it once again for those who may be unfamiliar. Beth and I are both first-borns. More than that, among our siblings we ended up doing pretty much everything first. First to marry and so first to have in-laws. First to have children, and so first to receive all manner of “help” in parenting them. Long after the start of Cape week we were also first to have a child marry, gaining in-laws in law, and along with that the first to have grandchildren of our own.

In-laws bring with them the expectations and desires of another family. For sure there are all kinds of new “must attend” events, but it is the two great American holidays that become the flashpoints of discontent, especially in families that do not settle together. Who will host Thanksgiving and Christmas, and more importantly, who will be there? With the appearance of in-laws for my youngest sister we four siblings and our spouses realized that there were no easy options to make all 5 sets of our parents “holiday happy”. Our response? At least for the extended White Family, we would create our own holiday, a week together at the beach. My sister Tracey found a 5 bedroom house across a sand road from the beach, and in July of 1992 Cape Week was born.

For 25 years we had a kind of growing Groundhog Day week. We gathered in the main house (to which we added a spill-over cottage next door in year 4) for meals, games, and naps. Each day was spent almost entirely on the beach. Even Dad, not in any sense a beach guy, would fill up a beach chair and be at least a part of the scenery (as an aside, this is part of what informed my description of him, and my father-in-law, as “garden gnome” grandfathers: fun to play around, but they didn’t really play back). Eventually there was a total of 10 grandchildren, none of whom lived in the same town, and all of whom have become friends because for one week each year they were together on the beach.

It was quite rare for anyone to leave the compound in those first 25 years. Nor were visitors invited in, to be honest. During the years of “Cape Week Classic” it was the extended White Family, period. We are a family of habit, tradition. Comically so, in some instances. Saturday night dinner? Always barbecued chicken. Friday night finale? Pizza. The change from Joey’s to Paradise, years overdue, took one full week to bring about. No, while growth (we had young kids!) was occurring, change was not a part of Cape Week. With the exception of medical crisis, for 25 years we all came and we all stayed.

What does it take to pull off something that remained so much the same for 25 years? I’ve reposted my “musings…” from year 25 just below. Quite frankly no one can really say, and what I said 6 years ago is probably as well as I will personally ever be able to say it. Four couples committed to a week together with one parent/in-law, and then did whatever it took to make it happen for 25 years. It is now year 31, and as I predicted, our 25th year on the Cape was, indeed, the last of what I, at least, would call Cape Week.

The winds of change had blown through our week at the beach, as we all knew, or should have known they would, though each of us in our own way held out a tiny bit of hope that they wouldn’t. Dad passed away. Mom now only makes short “ceremonial” stays on the beach itself, and only a few at that. One sibling has a medical condition that for the most part keeps them off the beach. The daily walks together with my siblings and in-laws weren’t possible for me because I need a new hip. Only one grandchild remains in college; the rest hold jobs with little vacation to spare for their parents’ in-laws. Only two of five great-grandchildren have ever felt the sand of our sacred beach between their toes. In year 1 of Cape Week there were 10 adults and 5 children together for 7 days and 6 nights. For year 31 we had 9 adults and 3 children.

No one was left for pizza on Friday.

What a run it was, though! At the end of Year 25 I sobbed in the night before we left, as I kissed the beach goodbye, and while I wrote my “musings…”. What my siblings, our spouses, our children and I had come to know as Cape Week had, indeed, run its course at the end of that week, and if we never returned it was a run for the ages. 25 years! Everyone there all day, every day, every year. Although I did leave behind a tear or two during my annual kiss of thanks to our beach, these tears were not only tears of sadness as they were in the past. No, these were also tears of gratitude for what this beach, this Week has meant to our family and done for our family. For the friendships among the cousins. The love among the four couples. For my parents.

But they were also tears of joy. Some time over the week it finally came to me that another Cape Week tradition, a wholly new and different one, had actually started in year 26. Different, yes, but once I realized that, everything changed for the good. We had 25 years of Cape Week. As a family and as families we were blessed beyond reason. And for 6 years we’ve had something else. We can still call it Cape Week, of course, even though it’s different. But I didn’t cry on the way home, and I’m not crying while I write this. Each of the last 6 years has been unique, yet if you think about it–if you allow yourself to admit it–each of those years was just as lovely in its own right as all of those first 25 years were.

Some part of our family was together on “our” beach.

Winds of change have blown through Cape Week, but these last 6 years have shown that our love and fidelity to the goals we once had, and the memories we created over 25 years and will now share for eternity, need not be carried away by that breeze. Cape Week has changed. We have changed, all of us. But Cape Cod and our sacred beach remain, there for whomever may wish to gather for however long they wish to stay.

We will experience joyful change (graduations, marriages, births), and eventually loss and sorrow. We once chose to be together, and for 25 years we ritually did so. Have we closed the door on the house and driven away one, last, final time? I don’t know. I doubt it. While the ritual is gone, we may be fortunate enough to make the same choice we’ve now made 6 times, if not always, at least on occasion. We can choose. Cape Week, for all of its intensity over the years, has changed with us as we have changed along the way. The setting is the same; the story and the characters a bit different each time the book is opened. Who knows? There may be 25 more years, each one as unique and different from the last as years 1-25 were the same.

Year 25 actually WAS the last year of Cape Week as we first knew it. Cape Week has been reborn. It just took me 6 years to realize it.

Sunday musings…

The beach was chilly, the water a boiling mass of foam, yet the sand was smooth and calm. Unaffected. Doubtless, it had seen this before. My eyes began to leak. It must have been the wind. Yes, that’s it. The wind. I stood there in silence, struggling to fix the image in my mind. I knelt down to kiss the sand of my beloved beach. With a shirtsleeve to stem the flow from my eyes I walked away from 25 years of family history and toward the beginning of a new story.

