By Andy Kingman
It was the right question. “Do you have a playlist made already?” my colleague asked with an excitement that revealed her enthusiasm, like mine, for just the right combination of songs matched to a highly anticipated experience.
And the experience, though only four days, promised to be an intense one. With special provenance and steadfast support from my wife and 3-year old, dear old dad took the first four days without work email in quite some time to head to Sea Island on a solo golf trip — or more aptly, what I hoped would be a spiritual walkabout that could bridge the 20-year chapter I’d just closed before starting a new job — and new chapter — the following Monday.
When your dad dies and you’re only 18, it takes a while to pull the various threads on how it affects you. Now that I’m on the cusp of 40, I thought I had a pretty good handle on this; thought I’d been able to dispassionately assess the pros and cons of the process. But in the last few years, and particularly in pandemic life, I hadn’t been able to shake the nagging emptiness that comes when your twenties are not spent roaring at the chasm between you and adulthood, but grinding to dig yourself out of an emotional hole; in what should have been my carefree college years, I experienced what living with my parent, while working a tough job — not a career — full-time looked like. After I managed to graduate from college, the fear of returning to that life has driven me ever since, from a political campaign working 100+ hours per week, to law school, to gutting it out in corporate litigation, before finally finding my path and my home at my most recent gig that I was now moving on from. This last job has been where much of my prior hard work has paid off, and I’m voluntarily leaving to seek out a new role at a rocket ship of a company, embarking on what is sure to be a wild ride but leaving much certainty and comfort behind.
In my mind at least, the last 20 years have been spent distancing myself from “the line” — the place where with one wrong move, everything falls apart, and all the success and forward progress disappears. It’s the difference between the days when your swing comes free and easy, powerful draws all day, and the days when it’s a chore just to avoid yet another double bogey and the right miss is maddeningly in play. I’ve reaped the benefits of this drive — a successful career and, most notably, a deeply genuine and loving partnership with my wife, and a spunky, hilarious daughter who seems to for the moment enjoy watching and playing golf with dad. There are also consequences to this approach — it is very difficult to experience true happiness, because it leaves no time to rest. The line is omnipresent and it’s coming for you.
“Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels/Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields.”
I cue up the first song as I pull out of the Avis parking lot in the Mustang convertible (another five years and this trip would be considered less a spiritual walkabout and more a full-blown midlife crisis) and put on my carefully curated playlist. Jackson Browne slams those first piano chords, then the drums kick in, then the top is down, then I’m on 95 North booking it to solitude and doing a damn good impression of Reese Witherspoon in the last scene of Cruel Intentions. For the first time since the darkness of the pandemic shrouded our lives, I feel free.
As the drive flattens out into the Georgia lowlands, the space is hard to grapple with. In Massachusetts, it’s our buildings that have been around for hundreds of years and give a sense of scale and time to the landscape. In Georgia, it’s the stooped but majestic birch trees that let you know you’re in old country. It’s a welcoming jolt to the senses to be in a new territory after a year of being cooped up in one place.
“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, ’cause we’re tripping billies.”
The morning promises to be a good one. A cappuccino and yogurt parfait consumed on the balcony overlooking the putting green and the ocean. Sunny but not too warm. It’s a short drive to the Retreat course, and I awkwardly load the golf clubs into the convertible, and unload them even more awkwardly, to the great amusement of the staff I’m sure. After some middling swings on the range, I fall into the familiar routine that I’ve missed so much over the winter — tees and extra ball in the right pocket, divot tool in the left, and I’m putting a tee down in the ground and marveling at the freedom that comes from knowing you’ll never again have to keep track of your professional time in six-minute increments.
I didn’t really start playing golf until about five years ago, so I don’t have a group of buddies who are all up for golf trips each year. I didn’t grow up spending Sundays in church pew bunkers — one might say I play with the verve of a born-again evangelist. My love of the game is about finding calm in the swirling winds of life. Some people meditate or practice mindfulness; I am never more present, less connected to the real world, then when I’ve got a tricky chip shot and have to play a low spinner off an undulating green.
Of course, all this solo golf has its downsides as well — watch carefully and you might catch me double-checking exactly how to press; I have no earthly idea how to play Wolf Hammer, and will confess that it was only last year when I stopped disingenuously nodding when dots would appear on my scorecard for greenies (those dots did not appear nearly often enough, although this year will be different…I’m sure…).
The Retreat was just that: a welcoming kickoff to the 2021 golf season. Not a terribly difficult course but a great start if you haven’t played a round in three or four months. Some good shots, some bad, but I began the day with a par and ended it with a tough bogey save that allowed me to walk off with some momentum heading into the next day.
That night, I sit at the bar, drink a perfectly made old-fashioned and a luxuriously decadent burger, and for the first time in months, flex my small-talk muscles. Although we are socially distanced, I catch a glimpse of a post-pandemic life that includes regaling others with your golf foibles and triumphs, stories about our kids getting into the game, and the social energy strangers generate when we talk about the game we love.
