Tag: Golf

Both Things Are True

A son’s phone call, a course called Landmand, and a reunion photo that made one choice cost something even though it was still the right one.

The dream comes back often enough that I have stopped being surprised by it. I am walking the halls of my high school, the version that exists only in my head, and I end up in the fine arts center almost every time. Usually it is the band room. Sometimes it is the theater above it. I spent a lot of time there throughout high school, especially senior year, and those rooms were where I began learning who I was going to become before I had any real proof of it.

Sometimes I land in the lunchroom instead, and I always know why. That is where Mike Church told me the Challenger had exploded, and I did not believe him, right up until I did. Some part of my mind decided that moment belonged in the same building as everything else it was not ready to let go of.

I do not wake up from these dreams shaken or sentimental. I wake up and make coffee. But forty years later, it says something that my subconscious still knows the floor plan by heart, even though I could not tell you where any of my lockers were or what a single classroom looked like. Memory makes its own choices about what it keeps and what it allows to disappear. I wish there were a confirmation screen before something vanished, the way there is when you delete a file from your computer. Are you sure? One last chance to keep it.

I have been thinking about all of this more than usual lately, because the dream and the actual building finally had a reason to overlap. This past weekend was my 40th high school class reunion, and even typing that number, I still have to stop and do the math twice before it sounds real.

I have gone back for two reunions, the 10th and the 20th, and if I am being honest, I did not enjoy either one very much. I was never one of the athletes or the popular kids, genetics left me an NBA center trapped in a guard’s body, so there was only so much a name tag and a cash bar could do to manufacture a connection that was not really there the first time around. Do not get me wrong. I had friends, and I liked most of my classmates.

What I never really had was contact. Once my parents moved away, I drifted from most of them, mostly because I rarely went back, and long-distance phone calls were expensive. I suppose I could have written letters. I just did not form the kind of lasting friendships with them that I later formed in college and beyond.

The 10th landed just a few weeks after my father died. Some classmates knew and asked how I was holding up. Others did not know and asked how my parents were doing. Neither question was one I wanted to answer that weekend.

The 20th came a little more than a year after my mother died, and I brought my wife along that time. She did not know a single person in the room, and I do not think she had much fun. It is a strange thing, bringing someone you love into a part of your life she was never part of. She could see the building and hear the names, but she could not see what any of it meant. There was no way for me to hand that over to her in the space of one evening.

Going back for a reunion has always been a little different for me because my parents moved away four years after I graduated. There has never been a house to stay in, a childhood bedroom still holding my trophies, or family to visit while I was in town. You stay in a hotel. The reunion becomes the entire reason for the trip, not one stop on a longer visit home.

When my parents died and were buried in that same town, the tether became stranger. I go back now for a cemetery, not a childhood. Visiting their graves is usually one of the first things I do and one of the last, though I have never made the trip specifically for that reason. The cemetery is something I stop at on my way to something else, a reunion, a funeral, or a drive through town on my way somewhere farther. It is a ritual built around memory, the same names on the same stone and the same silence waiting for me.

None of that means I have lost interest in the people. I do not think I would go back to relive what happened forty years ago. Those years mattered, but I have never felt much need to step inside them again and pretend nothing has changed. If I went back, it would be to find out what happened after we all walked out of that building and into the rest of our lives.

The truth is that social media, Facebook in particular, has already filled in much of that story. Most of us got married. Some of us got divorced. Many had children. We built careers, changed directions, found success, and endured failure. Some became exactly who they imagined they would become when we were seventeen. Many of us did not. That may sound colder than I intend because it is not that I do not care about them. I do. It is simply that high school was forty years ago, and I am still trying to look forward. I remain curious about where life took everyone. I am just not sure I am curious enough to drive three hundred fifty miles for the chance that they might show up.

Even so, I was on the fence about going. My wife could not make the trip because a co-worker’s bachelorette outing had already claimed part of her weekend. If I went, I would be going alone, though maybe that was fine since she had never known any of these people to begin with. One classmate, whose wife was not coming either, offered to make me his plus-one for the drive. I appreciated it, but the offer did not move me any closer to going. It still meant a long drive there, a hotel room, and a long drive back.

I had not decided anything when my phone rang. It was my youngest son, the one who spent his high school years on the tennis court, calling from Nebraska, where he lives now. He asked if I had anything going on that particular weekend. I told him about the reunion, still undecided and still turning it over. He said he had a better idea. He wanted me to come play golf with him at a course called Landmand.