What does it take to bring together an entire family for 7 days under one roof, every year, for 25 consecutive years? Why even start in the first place? Once upon a time families were born, grew, and died in a single town or small group of neighboring towns. Getting together was a given. Holidays presented a challenge born of access: who would host whom for what occasion at what time and for how long? Your Mom or your spouse’s Mom for Thanksgiving or Christmas or whenever. A cousin’s graduation might be a life-or-death obligation, attendance mandatory. Proximity rendered this moot, but we moved away.

First borns both, Mrs. bingo and I married first and had the first grandchildren. We hit every adulting stage before any of our siblings. This meant encountering in-law issues first as well. Where would we go and when? Sticky wicket, that. The solution, at least for the White family was the creation of a separate holiday totally removed from any established American tradition. We would all go to the beach together, just like we did as kids. Thus began “Cape Week”.

How do you get 4 young couples, all of which had multiple children to return time and again to the same place at the same time to do pretty much the same stuff each year for 25 years? It could be having a parent everyone was afraid of, or another no one wanted to disappoint. For sure having BOTH was a key component. Through every milestone each little family plowed through and found a way to make it to Cape Cod each year to spend every waking moment together in our little compound. Only serious illness kept anyone away. Over the years change did eventually come in the way of summer jobs for the grandchildren, which led as such things do to real, live adult jobs with little vacation time. That and of course, another generation of in-laws for our children to now contend with. Whispers of change were on the winds these last couple of years, but still, almost everyone was there for almost the whole week each summer.

I know what you’re thinking. Somehow it must have been easy for us. There must have been some sort of massive bribe, or something. Nope. What it took was a ton of commitment and hard work by four (now not so) young couples to make Cape Week happen. One family came from California for several years, another from the Midwest. There were summer camps that were never attended, All-Star teams made but All-Star Games missed. The classic teen rebellions against family were quashed, all 10 cousins showing up many more years than not. Invitations to vacation alternatives were graciously turned down, and every “how come always your family” discussion always ended with some version of “we can do that, too, just some other week.”

Cape week itself took hard work and commitment. Four families, 10 kids, and two grandparents together for meals, beach games, TV at night, and forays en masse to the ice cream shop. It could be a little bit cramped, even with the addition of a second cottage in year 4. Those 10 cousins from homes scattered all over America have grown up to be friends who know an amazing amount about each other despite their age differences and lack of proximity. For instance, 10+ summers of having the “college talk” with their aunts and uncles is uniformly one of their WORST memories. Yet there they were as well, every summer in which there was no unavoidable conflict. Until this year.

Why now? Why this, our 25th year, are we now closing the book on the last chapter of Cape Week? The easy answer is the loss of one of those grandparents, my Dad. It really doesn’t matter whether he was the one we were afraid of or the one we didn’t want to disappoint, I think it’s more a matter of needing both to make something like Cape Week a forgone conclusion. That one singular loss seems to have opened the door for each family to consider the value of Cape Week to their individual families. To think the heretofore unthinkable: something is more important to our family unit than the annual assembly of the extended family.

Is that it then? Is it over, 25 years and out?

It’s been an extraordinary run. Not a one of us knows a soul who’s even heard of a family that pulled off something like this. What is clearly over is Cape Week written in stone, and while that has always been inevitable if any of us ever really gave it any thought, it is quite sad nonetheless. We will continue to rent the main house, installing Gram for a week in the same chair at dinner, on the same spot on the beach. A calendar will say that it’s number 26, but it will be different. A new Cape Week, year number 1, invitations soon. Who will come?

If I close my eyes I can still see my beach. See it, as it has been these 25 years. With my eyes closed I see my Mom and Dad, young and vibrant, surrounded by babies and toddlers covered in sand and seaweed. There’s my brother and his wife, my sisters and their husbands, my darling Beth. We’re all together. My eyes have begun to leak again and it’s all a blur. There’s a breeze in my house; there must be a window open. Yes, that must be it, an open window has let in the wind.

The winds of change have finally come for Cape Week.

1 Open. Wow. What a golf tournament. Cam Smith holes out everything to spoil the feel good Rory story.

2 Wedding 1. Our closest couple married off their 3rd child last weekend. Nothing but smiles all around. There are few experiences more fulfilling than being treated like family at another family’s proudest and happiest moments, as we were so treated yesterday.

Congrats and bon voyage to Joey and Leslie. Fasten your seatbelts kids.

3 Wedding 2. Another couple with whom we are close married off their daughter yesterday. This one was quite an experience for both of us. Beth’s first Indian wedding (the mother of the bride is Sikh) and my first in 30 or so years. We both wore traditional Indian garb for the first ceremony, and then dressed up like the middle-aged Americans we are for the second, Christian ceremony. The festivities began on Thursday and only finished about an hour ago (we only participated on Saturday).

This one included a tiny little lesson in cultural respect. In all honesty, the effort that Beth and I made to show respect for the Sikh religion and traditions was really rather modest: we wore traditional clothing, took off our shoes, and covered our heads. Hardly worth mentioning, except that it must not be the norm, so effusive and sincere were the compliments and thank-you’s sent our way. Similar, but different (I was 31 or so) at my first Indian wedding.

All it takes to do the right thing with this kind of stuff is to ask a couple of questions and then make an honest and heartfelt effort. Heck, that should go for any situation where one is confronted with the opportunity to demonstrate your respect.

4 Clock. Nice little op-ed in this morning’s Plain Dealer by a former journalist honoring the memory of her recently deceased single Dad. Sounds like he was quite a guy. Union card-carrying auto worker who raised his daughter alone, gently guiding her away from danger while helping her find her way. When her marriage was over and she declared that she’d done all she coulde, he encouraged her to walk away and begin again.

