Fathers & Sons & Sports (17 page)

“Your sweet daddy died,” she said.

I dropped my suitcase and cell phone. Someone got them, I guess. The next moments are fragments. A parking garage, a silent car, relatives, pats, looks away, driving, buildings, thirst, I’m really thirsty, could someone please get me some damn water, traffic, interstate on-ramp, off-ramp, driving. I could only get out one question.

“Was he scared?” I asked.

Mama shook her head no.

The funeral week was a blur. When we picked out his favorite Zegna sport coat, I went into his bathroom, holding those Masters credentials in my hands. I took them out, slipping them into the jacket pocket. If there was an Augusta National in heaven, I wanted him to get in.

“I’m sorry, Daddy” I said to the air, “you didn’t get to go.”

Seven months later, I was back at Augusta. It was a hard week. I wore a pair of his shoes around the course, trying to walk it for him. I wrote a column about it for my newspaper and, as I’m doing now, tried to find some closure. Then, I believed my grief ended with the catharsis of the last paragraph. I was naive, as I found when I returned to Augusta in the coming years, finding my pain stronger each time.

Exactly a year after he died, my family gathered at home. We had a baby tree, grown from an acorn that came from the sturdy oaks in Ole Miss’ legendary Grove, where Daddy spent so many happy afternoons. We gathered at the spot where he’d sat, where he’d made his peace, and we dug a small hole, filling it in with the
roots of the sapling and potting soil. I carefully patted down the earth around the stalk. Then it was done.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Outside, rain poured down, soaking the tender roots. It rained an inch, then two, then more. The creek rose. I worried about my daddy’s tree, so I went to stand guard. Soaked, cold, shivering, I stood by the tree, protecting it as I’d been unable to protect him.

I stared out past the canebreak and the brick wall and the creek. The sky was black. I wondered if Daddy was looking down on me, watching me, seeing my successes and failures. I wondered if he was proud of me. I wondered if there was a way I could still ask questions and he could still give me answers. I’d always counted on him for the answers.

“Daddy,” I said aloud, “are you out there?”

I waited, but I heard no answer, just the shattering windows of water falling from the sky.

Maybe I’ll find those answers out here, at this place he loved so much. Is that crazy? Nothing seems crazy to me anymore. The grass shines like polished green mirrors. The flowers explode with a rainbow of shrapnel: pinks, purples, whites, yellows. Mostly, though, I see the fathers and sons, like the Livelys from Charleston, West Virginia, sitting in front of me, watching the par-three tournament. For fifteen years, he’d entered the lottery for practice-round tickets. This year, he won, and he took his two sons out of school for a day. I wanted that to be us.

Down by Ike’s Pond, television reporter Jim Gray interviews players as they leave the course. He asks what I’m working on, and when I tell him, he nods, pointing to a white-haired man sitting in the sun by the water. It’s Jerry Gray, his father, and for sixteen years, he’s come with his famous son to Augusta. “It’s the only week we spend together all year,” Jim tells me, and, again, I’m jealous. It doesn’t seem fair. Sometimes, a boy needs a daddy.

I just got married about a year ago, and I knew he’d have loved to stand up at the front of that church. In a way, he was: In the pocket of my tuxedo, I carried his yellow LIVESTRONG bracelet and, as Sonia started down the aisle, I rubbed it once, just to let him know, if he was watching, that he might be gone but he wasn’t forgotten.

I just bought my first house, and I knew he’d know whether I wanted a fifteen-year balloon. What’s a good interest rate? How do I pick a neighborhood? What is PMI?

I’m thinking of starting a family of my own someday, and I want to know how to be a good daddy. What should I let my son do? What should I tell him about crossing the street? About sex? How do you remove a splinter without making him cry? How to make him love you more than life itself? I know he’d know the answers, especially to the last one.

So I’ve been looking. I try to find messages, things he might have left behind to lead me down the right path. I know he thought like that. For months after his death, my mother found
flashlights in every room of the house. Big ones, small ones, medium-sized ones, all with fresh batteries. Then she realized: He’d put them there for when he was gone, in case she got scared in the dark, all alone.

