There is a long, tall slender pine on the back nine of what, over the last 18 years, had become my favorite place to play golf; not far from where one brother threw a pitching wedge far into the woods in disgust, another hit a 290 yard drive and where last Sunday, I played what might be the last round I ever will at the Lake Course at Kingwood Country Club.
We have met there the second week in April every year for the last 18.
Next year our annual outing will be up in the hill country so getting back to Houston not be an annual event anymore, if I get back there at all.
Pulling away yesterday in the jet, looking down on my former home, thinking about what my life was like 30 years ago when I lived there, what has happened, and what its like now, I had a pretty savage sadness well up; I was flying in a small jet, hemmed in by a large dude in the next seat. I had to breathe like crazy — like someone in labor or a sprinter — to keep from panic. It was odd.
I finally was saved from trying to claw my way off the plane, by gratitude — that was the only way to find my way out of the morass of emotion I was drowning in.
Gratitude worked thank goodness. And though I wasn’t completely sure what was going on, I guess now I know it had to do with the fact that there’s more time behind me than ahead of me. But, that doesn’t have to mean I’m on the back nine.
Yet.