My husband and I love to do things together. He is an amazing antiquing partner, for example, chauffeuring me to distant small towns to browse miles and miles of dusty aisles, perusing items that are more aptly described as “junk” than antiques. To his credit, he has come to love the treasure hunt as much as I do. He finds more old books, maps, fountain pens, ink wells, manual typewriters, medical antiques, and crystal decanters than I find lyre-back chairs and Bakelite bangles.
We also love to travel together. In another version of treasure-hunting, we like to turn business trips into long weekends, searching out the local food specialties or restaurants created by superstar Food Network chefs.
But one area where we have always been incompatible is sports. My husband lives for college football season. When that is over he becomes obsessed with March Madness. Through all of it is hockey season. And baseball season. I do not mind following a local team, and Boston has plenty of teams that take turns in the spotlight. Occasionally I will become caught up in the obsession if a local team is in a pennant race, or the Super Bowl. I confess that my husband’s Stanley Cup ring, presented to him for service on the Bruins’ medical staff, left me a little weak in the knees—but that is more about jewelry than sports!
I do not understand sports for the sake of sports. Sitting all day flipping channels from one game to another seems like a useless enterprise. How do you enjoy a game when you do not even have a dog in the fight? Football isn’t that interesting if you do not follow a particular team. And baseball without a hometown slant is nothing more than watching the grass grow. At least hockey has an occasional fight to punctuate the lull of watching grown men skate back and forth across the ice. It appeals to the same primitive instincts that gave birth to gladiator games.
My husband—God bless him—took my attitude of sports indifference as a personal challenge. That’s when he decided that what was missing from my life was golf. For an entire year, he made it his life’s work to enlighten me on the mystery and—dare I say it—‘joy’ of playing golf. This, he decided, was a playing field where we could meet as equals. He gave me golf lessons for Christmas. Through golf, he supposed, we would share his love of sports.
I am nothing if not open-minded. When he bought me a pair of cute little shoes with powder blue tassels and metal spikes I confess I sighed just a little. I also found out that I could buy coordinated outfits in Easter egg colors, a coordinating visor, and matching gloves! Encouraged by the opportunity to explore a new avenue for shopping I pressed onward. We picked out a starter set of left-handed clubs and headed to the driving range to “practice” before I scheduled my first lesson.
I have watched a lot of golf on television and it is nothing short of poetic. Those guys walk up to a ball, pose reflectively, wind up with their club, and send the ball on a soaring arc into the atmosphere. They are slingshots personified, harnessing all their physical strength and concentrating it to the sweet spot of the blade, causing it to burst onto the unsuspecting ball with such force that it propels it thirty percent further once it hits the fairway. Or, they sight the hole some thirty feet away and magically compel the tiny orb into its waiting grasp.
Whatever it was we were doing on the driving range was not golf—it was punishment. My husband had me grip the club in the most awkward way, layering my hands uncomfortably. I had to bend my knees, but not too much. I brought my feet together, then spread them further, then back a little more. I had to bend, but not with my shoulders. I wanted to hit the ball, but he said I was not ready. First I had to learn how to swing.
My first thought was that I would be happy to show him just how well I could swing that club! In the interest of togetherness, however, I batted my eyelashes and gave him his moment. He had me move the club to my right, holding one arm straighter than the other as they folded to take up the slack of the moving club. Moving in slow motion, I could not figure out if I was pushing or pulling. He had me practice this backward wind-up over and over, but I never got it to his specifications. This was an excuse for him to wrap his broad wingspan around me, coaxing me into the right movement. Although the pretense for a hug was amusing, the assisted swing was identical, I believe, to what I was already doing.
After a half an hour of agony with a blistering sun overhead, I was dying to hit the ball. Go ahead, he relented. Glad to be granted some freedom, I did my best to line myself up in front of the ball. I remembered to nest the little finger of one hand inside the index finger of the other and pulled/pushed back, then released the head of the club in the direction of the ball. As the blade came down it hit well short of the ball, dislodging a huge chunk of turf while sending shock waves toward my perfectly overlapped hands. Ouch! I tried again and again, each time failing to make even the slightest bit of contact with the ball.
The following week, I was anxious to begin my golf lessons, certain that a professional teacher was what was missing from this scenario. I spent my session with the pro while my husband hit his own bucket of balls several spaces down at the driving range. Over six weeks of lessons, I hit less than a dozen golf balls successfully—those going an average of about thirty yards. At the conclusion of my gift subscription there was no mention of extending the series for another six weeks. My husband never again suggested that I play golf. My adorable shoes and left-handed clubs were quietly sold at a garage sale.
Today, I encourage my husband to play golf whenever possible. Our golf togetherness has been relegated to snacking on homemade nachos while watching the Masters or Pebble Beach. I indulge his passion for team sports by accompanying him to the Bruins games and “allowing” him to subscribe to an obscure cable channel that carries his beloved Oregon Ducks. In my own defense, we have attended about ten times as many professional sporting events as live musical events over the course of a thirty year marriage. I asked him once if he regrets that I am a failure as an athlete. He smiled as he said, “Not as long as you keep cooking for me.”
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