Every now and then, I’ll discover something prescient. I have the note he left me when I visited him for what turned out to be the last time. There is a quote: “To influence people, appeal to their dreams and aspirations, not just their needs.” He wrote in blue ink: “WWT, Jr, We are so glad to have you home for a few days. Love, Daddy.”

Or the prayer he read at his last Thanksgiving, when we all still believed. Maybe he knew differently, for he wrote, to himself at the bottom: “What a great prayer for all of us this Thanksgiving day, and for all the tomorrows none of us can take for granted.”

But those small whispers and nudges are rare, so I try to find bits of wisdom and the comfort of his presence in the places he loved. I eat at the Mayflower Cafe in Jackson, Mississippi, I stay at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C., and now, I’ve come here, to this wonderful, ageless cathedral, walking up and down the perfectly manicured fairways, hoping to find a father. I walk up number ten, crossing fifteen near the grandstand, working back and forth through the pines, making my way toward Amen Corner. He first told me about it. The most amazing place in golf, he’d say reverently. Maybe he’ll be here. Maybe he knows his son is lost.

I climb the bleachers, find a spot to sit alone. As I did standing on that rainy night by the small tree, I try to talk to him. There are things I need to ask. How do you be a father? Are you proud of me?

“Daddy” I whisper, “are you out there?”

Something amazing happens. Understand that I don’t believe in stuff like this and am certain it is a coincidence … but, as the words are leaving my mouth, from across the course, a roar rises from the gallery, breaking the silence, the voices collecting into throaty applause, moving through the pines until it fades away, silence returning to Amen Corner.

Golfers come and go. As the sun warms my face, Jim and Jerry Gray climb the bleachers. They watch a few groups move through and, as they walk away, Jim carefully holds the rope up so his father can slip beneath it. It’s a touching moment, something a good son should do for his dad.

Watching this, I realize something. Although I relate to Jim, I also hope that someday, my boy will do the same for me. It’s the way with fathers and sons. The hole in your chest after losing your daddy never gets filled. You don’t get a new father. You become one yourself, and my transition from son to father is nearing completion.

I walk back. As the clubhouse gets bigger on the horizon, I see a dad and his boy standing near the tenth fairway. Both are
wearing golf clothes. I see myself in that father, hoping he can mold his boy as his own daddy molded him.

It occurs to me that all my questions have already been answered. I’ve been shown how to be a daddy. I just need to throw passes a little long so he’ll have to dive. I need to make sure he doesn’t lose his stuffed animal, and I need to take him fishing and I need to make him promise not to tell Mama. I need to make sure he knows that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar and that if it feels wrong, it is. I need to watch
The Guns of Navarone
with him. And I need him to lie next to me, on our tumbuckets, as I explain about a golf tournament in April in Georgia, about Amen Corner and Jack Nicklaus and I need to tell little Walter Wright Thompson III that his grandfather was a great, great man.

The clubhouse is in front of me now, and I have one final task. Once I bought my Daddy shirts and windbreakers. On this afternoon, I have something different in mind. I hurry into the cavernous golf shop, past the framed posters and women’s clothes to the back of the store. This is unfamiliar territory. I search the wall for the things I want, and I ask the clerk to take them down.

I buy a tiny green Masters onesie, then I pick out a small knit golf shirt, for a toddler. I have one just like it, so, someday in the next few years, when I finally become a father myself and continue
this timeless cycle, my son (daughter) can have a connection to this place that’s meant so much to me.

At the counter, the woman takes off the tags. When she sees the cute little clothes, she coos. Her words make me hopeful.

“Oh,” she gushes, “good daddy!”

can’t speak for all fathers of boys—Oh, sure I can. The birth of a son is an opportunity to create an improved version of ourselves. We know what mistakes were made and what opportunities were squandered by our fathers. The arrival of my first son, Marty, gave me a chance to show the world just how great a man I was supposed to have been. One of my first challenges was to turn him into the athlete I had never had the remotest chance of becoming.