“…life is too short to run out the clock.”

I love that. Just love it. I wish I’d read it before writing any one of my “seize the day” essays over the years. It’s just the kind of everyday poetry each of us needs to hear every now and again. RIP Mr. John F. Palfy. It would have been an honor to have known you, Sir.

5 Happiness. This is what happens when you don’t sit down to write every Sunday: lots of prompts back up in between your ears and you just have to put ’em all down to make sure you don’t forget them. Maybe come back and expand on them later, or maybe not. Whatever. At yesterday’s wedding one of my dear professional friends dropped this one on us at lunch:

Happiness is reality minus expectation.

Another 5 word poem. Think about it a minute. If you live your moments fully engulfed in them, without the “filter” of expectation, the wonderful among them are much more likely to generate happiness. How often are we disappointed by something which, from the outside, is nothing short of spectacular, but it wasn’t the exact spectacular we expected. Deepi was using examples from our specialty (we sat a a table of physician families), but it was clear that she meant pretty much everything.

This one I’ll come back to for sure.

6 Pain. Funny how two identical body parts can fail is such disparate ways, and along the way give you a totally different experience. When my left hip fell apart it did so rather slowly across several months. Even toward the end, when surgery was already scheduled, the degree of pain that was life-altering only occurred if I was particularly active. Pretty normal, un-extraordinary stuff like walking a couple of miles with Beth fell apart within 200 yards or so. Work, sit around, watch TV…no problem. It’s been 3 years since I had my left hip replaced and since the end of rehab it’s been a breeze.

This time it’s a totally different gig. Roll over just a bit too quickly? Yeah…zero to 8/10 in 2 seconds. I can’t stand still for more than 5 minutes without the same thing happening. Heck, I was getting a massage for goodness sake and had to cut it short because I couldn’t lie flat on either my back or my stomach. In less than 6 weeks this one is imposing itself on every waking minute.

Now, I’m not writing this seeking sympathy. Nope. With only a tiny bit of luck I’ll be just as well a month after surgery, and I only have 6 weeks or so to go before this other hip gets replaced. What’s of interest is this little glimpse into what a life with constant pain might be like. As far as I can tell the pain has changed neither my outlook on life or on the future. I’ve been pretty good at maintaining my sunny outlook (still Lake Dad, Mega!), but it has made me think about what a life with pain always there would look like. My level of respect–awe, really–for folks who soldier on despite debilitating chronic illness has tripled over the last few weeks.

How fortunate am I, are we, to live in a time when at least some of the pain can be cured.

7 OK. Honestly, the quick 90 degree turn in the conversation took me totally by surprise. I’d casually mentioned to Beth that one of my Williams email buddies had shut down his blog, an endeavor that he’d really seemed to be enjoying. It made me wonder if he was OK. If anything was going on. Instead of sending in a batting practice fastball and asking why I was concerned about Thunder (none of us have “real” names on that thread), she tossed a knuckleball:

“Are you gonna be OK? I’m worried about whether you are going to be OK if I’m not here.”

Not gonna lie, I wasn’t expecting that one. For sure we’ve talked about what it will be like to grow old together. Stuff like my recent pain, when we might need to leave Casa Blanco and what that may look like. Statistically it’s much more likely that I’ll shed the ties to this life long before Beth. We middle-aged men are definitely the more fragile version of the species, medical progress regardless. Still, it was, is, a fair question. I’ve made no secret of how much I love my wife. Love to be with her, even if it’s just in the same space while we do totally different stuff (like now while I write and she plays a game she loves).

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that she chose to ask if I’d be OK. Not if I’d be happy or sad, but if I’d be OK. Between our very brief conversation and sitting down to write I learned that my buddy Thunder was just fine; he just wasn’t getting what he wanted or needed out of his blog and decided it wasn’t worth continuing. “Just fine” is what he said. Would I be just fine without Beth? Nope. Not fine and not truly happy. Maybe not even content. No matter how much I try to make the integer “expectation” in my friend’s equation “zero”, in this case I can’t even visualize my world without Beth.

But what I WOULD be, what I’m sure of, is that I would be OK.

You see, I have spent a life, already quite long at 62 years, a life that has been grounded time and again by unconditional love. Love from people who time and again told me that I was OK. That I had it within me to be OK, even when other people might not have been. Same with Beth. Our parents loved us since I was old enough to know and remember, however much they may not have liked us at times along the way. So, too, my maternal grandparents, Gamma and Gramp. They are there in my earliest memories as well, always letting me know that I was, and would be, OK. Probably gave them fewer reasons not to like me I’m sure. The same type of unconditional love has been with me for all of the years Beth and I have been together. It grounds me, still.

So, happy? No way. Content? Fine, like my friend? Unlikely. Will I be OK though? Yes my Dollie, I’ll be OK. I promise. The unconditional love will still be there. Unconditional love will be there forever.

“S/He’s living her/his best life.” Seems I hear some version of that phrase to describe someone pretty much everyday. Most times I just smile, or maybe chuckle if it was said sarcastically or if the speaker was aiming for irony, but hearing it usually leaves no impact of any significance. What does it even mean, you know? Best in what way? Best possible for them? For anyone? What does it take to live your best life, anyway?

I am home after sneaking away early from a conference this weekend. Among my professional colleagues I am famous for making all kinds of plans to stick around to the bitter end of a meeting and then pulling an “Irish Goodbye” a day or two early. This time was kinda funny because you could reasonably said the it was an example of me “living my best life”. Or at least one version of “best life”. I was among many professional friends, some of whom I’ve known for decades. They were happy that I was there, and I in turn was quite happy to see all of them. The topics covered were in my wheelhouse, and happily every question lobbed in my direction came in as straight and true as a batting practice fastball.