I did not need to think about it. The invitation checked boxes I had not realized I was counting. Time with my son, first and simplest. A round of golf with him, which does not happen nearly as often as I would like now that he lives in Nebraska. And a chance to play a course where people wait a year for a tee time and still come away empty-handed. It was not a difficult choice. It was barely a choice at all.

Landmand sits in the middle of nowhere by design, carved into steep, windblown bluffs outside Homer, Nebraska, on a stretch of ground so rough that architects told the farmer who built it to look elsewhere. He did not. Now it is one of the hardest tee times to get in the country, an entire season’s reservations disappearing in less than an hour whenever they open the book. My son had one, and on a Sunday morning in September, that mattered more to me than anything happening three hundred fifty miles away.

The day started cool and gray, with rain moving through in waves. At one point, we watched lightning far enough away that we decided to keep playing rather than duck for cover. Later in the round, the clouds broke enough to let the sun through, though they never fully cleared. We played the rest of the morning under that half-lit sky, with the sun and clouds trading turns overhead.

My son’s roommate came along, and his father did too. It was not one father and son on that course but two, trading shots and ribbing each other across fairways wide enough to lose a golf cart in. There was no ritual waiting for me at Landmand and no history I was expected to revisit. There was just a course my son knew and I had never played, a son who wanted me there, and a Sunday that had not yet decided whether it would rain or clear.

I played terribly at the start and improved only slightly as the round went on. It did not matter. A day on the golf course with my son is priceless.

When I got home after golf, the reunion photographs began showing up. Some appeared on Facebook, posted by classmates who had gone. A few more were sent directly to me by someone who thought of me while scrolling through a camera roll. I went through them slowly, forty years compressed onto a phone screen.

Most of the faces I recognized without much effort, aged but unmistakably themselves. A handful I could not place at all, people who had apparently once shared hallways and classes with me but had left no trace in my memory.

Then I reached a photograph taken in the band room, where I had spent so much of my high school life. Standing in the middle of the group was Mr. Winter, my high school band director, smiling.

A month earlier, I had written about what he meant to me. I had ended that piece by saying that if I knew Mr. Winter would be at the reunion, I would seriously consider making the three hundred fifty mile drive to see him. He was there. I just had not known he would be.

Of everyone I might have wanted to see that weekend, he was the one I wanted to see most. I stopped scrolling and took in the photograph. I wondered if anyone had sent him what I had written about him. What I felt was not regret exactly. It was the honest weight of what a choice costs, even when it is the right one.

One Saturday at a Time

Four years ago the scale read 186. Today it tells a different story. This is the Forgiveness post — the hardest of the three to write, and the most honest.

Four years ago this spring, I stepped on a scale and it read 186. I had worked for almost two years to get there, and the work had shown up everywhere. New clothes in sizes I had not worn since college. Old energy back in the legs. Knees that did not complain when I stood up from the couch. The person in the mirror looked like someone I recognized again, which was not a small thing, because for a long stretch before that I had been avoiding mirrors the way some people avoid their inbox on a Monday morning.

Today the scale tells a different story. Not the one I want to tell, and not the one I had hoped to be telling four years later. Nothing dramatic happened in between, which is the part that took me the longest to understand, and the part that matters most for what this post is actually about.

I changed jobs somewhere in that stretch. That is probably a post for another Saturday, the one about the difference between academic life and the financial world, between a calendar that breathes and a calendar that does not. I will write that one later and spare you the full tour for now. What matters here is that the new work sat me down, the old rhythms did not fit the new life, and I did not build new ones fast enough. The body did what bodies do. It adjusted to what I was actually doing, not to what I meant to be doing. Turns out bodies are excellent listeners. Mine heard every excuse I made and took detailed notes.

The return was not a week or a month or a quarter. It was four years. It came on slowly, in small unremarkable increments, the way these things almost always do. There was no decision to point at, no bad stretch I can circle on a calendar and say this is where it went wrong, no villain. Just a slow drift, measured in pants sizes and the steadily growing list of things I did not want to look at too closely. That is the hardest kind of regression to explain, because there is no story in it. A bad month has a shape to it. A bad year has a cause you can name. Four years of gradual drift has neither, which is probably why so many people end up carrying some version of it quietly, with no good way to talk about it even when they want to.

