We Gotta Play, We Just Gotta

The women in my family would rather die than be kept from their sports. Take my grandmother, Helen: small, tyrannical, competitive. A cut-throat bridge and gin rummy player. A golfer.

"That Helen," one of her friends told me once. "So short, you'd lose her in the rough, but tough as nails."

As the story goes, she'd been very ill the day before a golf game at Saranac Lake in New York, up vomiting most of the night. Although she still wasn't feeling so hot the next morning, she went ahead and played nine holes. When she finally went to the doctor, he informed her that she'd just suffered a heart attack.

"Helen," he said, "Are you aware that you played nine holes following a myocardial infarction?"

"Well," she said, "I didn't take any practice swings."

Before two bum knees made golf impossible for my mother, whenever I visited her in Florida, we played nearly every day.

"Maybe we should take tomorrow off," we'd say after a hard fought battle on the links. 

My mother used what she termed "a rolling mully," short for "mulligan," which meant she could take a do-over on any shot at any point. Even putts. We wrangled, we bet. There was the occasional nudge with one's foot. We sliced, we shanked. We walloped those little white balls - well, sleeves of little white balls - from the tee, from between trees, from surrounding property owners' lawns, down the fairway, over (and into) water hazards, flew it, threw it to the green, delighted or disgusted. 

Our conversations went like this:

"Amy, you're so long. I used to be long," Mom would sigh if I smacked my drive. In her youth, she had been so long she had hit the Prince of Wales in the calf from an adjacent hole.

Or, after a particularly unfortunate shot of her own, she would moan, "I'm just plain rotten is all, just plain rotten!"

"No, you're not," I'd say soothingly. "You made a great chip shot. What shall I give you for the hole?"

"Give me a 5."

"I thought you had a 7."

"Give me a 5."

Or:

"Mom! I saw you move your ball."

"Did not."

"Did too."

As we'd drink our morning coffee the following day, one of us would rustle the Times and cough with significance.

"Maybe, we could fit in a few you know --" my mother would hint, and we'd grab our golf shoes and be out the door.

When it rained, we parked our cart under a tree and ate sandwiches, willing the sun to return.

"I think it's just a passing shower," Mom would muse, as hail bounced off the roof. Once in Vermont we nearly killed her dear friend, Mrs. Anthony. It was mid-October, and as we stormed the 16th green, snow began to fall.

"Shouldn't we call it q-quits?" Mrs. Anthony stammered, blue-lipped, as we raced to our balls.

Mom and I shrugged.

"Only two holes to go," we said. 

Mrs. Anthony, who turned 94 last week, got pneumonia.