Yes indeed, professionally I was living my best life.

Among this group of colleagues is a smaller group of people who are, or are becoming, friends without a qualifier. People who I would try to see and hang out with every week if we lived closer. One of them–I’ll call him Mark because, you know, that’s his name–is someone with whom I’ve been exploring two of my pet themes: friendship and happiness. Mark and I are close enough in age and life stage that we cone to these topics, and the vocabulary necessary to discuss them, with a kind of ease and comfort. We’ve talked about the Harvard Class of ’55 study that showed that, outside of being married, the only thing that consistently results in happiness is the presence of three close friends.

Mark is a very successful executive who has moved around a bit during his career. Beth and I moved a bit during our younger years before settling in Ohio 30-some years ago. Despite this pattern deviation between us, Mark and I agree that our jobs and our commitment to family have made it difficult for us to cultivate those local friendships. I’m not sure how Mark views his situation, but I’m pretty sure that I bear more than 1/2 of the responsibility for mine. Since our dear friends Bill and Nancy decamped for Cincinnati I’m sure that my side of the effort equation has been lacking hereabouts.

And yet, despite that, I’m really quite happy at the moment, however much I may worry about what is to come, and I think Mark feels the same. Why? Well, we are both married for one thing, and anyone who reads my pabulum here knows that I am blissfully married at that. As much as I like my professional friends and colleagues, I do have a small tribe of buddies whose company I throughly enjoy, who have thus far continued to welcome me as a tribemate. As I flew home on my secret ninja express yesterday, thinking about Mark and our latest exploration of middle-aged mandom, I realized that not only am I not alone, not even remotely, but it is more likely than not that I will spend much more time with this tribe as we all leave our working lives behind.

Mark and I both have people we live with, and who we live for.

Flying home I realized how lucky I am to have these people. Beth, my kids and grandkids. Siblings and their spouses, all of whom I would love to see every week. My little tribe here locally and all of my professional friends I see over the course of a year. Bill and Nancy, who we still see every couple of months. It made me think of a man I once met at work who had no one, and what I wrote about him after we met.

Billy Ray (not his real name, of course) turned off his implantable defibrillator (ICD). Billy Ray is 44.

In my day job, in the days that I did in-house consultations, I was asked to evaluate Billy Ray for a problem in my specialty. I was told he was about to enter hospice care and assumed that he was much, much older and simply out of options. I admit that I was somewhat put out by the request, it being Saturday and the problem already well-controlled. Frankly, I thought it was a waste of my time, Billy Ray’s time, and whoever might read my report’s time, not to mention the unnecessary costs. I had a very pleasant visit with Billy Ray, reassured him that the problem for which I was called was resolving nicely, and left the room to write my report.

44 years old though. What was his fatal illness? What was sending him off to Hospice care? I bumped into his medical doc and couldn’t resist asking. Turns out that Billy Ray has a diseased heart that is on the brink of failing; without the ICD his heart will eventually beat without a rhythm and he will die. A classic indication for a heart transplant–why was Billy Ray not on a transplant list? Why, for Heaven’s sake, did he turn off his ICD?

There is a difference between being alive and living, having a life. It’s not the same to say that one is alive and that one is living. It turns out that Billy Ray suffered an injury at age 20 and has lived 24 years in unremitting, untreatable pain. Cut off before he even began he never married, has no children. Each day was so filled with the primal effort to stop the pain he had little left over for friendship.

Alive without a life. Alive without living. Billy Ray cried “Uncle”.

I have been haunted by this since I walked out of the hospital. How do you make this decision? Where do you turn? Billy Ray has made clear he has no one. Does a person in this situation become MORE religious or LESS? Rage against an unjust God or find comfort in the hope of an afterlife? Charles DeGaulle had a child with Down’s Syndrome. On her death at age 20 he said “now she is just like everyone else.” Is this what Billy Ray is thinking? That in death he will finally be the same as everyone else?

And what does this say about each of us in our lives? What does it say about the problems that we face, the things that might make us rage against some personal injustice? How might we see our various infirmities when cast in the shadow of a man who has lived more than half his life in constant pain, a man alone? The answer, of course, is obvious, eh?

The more subtle message is about people, having people. Having family, friends, people for whom one might choose to live. It’s very easy to understand the heroic efforts others make to survive in spite of the odds, despite the pain. Somewhere deep inside the will to live exists in the drive to live for others. The sadness I felt leaving the hospital and what haunts me is not so much Billy Ray’s decision but my complete and utter understanding of his decision.

Billy Ray gave lie to the heretofore truism that “no man is an island”.

Find your people. Allow yourself to be found. Go out and build your bridges. Build the connections to others that will build your will to live. Live so that you will be alive for your others. Be alive so that your life will be more than something which hinges on nothing more than a switch that can be turned off. Live with and for others so that you, too, can understand not only Billy Ray but also those unnamed people who fight for every minute of a life.

Be more than just alive. Living your best life means living with, and for, your people.

Thanks to my friend Mark for the inspiration. I’ll see you next week…

A raging “sea” sits just outside my windows as I watch the U.S. Open Golf Championship, held this year as always on Father’s Day weekend. 50+ MPH winds last night “redecorated” my backyard, depositing umbrellas in new locations and moving carpets hither and yon. I got an impromptu shower as two gigantic waves hit the seawall while I was checking on the condition of my antique boat, stored as always just below our upper deck. Beth is at a horse show; the dogs have re-racked. The weekend is off to a quiet start. At least indoors, that is.