Three weeks ago I wrote about why I started. Last week I wrote about what the scale does not tell you. Focus, then Facts. I told you there would be a third one, about Forgiveness, and here we are, which was always going to be the hardest of the three to write honestly.

I would love to report that writing those first two posts fixed something, that putting it in public and naming the framework and telling all five of my readers exactly what I was going to do was enough to break the pattern. That is the version of this post I wish I could write. It is not the one I am writing, because the last month has produced no meaningful progress, and that is on me. I know what to do. I am not doing it. The focus slips somewhere around Monday, the facts become negotiable by Wednesday, and by Friday I am telling myself the week was unusual and next week will be different. The weeks are never unusual. The weeks are the point, and pretending otherwise is how four years happen in the first place.

There have been family matters this spring that have required attention, and I am not going to write about them here. There has been travel. There has been what I consider the particular stress of spring, which always seems to arrive with more on the calendar than I remember agreeing to. None of that is an excuse, and I am not offering it as one. I mention it only because pretending the last month happened in a vacuum would be its own kind of dishonesty, and this post has no room for that.

What I usually do next, after a stretch like that, is spend a few days beating myself up about it. Quietly, mostly, but thoroughly. I run through the week, count the missed walks, replay the snacks I did not need, the water I did not drink, the extra serving, the dessert, and make a long internal case against myself that no actual courtroom would have let me bring. The lawyer in me knows better. The rest of me does it anyway. It does not change a single fact about the week that already happened, and it almost always makes the next week harder than it needed to be. This is the part they leave out of every motivational poster. The part where you know exactly what you did and you sit with it anyway.

That is the thing I have come to understand about Forgiveness, and it took me longer than it should have to get here. Forgiveness is not lowering the standard. It is not telling yourself the week did not count. It is not pretending the facts are something other than what they are. It is just the part where you stop prosecuting yourself long enough to get moving again. The setback already happened. That part is finished. The only thing still in front of you is how quickly you put the case down and start the next day.

Here is what I have learned after enough Mondays and enough fresh starts to know the difference. The people who make it back are not the ones with the most discipline or the most willpower or the best plan. They are the ones with the shortest recovery time. The ones who can look at a bad week honestly, set it down without ceremony, and show up the next morning anyway. That is the whole game. Not the falling. The getting up. And how long you spend on the floor in between.

The struggle is real, and I am not going to dress that up or sell it as something it is not. The fight continues, and I am not going to promise it is going better than it is. Forgiveness is the part that lets the fight continue at all, because without it, four years of drift becomes a reason to stop trying, and with it, four years of drift becomes a starting point. The same way it was a starting point in November of 2020 when I took that picture and looked at my face and decided I was done. The starting point is wherever you are standing. It is never where you wish you were standing, and waiting until you are somewhere better before you begin is just another way of not beginning.

So this morning I walked. This morning I also hope to play golf, weather permitting. This afternoon I will make choices about what I eat, and some of them will be the right ones and some will not. Tomorrow I will do it again. The ebb and the flow is not the obstacle. The ebb and the flow is the shape of it, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something. Focus got me here. Facts tell me what to do now that I am here. Forgiveness is what keeps me here, on the days when here is not where I wanted to be by now. Four years. One Saturday at a time.

Saturday Routine

“I do not have a formal degree from the University of Michigan. I have something more valuable. A certificate of completion. Think of it as the Gen X version of a participation trophy.”

Last Monday, my beloved Michigan Wolverines won the NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship. I have fielded the same question all week. What is your connection to Michigan? Did you go there? Are you from there?

The answer is simple. And complicated.

I do not have a formal degree from the University of Michigan. I have something more valuable. A certificate of completion. Think of it as the Gen X version of a participation trophy. I did serious post-graduate executive training there, which counts for something, at least in my mind. My uncle lived in Michigan for years and raised his family there. I gave genuine consideration to attending law school at Michigan. Unfortunately, Michigan did not give the same consideration to me. Perhaps it was my law school admissions scores. We will leave it there.

But the moment I fell in love with Michigan and its flagship university is easy to trace. My wife and I honeymooned at Mackinac Island. In nearly 25 years of marriage, we have returned to the island no fewer than 17 times. In the early years it was annual. It is woven into us in a way that is hard to explain to someone who has not stood on that island and understood immediately why you would keep coming back.

