straight up onto the green and right into the cup for a birdie. A birdie on the Road Hole.
On 18 we both hit straight, deep drives, though without the wind blowing hard to the left from over my right shoulder, I might have flirted with trouble down the right side. Jack hit another wedge with too much behind it and flew his ball past the pin to the back of the green. I left my nine-iron short and watched the ball lose its momentum and die in the Valley of Sin in front of the green. I waited for Jack to make his par. But he three-putted for only the second hole of the day to take a bogey 5. I was doing the math in my head by then, and I knew that if I saved par, I would beat him on the back nine 37 to 38.
With this in mind I putted out of the Valley of Sin with much too much force, and my ball rolled across the green, passing the pin on its way to stopping four feet in the fringe. It was a terrible shot. Just terrible, but I thought if I could tie my son on the back nine of the Old Course, that would still be something.
Jack stood on the green about to pull the pin. “Leave it in,” I said to him as I walked to my ball. There were a few people with cameras, watching us now, the only two people left on the course again. I put my putter back in my bag, took out a seven-iron, and hit the ball right into the center of the cup. It made a marvelous sound as it rattled against the iron pin on its way down into the hole.
We shook hands. “You played the last five holes at one under par,” Jack said generously.
“Thanks,” I told him. It was the first time I’d beaten him at anything in so long I couldn’t recall when it had last happened.
———
Back at the hotel I was settling in to watch soccer with Jack, when he announced that he was going out for a while. “Is everything all right?” I asked.
“I just want to take a walk,” he said. “I have five months before I graduate.”
I was certain that he was feeling what it was going to be like to leave everything that was familiar to him. I think he had a sense of what this would be like for him.
The minute he left the room, I started to miss him. I ran down the back stairs to the lobby and out the front door. I reached the sidewalk just in time to see him disappear around a corner way out ahead of me. Take all the times I’d stood at the window at home watching him drive away, feeling helpless, and worrying if he would make it back safely. And all the times I’d watched his sisters do the same thing. What I felt now was worse. It seemed as if everything I knew was wrong.
Lying in bed, waiting for Jack to return, I recalled the nightly “knee football” games we used to play before his bedtime when he was little. He was still wearing the pajamas with feet, and I could almost hear the little scuffing sound they made on the floors. If you get that in your life—a little boy in your arms laughing as you tackle him to the floor, and then begging you to do it again, and then pleading with you to lie beside him in his bed until he falls asleep—you don’t have the right to ask for anything more. Even if you end up alone in the end, you’ve lived. You’ve really lived in this world, and you have no right to ask for more. But I had. I was always asking for more.
JANUARY 20, 2007
The final day of our trip, and it turned out that I had not lost Jack’s high school ball at Carnoustie. It had slipped inside the lining of my golf bag. I took a butter knife from breakfast to bury the ball on our last round at the Old Course.
As we walked up the 9th fairway, I told Jack that before we left home, I had spent an afternoon reading my old journals, and I’d found something I had written about him when he was four years old. “It went like this,” I said:
Tonight I had to scold you for the first time because you had punched Mommy in the nose. When I went into your room later you were curled up in your blankets. How are you, Jack? I asked you.
On 18 we both hit straight, deep drives, though without the wind blowing hard to the left from over my right shoulder, I might have flirted with trouble down the right side. Jack hit another wedge with too much behind it and flew his ball past the pin to the back of the green. I left my nine-iron short and watched the ball lose its momentum and die in the Valley of Sin in front of the green. I waited for Jack to make his par. But he three-putted for only the second hole of the day to take a bogey 5. I was doing the math in my head by then, and I knew that if I saved par, I would beat him on the back nine 37 to 38.
With this in mind I putted out of the Valley of Sin with much too much force, and my ball rolled across the green, passing the pin on its way to stopping four feet in the fringe. It was a terrible shot. Just terrible, but I thought if I could tie my son on the back nine of the Old Course, that would still be something.
Jack stood on the green about to pull the pin. “Leave it in,” I said to him as I walked to my ball. There were a few people with cameras, watching us now, the only two people left on the course again. I put my putter back in my bag, took out a seven-iron, and hit the ball right into the center of the cup. It made a marvelous sound as it rattled against the iron pin on its way down into the hole.
We shook hands. “You played the last five holes at one under par,” Jack said generously.
“Thanks,” I told him. It was the first time I’d beaten him at anything in so long I couldn’t recall when it had last happened.
———
Back at the hotel I was settling in to watch soccer with Jack, when he announced that he was going out for a while. “Is everything all right?” I asked.
“I just want to take a walk,” he said. “I have five months before I graduate.”
I was certain that he was feeling what it was going to be like to leave everything that was familiar to him. I think he had a sense of what this would be like for him.
The minute he left the room, I started to miss him. I ran down the back stairs to the lobby and out the front door. I reached the sidewalk just in time to see him disappear around a corner way out ahead of me. Take all the times I’d stood at the window at home watching him drive away, feeling helpless, and worrying if he would make it back safely. And all the times I’d watched his sisters do the same thing. What I felt now was worse. It seemed as if everything I knew was wrong.
Lying in bed, waiting for Jack to return, I recalled the nightly “knee football” games we used to play before his bedtime when he was little. He was still wearing the pajamas with feet, and I could almost hear the little scuffing sound they made on the floors. If you get that in your life—a little boy in your arms laughing as you tackle him to the floor, and then begging you to do it again, and then pleading with you to lie beside him in his bed until he falls asleep—you don’t have the right to ask for anything more. Even if you end up alone in the end, you’ve lived. You’ve really lived in this world, and you have no right to ask for more. But I had. I was always asking for more.
JANUARY 20, 2007
The final day of our trip, and it turned out that I had not lost Jack’s high school ball at Carnoustie. It had slipped inside the lining of my golf bag. I took a butter knife from breakfast to bury the ball on our last round at the Old Course.
As we walked up the 9th fairway, I told Jack that before we left home, I had spent an afternoon reading my old journals, and I’d found something I had written about him when he was four years old. “It went like this,” I said:
Tonight I had to scold you for the first time because you had punched Mommy in the nose. When I went into your room later you were curled up in your blankets. How are you, Jack? I asked you.
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