Father’s Day is an interesting holiday. Many (most?) Dads get a pass on pretty much all responsibilities at home and head to whatever venue they visit when they are doing the thing they do for themselves. The golf course or the boat launch. Perhaps the tennis courts or a duck blind. I’ve always taken a different approach, trying to be available to do Dad stuff with my kids, or in recent years with my grandkids. I liked being “Dad” when my kids were younger, and I really enjoy being “Papi” with my grandkids. Who knows who will be around to play with me, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll be here and I’ll be ready.

In yesterday’s WSJ Elizabeth Bernstein wrote a very nice little piece about the bond she and her Dad had through sailing. For my brother and me the bond came through golf. My Dad gifted us with the game of golf when we were quite young; I was 8, my brother 7. Golf was where we got to see the guy my Dad’s friends saw. Dad was a bit of a tease with his buddies, who in turn teased him right back. It wouldn’t be until we were in our 30’s before Randall and I felt like we could tease him back. On Father’s Day Dad would play with the Levin brothers, three of his close golfing buddies, and the caddy master would assign my brother and me to the foursome. To be sure we were at work, my brother and I, but unlike other Sundays we were very much included in the banter of the round.

Our Dad being a Dad on Father’s Day.

It’s been almost 7 years since Dad passed away, and about 10 since he disappeared into his mind and left us. I think of him and miss him every day, but especially so, of course, on Father’s Day. I want to call him and ask him about The Country Club and his round there. To tell him how excited I’ve been to be playing golf again, and to hear him offer encouragement when I tell him that I’m back on injured reserve as my “good” hip fails me and I can neither walk a course nor swing a club. He’d be upbeat and positive, confident in my eventual recovery, and we would look ahead to our next round together. A good walk it would be, indeed.

As I wait in hope that I will receive the gift of being Dad or Papi I will leave you, as I have done for some 5 years now, with the story of the last Father’s Day I spent with my Dad. A brief moment when all was as it had been, a Dad and his boy together on a golf course.

My siblings and I only need to remember one weekend each year when it comes to celebrating my Dad. His birthday almost always falls within a day or two of Father’s Day. So it was that I found myself in Rhode Island the past couple of days, in the company of my Mom and a guy masquerading as my Dad, a guy who was very curious about the new fella who’d dropped by for a visit.

Getting old is not for sissies, my friends.

Somewhere inside, deep inside, there’s still some of my Dad in the jumbled up connections of his mind, carried by the body that failed him in such spectacular fashion 2 ½ years ago. Dad is extremely intelligent, the only family member in his generation to have gone to college. Quite the athlete, he used football and the GI Bill to pay for school. Like so many in his generation he then worked, raised a family, and put himself through grad school. He won his club championship in golf twice at the ages of 50 and 60. No typo. Beat the reigning RI State Amateur champ on his home course for the first one.

As we sat on the porch of his house overlooking the par 5  14^th hole, I had an ever so brief visit from that guy. From my Dad. Like a citizen of Brigadoon he came slowly through the mist of his mind to join me for a bit. We’d always bonded over golf. My brother and I never turned down an invitation to join him on the course, either as partners or as caddies for him and his buddies. It was quite a privilege to do either; my Dad’s most elemental essence was expressed on the golf course.

A light breeze was blowing through the forest in the back yard just beyond the rough. We chuckled at the golfers who failed to take the wind into consideration, sheepishly trying to sneak into our yard to retrieve their out-of-bounds second shot. Dad talked about caddying as a kid in the Depression. We both noted the absence of caddies as the foursomes passed in and out of view. It was really very nice.

I quite like the Dad of my adulthood. Quick to smile, slow to anger, unfailingly loyal and kind. It’s hard to imagine now how distant he was when I was a boy, his friendship as an adult is so easy. I’m not sure how long we sat there to be honest, nor when I noticed that he was slipping away. As surely as the village of Brigadoon disappears, the mist had returned to claim him. I got up, walked over to his chair, held his hand and gave him a kiss. I wished him a Happy Birthday and a Happy Father’s Day, hoping that I’d made it on time. That he was still there. That he knew it was me, Darrell, his oldest child. I told him I loved him.

He smiled and gave my hand a little pat as he disappeared into the mist.

I really miss my Dad.

Happy Father’s Day to all who are so blessed. I’ll see you next week…

1 Gore. An unused parcel of land over which no one claims ownership. Apparently the word from which one of my college classmates last name is derived.

Could have some fun with this one in lighter times, eh?

2. Birthdays. We’ve entered the time of year I like to call “birthday season”. All three of my kids start turning older this weekend. Randy turned 30. 30! How the heck did THAT happen?!

Time flies, man. Time flies…

3. Reunion 1. Beth and I are “flying back” from my 40th College Reunion on Route 90. We had the silliest flight home from Williamstown you can imagine. A three hour drive to Boston in order to fly to Myrtle Beach for the privilege of a 3 1/2 hr. layover before heading home to Cleveland. Almost 12 hours via that route, so here I am, with Beth driving, once again typing to you at 75 MPH courtesy of the modern internet.

I mean, come on, who does anything but fly TO Myrtle Beach?

4. Reunion 2. Wow. I mean, just WOW! It’s been 40 years since I drove away from the Purple Valley in the family station wagon chockablock filled with 4 years of stuff cleared out from the last of my dorm rooms and carted back to Rhode Island for the last time. That was a weird trip; I think it was the only time I was alone in a car for that drive, ever. Pretty melancholy ride, to be honest. Quite a bit different from my first drop-off ride in the fall of 1978 when I was deposited in my freshman dorm room after a raucous family drive along the topsy turvy asphalt ribbon of Route 2, the Mohawk Trail, through Massachusetts.