It’s also a night to test-drive describing the job I’ll be starting in a couple days, and the finality of closing the book on the last 20 years starts to dawn on me. At this bar in Georgia deep in the night, surrounded by new friends and old scotch, the line is blurry in the distance and feels very far away indeed.
“Hold tight, you’re slowly coming back to life, I’ll be keeping your head up, I’ll be keeping your head up darling; Let go of all your haunted dreams tonight, I’ll be keeping your head up, I’ll be keeping your head up darling.”
It’s the pandemic, so of course the weather on the day I’m scheduled to play 36 holes is 45 degrees with wind and rain on the horizon. I’ve got the Plantation and Seaside courses on deck. First up, Plantation. Even with the weather, I’m instantly drawn to the combination of open fairways and daring approach shots that the course demands. Playing with one of the pro shop guys and a guy from Georgia who has an infectious laugh, we easily fall into comfortable banter as if it’s our weekly Saturday game, and again I see what a post-pandemic life portends. The second hole, with an elevated green fronted by a deep bunker, is a charmer, and on that morning, rolling in a nice birdie putt on No. 8 feels like the only vaccine I’ll ever need (note: this feeling did not last, and I would like the real thing soon, please).
By the time we’re on the back nine, exposed to the stiff ocean breeze and occasional burst of rain, the three of us are playing some speed golf and thinking of the hot showers that await us at the end of the round. Still, Plantation was a true joy, and I’d happily play that course every day, confident of finding new strategies to deploy and new ways to detonate a promising round.
But when I get to Seaside, I feel like I’ve put down the cocktails and put on the dinner jacket for my date with the grand dame. By the fourth hole, when I’m looking nearly 90 degrees to my left and realizing that the upcoming stretch of holes are the most beautiful Tetris pieces I’ve ever seen, I’m practically giddy, wind and rain notwithstanding. I’m playing solo but catch up to another single for the back nine, and again marvel at how such a dumb game can serve to transcend regions, jobs, and disparate pasts to leave a couple hours and a couple drinks later feeling like I’d gained a friend.
As the round is winding down, my mind drifts back to the prospect of whether I’ll be able to let go of this fear of failure that has stalked me, driven me, and allowed me to excel since my father’s passing. I wonder whether I still need it to propel me, and I start to think for the first time that maybe I can let it go, light it up on a raft and burn it while it floats into the distance like a Viking funeral pyre. As I’m standing over the last par-5 tee shot of the day, it hits me that letting go of this also may mean letting go of another connection to my dad; that my fear of “the line” has also served as a through-line to the time in my life where I had a dad and then had to figure out a life without one. I swing and slice the ball to a resting spot on the blade of fairway grass farthest from the hole. A long way to get home, indeed.
That night, in the midst of consuming some of the most delicious food I’ve had since our entire human population radically changed the way we live nearly overnight, a casual question about my server’s tenure at the restaurant chokes me up. He tells me that this is his last shift after 15 years; he came over as an Italian immigrant and is leaving tomorrow to start his dream job. I ask him what he is proudest of, and he says, “This job is very comfortable, and I could be here the rest of my life. But when I have tried to do something very hard in my life, I’ve usually succeeded. I am proud of that, and of bringing happiness to the people I’ve served. And if you do something too comfortable for too long, then you lose out on new experiences.” That’s it right there, folks.
I expected all of this to create a sense of mourning, but instead I’m flooded with feelings of gratitude. With some space from the pandemic, with a few days of golf and perspective, and the divine combination of a perfectly cooked ribeye au poivre and a Borolo, all that comes to my mind is the great number of people who have helped me along the way – who have believed in me, done favors to help me, fought for me, and supported me. It feels like the right time to be making this change, to snatch up those experiences now that I never got to have earlier in life. And to do so free of the guillotine that I’ve let hang above my neck for too long.
“It’s times like these you learn to live again, it’s times like these you learn to love again.”
The last morning, I play Seaside again and my swing finally deserts me. And, as in many of my most memorable rounds, the company and the sunshine after yesterday’s storm mitigate a disappointing number on the scorecard. I’m playing light and free, and the funny jokes and good vibes are flowing in the group. It’s the perfect end to this trip that has been all I asked of it. Time to go home and be a dad, and husband, and new employee.
“I’m not saying I’m a wise man, Heaven knows there’s much that I’m still finding, making my way down this winding road; Holding on to what I love, and leaving the rest behind.”
That afternoon, as I pile into the Mustang one last time and have one last magical ride, I’m not sure where the line is in my life. As much as I’d like to say these four days have allowed me to let it go, I don’t think I’ll know for a while how it plays into my everyday world. But, like a sliding 12-foot breaker for par, I do know that marrying the line with proper pace and a confident stroke will most likely yield a result with which I am happy.
Andy Kingman is just a guy, standing in front a flag, asking for a birdie. He is a public policy professional who lives with his family on the north shore of Massachusetts, and he tweets at @andrewkingman.
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