So when the final seconds ran out Monday night, it was not just a scoreboard. It was something older than that. And somehow, with the college basketball season now over, it feels like permission. Winter is done and spring can begin. Rightfully so, a small world is turning its attention to Augusta for a tradition like no other. The Masters is on. Saturday morning is about to change its address.

Augusta has pristine emerald fairways and perfectly manicured greens. It is the kind of green that makes you envious until you remember what Georgia feels like in July. The envy passes. My head has been somewhere else most of the week, and I am not apologizing for it.

Consider what a Saturday morning routine actually is. Not what it looks like on the surface — coffee, a dog, a tee time — but what it does. It is a standing appointment with a version of yourself. You show up to the same place at the same time, and over months and years, that consistency builds something you did not plan for. It makes you findable. Not just to yourself, but to everyone who has ever known you.

Outside of golf season, Saturday morning means Josiah’s. Same line, same order. Ginger handles public relations. I handle the coffee. She is better at her job than I am at mine. This past February, two Saturdays in a row, a former student appeared in line behind me. Same opening line both times.

“Professor Harris, I’m not sure you remember me.”

This is not a coincidence. It is not luck. It is what happens when you show up to the same place reliably enough that the people from your past know exactly where to look. I have taught roughly 1,200 students. I did not seek any of them out. I just kept showing up, and they found me. That is the quiet power of a routine that most people never think to name.

I always need a hint. I am always glad they said hello.

Golf season is a different Saturday entirely. Same day of the week, same general idea. Get outside. Move around. Spend time with people you stopped explaining yourself to a long time ago. We have been playing together for close to thirty years. There was no ceremony when that number arrived. You just look up one day, do the math, and feel briefly old before someone hits a bad shot and the feeling passes.

It is more about being outside than keeping score, but we always keep score.

Here is what thirty years of Saturday mornings with the same group actually produces. It is not a scoreboard. It is not even a friendship in the way most people define the word. It is something closer to a shared language. A set of references and rhythms that require no explanation because they were built slowly, Saturday by Saturday, across decades. You do not have to catch these people up. They were there.

Nobody on the fairway is going to tap me on the shoulder and ask if I remember them. Josiah’s is where the past finds you. The golf course is where you go to be exactly who you are right now, with people who knew you before you figured that out. Play your own game.

The line at Josiah’s will be there in October. Same order. Winter will come back, the courses will close, and Saturday morning will find its way back inside. There will probably be another former student behind me in line who is not sure I remember them. I will. I always need a hint, but I remember. That is what the line is for. Showing up to the same place long enough that the people who once sat in your classroom know where to find you.

For now, it is almost time. The same group. The same course. The same morning light that makes me think you might actually be good at this. I am not.

Don’t tell Ginger.

Day 22 Beautiful Things

Weekends in the summer are made for golf, and today was no exception. I hit the course and had a great time with friends. My shots were a mixed bag – some were beautiful, while others, well, let’s just say they added some excitement to the game!

Day 16 – Beautiful Things

Over the weekend, my youngest son paid us a visit. Amidst the excitement of a wedding and catching up with his buddies, he managed to squeeze in some quality time with us. We even hit the golf course for a few rounds. While he’s now a better golfer than I am, we always have a playing together. It’s great to see him thriving and it’s even better to share these moments with him.

Day 15 – Beautiful Things

I’m currently in the midst of the Beautiful Things series, where I intentionally direct my focus towards the beauty that exists in our world. It doesn’t mean that I am disregarding the less beautiful aspects; I am simply taking the time to appreciate the breathtaking moments.

As I was scrolling through social media today, I was reminded of a significant event in my life – the tragic death of Thurman Munson. The day after Munson died in a plane crash, my father flew us to pick up my grandpa in Aberdeen. Then we proceeded to Minneapolis, where the three of us attended a baseball game between the Minnesota Twins and the California Angels.

I have three standout memories from that day, as it was my first major-league game. First, there was a moment of silence for Thurman Munson, with everyone standing in unity for a moment. Second, it was one of the first games Rod Carew played against Minnesota after being traded. He pinch hit late in the game and struck out looking. Third, it was a beautiful experience watching the game with my father and grandfather.

I have taken both of my sons to many sporting events, including baseball, football, and basketball. Currently, I am watching a baseball game. Sporting events have the power to create wonderful moments and memories for your loved ones. Also, the grass at a professional baseball stadium is amazing!