It ain’t about the golf

Ten or so friends, brothers, cousins meet once each Fall to play golf, but it ain’t about the golf. It’s about brotherhood and being together in the struggle to stay married and loving our wives and children and keep laughing through middle age. We’re mostly in our 40s now and greying and balding and hip-replaced and knee reconstructed, but nothing can keep us from falling over laughing on the tee boxes and fairways.

The trip for us is laugh therapy and there’s usually a roadtrip component for some of us. We’ve been to San Antonio, Northwest Arkansas, Dallas, Nashville, Little Rock, and several other sites, and on the road we bond and talk, though this trip we listened to the World Series on the way and mostly slept, talked college football, or listened to Bruce Springsteen on the way back.

We try to openly and honestly talk with each other about our lives, our failures, our families. We check in with each other about our marriages and children and encourage each other to stay pure sexually, to be good dads, to keep focused on what matters in life as we lead in various ways in business, church, community.

Next year will be our 10th anniversary of the golf trip that ain’t about the golf. We’ve been talking about doing something other than golf on one of the trips. But we’ll probably still keep playing each year. There’s something about golf that makes us realize our hip hurts and we see each other’s limp, like Jacob’s, and that we’re all hacking out life, and that we need each other to make this scramble and that we all miss putts but there’s much joy and laughter and a few solemn moments along the way.