Until this weekend that was the only time I’d been in a car on that particular drive. Beth and I were routed that way from Boston via the map app as we headed back to Williams College for my 40th college reunion. Talk about time flying. Whoa. 40 years. 44 years give or take a few months since that first drop-off. Ditto for the orientation week known as “Freshman Days” back then (though probably no longer because, well, freshMEN), the week when I first met my classmates. I’ve written about this phenomenon before. Even in a school as tiny as the Williams of that time I really had no contact with at least 50% of my class from that early week until various reunions to come.

That was, once more, one of the themes of this reunion. “Hi, I’m Darrell. How the heck did we not know each other in school?!”. This year’s version was almost exclusively men I’d not known; past years almost exclusively women whose friendships I’d missed out on for whatever reason. Despite the lovely protestations from everyone over the years I still think these missed opportunities, and the responsibilty for the misses, is probably on me. I still think I was overly interested in myself back then. But this year brought a balancing note to those missed opportunities because a couple of people I DID know in those younger days came to this year’s festivities for the first time, or the first time in decades. What a treat to see Brenda M. and Jennie V. after so many years.

I could have spent hours with them both!

The second recurring theme this weekend was retirement. It’s a natural; we’re all in our 60’s after all. I expected to hear that most of my classmates were already retired. So many have been so very successful that it only seemed natural. Frankly I was looking forward to tapping into their experiences as Beth and I begin to plot our eventual glide path toward our retirement landing. To my surprise almost everyone (with the notable exception of my lifelong best friend Rob) was exactly where I find myself now, enjoying work and without that one thing we are looking forward to retiring TO. It was comforting to know that I wasn’t the outlier even though this is likely the best source of advice for me whenever they, and I, are ready to take that next step.

In a funny way the people who didn’t attend were in many ways at least as present at those that did. Perhaps because some of them were friends I was looking forward to seeing in real life rather than on social media, or folks who’d suggested that they might be there and I just expected to see them. Beth was curious about my friends’ and my dating back in the day (only one old flame for any of the guys was there). Where were they all? Where were the ones who’d come to Reunions in the years just after graduation but have stayed away for 5 or 10 or 30 years? Thinking about them now, they were mostly the kids who aced college. Grades, sports, romance, through the lens of 40 years gone by it seems that they were the ones who nailed the whole Williams thing. A couple of the girls I did date including my freshman crush, Jaime, come to mind. They seemed to sail peacefully and happily through our four years in Billsville.

One is left to wonder, though. Was my take on their college days accurate, and they were just so good that a reunion could only be a letdown? Or did I totally miss the boat and their experience was as varied and normal as the rest of us? Maybe secretly worse, and a reunion just opens old wounds? Funny. As we drive home it’s the classmates we didn’t see who fill our thoughts. Enough to see ourselves back in the Purple Valley 5 years hence, back to visit with the young man who left college unaware that he’d only just begun to learn who he would one day become.

To my classmates, I hope I see you long before our next Reunion. For those of you with whom I’ve become Sunday friends, well, I’ll see you next week…

At the moment I am sitting in an airport–Boston, if it matters–on the way home from a very nice visit with my Mom. I really don’t get to see her all that much, which is, of course, on me. I was able to turn a business trip during which I took Mom out to dinner into a weekend visit with Mom during which I snuck a business meeting in.

The highlight was Mass this morning. With the Pandemic lockdowns and Mom getting older and no longer driving she has seen her church-going reduced to 11 AM mass on TV. While it’s better than nothing it’s really only a touch more than nothing, even for Mom. It was nice to get the day started in the Church of my youth, my butt aching on the hardest wooden pews in America, my back as stiff as a board leaning into the perfect 90 degree angles.

We’re Catholic; we suffer.

During my “sneak away” meeting we had a little sidebar conversation about role models. In this case professional role models, but on my drives to and from Boston I got to thinking about role models in general. My parents and my maternal grandparents were obvious role models, of course, as were a couple of coaches who wore the role model cape as comfortably and naturally as they did the whistles around their neck. In Church this morning I was reminded by the priest that we have a “built in” role model. As Christians we “celebrate” the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate expression of altruism and seeking to help others in the “history” of mankind. Men and women are tasked with following Him as the ultimate role model for how we are to live our lives.

If one does, indeed, believe, and if one does follow Him as the role model in one’s life, then all other talk of role models is irrelevant. Like so many other goals and targets, though, the Lamb as role model is ultimately unachievable by any and all, and thus we have the all too human phenomenon of other, human role models. Believers or not we all seem to get this; everyone I’ve ever met can name more than one role model, someone very public or known only to them, but always at least one.

What then constitutes a role model? Who is qualified to fill this role? Who would be willing to do so? How do we find these people, these role models?

In a world that was much less heterogenous, where people of all stripes had more in common than not and acknowledged that fact, role models seemed to be a little easier to come by. Audie Murphy. Stan Musial. Jackie Robinson. Heck, even a politician or two filled the bill. Every town had a teacher or a coach or a cop who everyone looked up to. Why then and not now? Partly because of that sense that we were all more the same than less, but partly because we only knew the good stuff about our role models, and on top of that we only really wanted to know the good stuff, ya know?

Once upon a time to be a role model meant to be always trying to do the right thing for the right person at the right time. We forgave the occasional slip because we saw the effort and appreciated the ongoing effort. It inspired us to do better ourselves. We forgave the occasional failure because we knew how hard it is to always look to do that favor, to offer the helping hand, to put forth the best effort. To put yourself in line and push others ahead. Our sense of our own humanity was extended to our role models as a gift to them such that they would continue to lead us.

