For a long time, my husband was a traveling man doing legal work in Europe, South America and the United States. No matter where he traveled, if it was at all possible, he returned home on weekends. And he didn’t then go off golfing when he arrived home. Instead he stayed home and slugged it out raising our five kids.
Once he retired he played a lot of golf, which has given him great pleasure and many good golf buddies. He’ll never be a scratch golfer, but our kids sure like him anyway.
When our boys were growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, we had the good fortune to have a public golf club that was very reasonably priced and within biking distance of our home. As teenagers, especially during the summer, they would head over to Hubbard Heights with their buddies and play. They got to be pretty good at golf because anytime you are taught something in your youth, it’s a head start.
As our boys married, they took the same stance as their dad about golfing — too much time away from the family. Now their kids are getting older so they do try to golf once in awhile, but like their dad, will probably enjoy it more in a few years.
This introduction was made to lead into a terrific experience our four sons and their dad had golfing. It was a first, and likely won’t be repeated anytime soon. They still can’t believe they carved out the time to do it, and it was really over-the-top fun.
Steve’s wife, Barbara, got the idea of them all coming to the Forever Young tournament in CordeValle, California, this year. Then it grew to three other prestigious golf courses my husband, Grit, never dreamed he would get to play. He usually likes to go to the ones you can get good deals at and just have a good time. It was pretty amazing — and at times the views of the Pacific ocean were breathtaking. Four days of golf with his busy four boys.
It wasn’t just the golfing that was a pleasure. It was driving in a car together, telling stories at dinner together without interruption from an errant child and, for the boys, getting a bit more sleep than usual. It was a special time carved out of a lifetime, and they will always remember it.
This story is not to make our lives feel like an Instagram post, or that we’re the luckiest, most perfect family in the world, because we are not. We’re just folks like you who, when given the chance, like to take advantage of what life has to offer.
Gatherings don’t need to be this over the top, although who would turn it down? They just need to happen once in awhile when a dad and his boys or a mom and her girls get together to catch up and enjoy each other’s company. It was a bonding change of pace from our huge family gatherings, which are pretty nice in their own way as well.
Life marches on whether we plan for fun or just keep slogging away at things like our grown children raising their families as we the elders watch and wait for ways to intersect. Nobody knows you like your own family. That includes the good, the bad and the ugly, and some of those old stories can double us over with laughter in the retelling. It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve heard some of them, because to us they are good stories — they are our stories — and its is important to keep making new stories together.