I’m here again in Washington, D.C. paying a visit to my ninety-four-year-old dad and his ninety-nine-year-old wife in beautiful Rock Creek. It is such a privilege to be in this house surrounded by fully grown trees and a lawn that slopes down to the road and the adjacent lushly verdant Rock Creek Park.
It is always wonderful to pump the brakes a bit and spend some quality down time with the “rents.” Our days consist of three square meals and perhaps a golf game in the morning. My dad can still play nine holes in the low forties, and the nearby Rock Creek Golf Course, slated to close in November for some major renovations, looks really green these days, with the torrential rains that we’ve been having every night. I don’t play golf, never having taken it up despite life-threatening exposure since childhood. The golf game dad plays with his buddies is abbreviated with its own charming rules. Two putts for the first hole, i.e., if you putt four, you still get two, one Mulligan or do-over per game, and no score higher than an eight so if you find yourself shooting ten to get out of the trap on the seventh hole, you still get an eight. They bet a dollar for each round, so the stakes are low, though you wouldn’t know it from the exhalations of rage around a missed shot, or the effusive praise when the ball goes farther and truer than anticipated. I love to go along just to drive the cart, but this week when dad played with “the ambassador,” he got out of the car and jumped into Gordon’s cart, leaving me to walk the course. This was actually a happy circumstance. My knee is great now and despite the morbid humidity, I enjoyed the approximately two mile walk around the front nine. We started on the fourth hole, because there were people on the first and second holes. The golf course staff knows dad – they are exceedingly understanding of his quirky impatience. Dad started off in the cart with Gordon for the fourth hole, which is a goodly distance from the first and Doug, the starter, pulled up in his cart and gave me a ride to the fourth tee, which was lovely. They then started playing and I walked, keeping up with them to a remarkable degree. I guess that’s why people who walk their bags can play with people in carts. Well designed timing on this game.
I think the funniest thing about being a fly on the wall in this male golf experience is really how little these men communicate with each other around things other than golf. We had dinner last Saturday with Peter and his wife, Marybeth, and she and I laughed about the lack of substance to their chatter. Get a bunch of women out there on the golf course and I daresay it would be a significantly different story or series of stories. But I could be wrong about that, having never golfed myself.
My take away from these hellish saunas along the greenswards of Rock Creek is that it’s good exercise, and based on the amount we sweat while out there, it must be good for our skin.I love watching dad lose his shit over a muffed shot. I can’t imagine getting that worked up, but then, I suppose it’s a good release. Like primal scream therapy. I try not to stand too close so as to not get hit by a club but I’ve noticed as he ages, he throws the club less frequently. Why? Because you have to go pick it up and there’s already enough walking. Duh.
Aside from the golf, we take (it seems), a daily trip to Rodman’s Gourmet Grocery store and pharmacy. It’s a really nice grocery store though I can’t seem to retain where the soup aisle is – not where I’d have put it. I don’t think we’ve ever come away without something we were looking for. It’s a gourmet chef’s dream.
I took dad to see Robert Reich’s film, “The Last Class” on Sunday last week. It was in a lovely little theater called Greenbelt Cinema and my GPS got us there without incident. It was my second viewing of the film which I find moving and activating. It is about Reich’s last semester at Berkeley, and a class called “Wealth and Poverty” that he has taught there for about 17 years. He is such a smart and funny and humble professor. The 800 students in his final semester were so lucky to have his wisdom. The film was beautifully made. I highly recommend it if you can see it somewhere near you. The website also allows you to take the class online which I am probably going to do. It includes reading links and discussion questions. AMAZING!
On Monday, we eschewed golf to go see dad’s doctor and had a lovely visit with her, sitting across her desk and the fifteen inch tall file dad has accumulated over the last thirty years. For a healthy guy, that’s some serious reportage.
We drove home and then I borrowed the car to go down toward Annapolis to visit my best childhood friend, Liz and have lunch. Liz had prepared a beautiful and protein-rich salad, with arugula, sliced lox, a hard boiled egg, some pistachio nuts, and some pickled onions. It was healthful and filling. She also had prepared a scrumptious dessert, a parfait of low sugar berry sauce and yogurt, adorned with blackberries and some blueberries from the garden (we picked them before lunch!). The parfait was a perfect ode to our childhood. I practically grew up with Liz and her family, as they lived about 1/8th of a mile from us. We met when I was about eight and she was nine, and were inseparable. She is responsible for my higher education path, as her mom suggested that I go to St. Paul’s School during my parents’ awkward divorce. I am forever grateful to her for that suggestion and for the familial inclusion of the time spent with her siblings, parents, and dogs.
Liz and her husband, Steve, currently have an amazing dog, Enzo, who I didn’t get any pictures of this time, but had this one from a previous visit.
We spent the end of our visit with our toes dangling in the pool satisfying or partially satisfying Enzo’s insatiable love of chasing the ball and retrieving it. He’s a hunting dog; it was lovely to watch him jump out of the pool to then immediately jump back in to get the ball, then swim over to us to begin again. The whole afternoon was magnificent, and as you can see, I made Liz pose with me and my book to prove we were together.
On the book.
It is incredibly weird to give birth to a book, send it out into the world to various readers, and wait for reactions to come in. I thank the three people who wrote such glowing reviews on the Amazon site, and am grateful to those friends who have called or written an email or text giving me some feedback. I reconnected with a long lost friend today which was phenomenal! But probably any author can tell you that at this phase, just after release of a book, we are hungry for more. Insatiable, like Enzo by the pool. Please don’t be shy. Your feedback is so valuable to me. I would love to know what resonated with you, and what didn’t. Did you have questions? Did you find it relevant to your experience, either in life, or if you are in the theater, there? Are you still speaking to me if you find yourself in the pages of my book? If not, can I take you out for tea/drinks to discuss further?
Starving here. But I can be patient, too. I know I can’t assume that you got your book, dropped everything in your busy life to rush to your easy chair and read it cover to cover. (Though I think that reader who told me he did just that moved me close to tears.) 😭 Please send me news! I was gratified that my friend Jill in England got her copy and is taking it on tour. I sent a copy to North Pole, AK the other day and fully expect that Santa will want to order many many more copies. Well, one can fantasize!
My friend, Bob, who designed the cover of the book, sent me an adorable photo when he got his copy of the book in the mail. It inspired me to respond.
I just realized that it is pouring again outside. I guess we’re in for the evening. I did get drenched at the post office this afternoon when I went to mail a book. Here’s a photo from the window of the room where I stay when I’m here. Everything is so green. It’s enough to make a Californian salivate in an unseemly way.
Happy dog days of July. More to come in August!
lifeinthethe8tre 