A Day of Love

Walt, Mark, Frank, Geoff

I trudge up the marshy fairway in the cool of an overcast June morning. Two men are ahead of me, walking side by side pushing golf carts: my middle brother, Mark, and my husband, Walt, compare data from their new golf toys. Glancing back I see two men behind me, walking side by side pulling golf carts: my oldest brother, Frank, and my youngest brother, Geoff, heads bent toward each other in conversation. I carry cameras.

There's so much amazing about this ordinary moment in time I can hardly absorb it all. But I bring every part of my being to right now so I don't lose any of it. Even coming here without expectation, what's unfolding is far beyond anything I imagined might be possible.

I'm on a golf course, alone, with the four most important men in my life. They're golfing. I'm taking pictures and visiting. Not being big sister or wife. Just being a woman who loves these men, enjoying their company and recording the day for us all. Marveling at this view of male society - the giving of shit, the congratulatory knuckle-bumping, the long stretches of easy silence as they travel from ball to ball.

Two of these men, the oldest and youngest brothers, have not been together voluntarily for almost a decade. Anger, hurt feelings, misunderstandings. Stubbornness, a shared family trait, that two-edged sword of survival and isolation. Both men were right about the facts they held in the light, and for a very long time, neither were willing to be anything other than right.

Today, they're here. Together. With our middle brother, who tilled the ground for the seeds of reconciliation to sprout. And with their sister and her husband. There is no acknowledgment of the chasm crossed, but neither is there a sense of anything avoided. Questions are asked. Information is shared. Laughter and our aging bodies are the common language.

We've arrived at the green. The four men discuss the best approach to the pin and spread out in a wordless and comfortable choreography. As each takes his shot, they analyze what worked and didn't work so the next one up has better chance of getting the ball in. They are equals, contemporaries, friends. They share this day, a lot of gray hair, and love for the woman watching them with amusement and wonder.

 I stand just at the edge of the felted grass of the green, more interested in the men, the thrumming bass accompaniment of the bullfrogs in the pond behind us, and the fact that there are two kinds of swallows barnstorming around us, than in whether the ball goes where it's meant to.

While the rutted muck and clumps of fermenting grass on the fairway pull me to earth, the bluing sky revealing the majesty of Mt. Rainier and the magic of clean and clear male energy set me free in a way I have never before experienced. This is what love feels like. This is what healing feels like. This is what miracles feel like.