Alby - The Fifth Putt

Lining Up Your Fifth Putt

“Your veins don’t want to cooperate,” Jenny said as she tried to find another spot to insert the I.V. “This happens sometimes, it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

The chemotherapy drugs were infusing when Dad’s vein shut down, stopping the entire process cold. He had been peacefully drifting off a bit while the rest of us watched The View. Well, we weren’t watching really; we were each just looking at the television set while seeing our own mental movies being acted out. In the distance I could hear Barbara Walters yammering on about something unimportant in the scheme of my life yet her voice was somehow comforting in its familiarity.

When the vein shut down the fluid backed up rapidly and was forming a nasty looking welt before any of us even realized what was going on. No sooner had we called for Jenny than she was in the room working hard to set things right again.

“I’m so sorry to have to poke you again. I know how unpleasant it is. Bear with me, I usually get a good vein on my first try.”

“You know,” Alby said as he turned to Jenny while she pierced his fragile skin, “This reminds me of something. I’ve got a story for you…” he began.

Alby was a golfer. He’d say it was terrific exercise because he’d get to chase a white ball through fields and forests, commune with the forest where his tee shot would magically disappear, make artistic designs in the sand, and have a captive audience for his repertoire of jokes. His average score was somewhere between 100 – 110 with a thirty handicap. Plain and simple, he sucked at the game but always held onto the hope that one day the Messiah might come and walk the course with him, allowing him to break 100 and not lose any balls in the process.

Alby had numerous golf partners, none of them in it for his skill of the game. They just liked to laugh and his jokes could them forget that they were witnessing one of the worst golfers to ever walk a cleated step.

Even though I grew up watching my father golf, I hadn’t taken on the sport myself. On one Mother’s Day my husband Gary bought me brand new titanium clubs with a vivid purple grip and took me to the driving range a few times to give me some pointers.
We have a local Par-3 course and Alby didn’t need much convincing to come out and play nine holes with me.

“Wow! If I play with you then I’ll actually look like I know what I’m doing. How can I turn down such an invitation?” Always the smart ass, my father. I wouldn’t have traded him for all the chocolate in the world.

When he showed up to play with me, I was forced to shield my eyes. Alby was a vision. He had what I liked to call a “Fashion Disability” and it’s certainly not nice to make fun of someone’s handicap. But there he stood, in all of his splendor, and it was impossible not to fear blindness from the mere sight of him.

From head to toe he was a study in fashion faux pas and exquisitely poor taste. He wore a red Kangol cap (he had those caps in every color, making them hip long before Samuel L. Jackson had ever even heard of them. . .) and had a scoring pencil behind his ear. His golf shirt, a navy blue and white horizontal plaid, was tucked into his blue, green and white vertical plaid pants which were being held up by a black belt. His brown golf shoes added just a touch of panache and almost hid the grey socks he was sporting.

“Dad. Oh my God, Dad. Look at you!”

“What? What’s the problem?” he asked, always delightfully unaware that he looked like a clown reject from Barnum & Bailey. Bozo would have run for his life.

“What’s the problem? The problem is that I’m nauseous looking at you. Besides the fact that the conflicting patterns are making me motion sick, your colors don’t even remotely go together!” I could barely squeak out my words.

“What do you mean? The shirt is blue, the pants have blue in them, therefore they’re both blue and therefore they match.”

Who could argue?

We teed up at the first hole and Alby immediately set out to make me the next champion women’s golfer. Okay, okay, so all he was trying to do was get me to make contact with the ball so I might actually hit it and it might even move off the tee a few feet. He repositioned my grip, fixed my stance, and told me to concentrate on the ball and my swing.

Thwack! The ball lofted high in the air, soaring straight and falling to the ground just yards from the green. “Whoo hoo!” Alby exclaimed. “Susie Q, you’re amazing. That was a perfect shot!”

I was jumping up and down like a child. “I can’t believe I hit the ball like that!”

“You had a great teacher. What do you expect?” he chuckled.

No matter that it was my only good shot of the day; my dog would have played better than I did. Each hole was more painful than the next for me, although I must admit there were some really interesting flowers growing in the rough where I consistently found myself.

But the real story was how Alby handled it all. Yes, he was a terrible golfer but in comparison to me, he was Tiger Woods without the Green Masters Jacket (although God knows he’d have thought it matched what he was wearing). I knew he was better than I and he knew he was better, but he derived no pleasure from looking good at someone else’s expense in any avenue of life and even more certainly, not in golf with his daughter.

He proceeded to miss every single shot pretending that he was trying his best, leaving crater-sized divots and “losing” ball after ball after ball.

“Let me tell you something,” he said as he took a shot out of the trap. “In golf, you ideally want to putt no more than twice on a green. But things just aren’t ideal no matter how much you want them to be, whether on the course or in your life. I always wanted to write a book and I would title it Lining Up Your Fifth Putt. The entire book would consist of only one sentence: When lining up your fifth putt, just remember that at least you’re still playing the game.”

By the fifth attempt at Dad’s weary veins, Jenny had gotten the needle in and the chemotherapy drip had resumed. “I guess I lined up my fifth putt correctly,” Jenny said with an apologetic smile.

“Sweetheart, you can play the game with me anytime,” Alby said as he planted a kiss on the young nurse’s cheek. “And at least in this game I didn’t lose my balls.”