The perceived lack of role models in society today says more about us than it does about any role models that we may have discarded. We accentuate our differences rather than our commonalities, no matter how far on either end of the curve lie those differences. We not only accept too much information about our all-too human potential role models, we actively seek the “smoking gun” that will bury them. We are all the lesser for all of that, for we deny ourselves the potential that could come from having a role model just a little bit better than ourselves. Someone not that very different from ourselves whose goodness we can aspire to because it is achievable, if only we would try.

And having tried, even if we are only partly successful, perhaps we, too, may become someone’s role model.

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” Jamie Anderson

Are you like me? Do you find yourself suddenly a bit sad, melancholy, out of the blue? Or perhaps, like me, you tear up at every sentimental story you happen across. A stray dog is reunited with its long, lost owner after a week, a month, a decade. An older man buys a kid a new bike after the kid slams into the man’s car by accident and the old guy just can’t let the embarrassment of hitting his car be the last memory of the bike. It’s like every possible emotion lies so close to the surface that the tiniest breeze uncovers it.

Maybe it’s the unbidden memories of loss that do it. That happens to me, too. More and more often, come to think of it. Some of them are prompted (the downside of Facebook Memories I suppose), but just as often they seem to come out of nowhere. I was watching my 9 year old Aussie racing around the yard yesterday and just couldn’t shake the memories of my Border Collie, Abby the Wonder Dog, who should have been right there chasing Sasha for all she was worth. It was hard to see Sasha after a moment. I thought I had something in my eye, at least until Beth’s goofy little mutt Tiny Tim joined the party.

Boy, did I love those dogs. Haddie and Kota, too. After so many years I still grieve.

As I was gathering my thoughts before musing this morning I stumbled upon Ms. Anderson’s words and had an epiphany: I miss being able to love those I’ve loved and lost. At levels both very deep and barely below the surface, I continue to grieve. It’s truly grief; there’s really not a tinge of regret here. I’ve largely followed my own advice to tell those I love them just that. To ask forgiveness if I’ve somehow hurt them, and forgiven them for any harms that came my way. I’ve thanked them for loving me and for allowing me to love them. No “I wish I’d’s” or “I should have’s” or “if only I’d had more to to’s”. When I read that lovely quote I simply realized that I still had so very much love to give to those I’ve lost, and what I was feeling was that I can’t.

Every now and again the losses pile up like so much water in a bucket, until they spill over into the open. Not just lives, although those are the toughest of course. My Dad and my grandparents, Beth’s parents. My friend lost to suicide a year ago. Perhaps its a one degree of separation life lost that does it; my sister and her husband lost a brother-in-law a couple of weeks ago; I’d never even met him, and yet the tears ran as if we’d just had a beer last month. Sometimes no one dies but there is a decrease, or a loss of proximity, contact. Doesn’t matter why. Something creates a space that is almost as wide, as impossible to navigate, as death itself.

Today is Mother’s Day, or as I prefer to think of it, Mommy’s Day. I confess that I have no idea how or where or by whom Mother’s Day was created. But unlike blatantly commercial creations like “Sweetest Day” (American Greetings card-giving creation) or just outright silliness like “National Eyelash Day” (not kidding; really a thing), today is the day when we are each given permission to fawn over the Mom’s we still have among us.

You called your Mom, right?

That’s the point. The reason I open my annual thoughts on Mother’s Day with musings on grief. My beloved Gamma, Mom’s mom, is gone. So, too, both of Beth’s grandmothers. My mother-in-law has been gone for a few years now, too. My FB Memories from 6 years ago are filled with pictures and videos of the magnificent trip to Mexico arranged by my soon-to-be departed father-in-law when he surprised Sandy by bringing their girls (and their boys) to Mexico for a last family gathering to celebrate both Sandy’s Birthday and Mother’s Day. Soon, too soon, Bob would be gone. My Dad, too. Whether it’s Mother’s Day or just some random Tuesday, there’s no one there to call.

But not today. Sure, I will set aside a little bit of time to grieve for Mommies not here to Mom. I’ll tear up at all of the Mom memories that come my way today. But I am still blessed on this Mother’s Day. Today I have a bunch of Moms to call. Starting with my Mom and my darling Beth, my kids’ Mom, I have tons of love that still has a clear place to go.

So Happy Mother’s Day to all of you Moms out there, and to the kids who still have you there for us to love.

1 Hostage. First published “Musings” in weeks. My blog has been held hostage by multiple server quirks. Lots of stuff to talk about. Also, likely time for a change in venue.

2 Equilux. The first day of Spring, the Equinox, is not the day when daylight precisely equals dark. That day is actually called the Equilux, and it typically occurs a day or two prior to the first day of spring.

Learned that from the comic strip Frazz.

3 Mistake. “A mistake repeated more than once is a decision.” –Paulo Coelho

Boy, there’s a lot of meat on that bone, isn’t there?

4 Schlimmbesserung. German. An intended improvement that actually makes things worse. Think New Coke. Or EMR.

Yeah…definitely EMR.

5 Memories. One of the things that Facebook does very, very well, is remind you what you were up to in years past. At the moment I am in the midst of 24 consecutive days of “Drinking with John Starr” 2 years ago during the Pandemic lockdown. It was a very dark time for me, one of the darkest of my life. And yet, every day at 5:00 I thought about my friend John and his “Drinks Around the World”, and I smiled.

It may not have been the best coping mechanism (as John himself pointed out), but it did get me through. In 10 days or so I will buy John a drink and say “thank you”.

6 Movies. This has been an “on” week in our new life as grandparents. Beth has lots of responsibility with the little ones. My Dollie is exhausted. We’ve reacted by watching movies together. Some at night, some during the day, but all together. We typically choose movies we’ve missed over the years, or current movies everyone is talking about. There’s a trend we’ve noticed of late…

…we almost always find the most lauded movies to be disappointing.

Seriously. Manchester by the Sea was nothing less than a 3 hour emotional beatdown. You stick with it because it was so well-reviewed. The actors and acting said to be so good it didn’t really matter what the story was. You stick with it thinking that any movie so highly regarded MUST give you some kind of reward for sticking it out. Yeah. No.

Last night it was “Lost in Translation”, one of Bill Murray’s non-comedy movies. One that supposedly proved his chops as a “real” actor, not just a goof. Sure, Murray’s acting was actually quite good. But come on now, WTF was it really about? The best, most memorable scene in the whole thing was Murray whispering something wholly unknown into his co-stars ear at the end. It was the signature moment and you can’t hear him.

You. Don’t. Know. What. He. Said.

So today we took a totally different tack. Beth and I watched a movie with no pedigree whatsoever, starring actors we’d never heard of or seen before called “Without a Paddle”. It’s ridiculous. Just silly. Not art in any sense of the word.

We loved it.

It’s like that book you read because you simply want to be entertained. No work. A “Harry Bosch” or “Grey Man” novel. Bourne, in years past. I’d have felt a bit better about the “esteemed” movies if they’d been…you know…fun. Even less pretentious would have been better.

Murray didn’t need an “art house” movie to cement his reputation. Beth and I didn’t need his (or Ben Affleck’s for that matter) offering to the arts gods.

7 Masters. At the moment I am sitting in front of a television, finishing off one of my DWJS cocktails and enjoying my annual “visit” to Augusta National. I’ve sent out greetings to my locals, my brother, and my best friend. My two cheering interests will come up short, although the fact that Tiger made it through all 4 days without needing an ambulance is probably cause for a second cocktail. It’s funny, that a golf tournament is an annual touchstone for a guy who stopped playing golf for 12 years, but nonetheless, there it is on the tube.

I got to go to the Masters once. In person. My best friend since college once had a job where he took 3 clients to August for the Masters each year. We had a deal: if one of his customers bailed for whatever reason he would call and I would come. In a super cool coincidence I got “the call” at the dinner table when my Mom and Dad were visiting us in Cleveland. Rob had tickets for the whole weekend and one of his customers couldn’t come. I was in!

Have I told you this one before? No matter. It’s a good story, and more than that, it makes me happy to tell it. That’s kinda the point of musings, in’t it? Anyway, the deal was that Rob and his other three customers were landing in Charlotte Friday night and driving to a hotel near Augusta that night. I was to fly in and join the party at the airport. This being 1994 and Cleveland being a Continental hub at the time, the logistics were easy peasy. We met up in baggage claim, hopped in a (huuuge) rental car, and headed to the hotel. Up at the ass crack of dawn to drive to our rental house at the Augusta Country Club (the denizens of Augusta were way ahead of the AirBnB thing) where 4 passes were supposed to be waiting for us for both Saturday and Sunday at the Masters.

And where we found 4 for Sunday but only 3 on Saturday, one for Rob and each of his official customers.

Mind you, I’m pretty much playing with house money here. I’m gonna go to the Masters for the final round, one week after getting the call. We made the ticket discovery while we were exploring our 4 bedroom house, ESPN and CBS on cable, and a second fridge in the kitchen filled with Heineken and bottles of wine with names I hadn’t yet learned how to pronounce. Worst case scenario: I watch Saturday’s round on TV and drink waaaay above my pay grade. Rob wasn’t having it, though. He called the ticket broker his company used and read him the riot act. Off went Rob and his customers; it looked like my Masters experience would be a single Sunday final round.

So there I was, 11:00 or so, sitting on the can, when the broker calls the house. Yep, I’m here, guest of Mr. Roberto, no ticket. “Well, the only badge I have is my own–long pause–but I guess the customer always comes first.” Not gonna lie, I clutched just a moment there. I wasn’t really, truly a customer, after all. Just a moment, though. “Yup. I guess you’re right. So how do we get together so that I can get that badge?” He was playing the Augusta Country Club and would be making the turn around 11:30. Could I meet him on the 10th tee?

What do YOU think? Of COURSE I could.

So I walk out of the front door of our rented house and start to walk, well, where? Remember, this is 1994. There’s no Google Maps or Waze to help me find my way. I know that I’m in a course-side development, but frankly that’s pretty much all I know. The Golf Gods were smiling on me, though. Around the cul-de-sac comes a big, fancy Lexus and the driver rolls down the window as he comes up on me as I’m walking. “Where ya headed?” Turns out he’s the pro at the club where I’m headed. “Sounds like you need to get to the 10th tee!”

And it just gets better from there! Three groups pass the 10th tee and ask WTH I’m doing there, all to leave the tee with best wishes my way for a great day at the National. The broker hands over the badge and calls his driver with instructions to pick me up at the clubhouse. “Is it OK if I drop by our ‘command house’ on the way to the course? I’m pretty sure we can get you some lunch for your trouble’.” Homemade burritos served up by Southern Belles in the kitchen and then off to the Master.

There’s another full “Musings…” worth of stories from this adventure, but you’ve suffered enough already. Finding a high school golf adversary teeing off as I arrived, my Dad’s buddy squiring me around, invited to stay in the same neighborhood as Jack and Arnie if I don’t reconnect with Rob et al, and so much more. Every year my tiny little living room is crowded with these memories, sharing space with memories of my Dad and his love affair with the Masters.

In the end it’s just a golf tournament, right? And yet it is also a touchstone for things that are so much more. Each year I’d call my Dad to review the tournament. My best friend made the call and got me there in person. My brother and my locals have been texting throughout. There is so much that is so important to me that this weekend touches on.

No lesson. Nope, just good vibes. Just, you know, good.

I’ll see you next week…