masters at it.

daddy loves golf. is not very good at it, but years ago, when a group of men formed a small country club a few miles outside of town, we no longer had him at home for Sunday dinner.

i don't know if he had every played before the club started up, but he played most weekends when he was off. i am not athletic, so i never took it up, but i remember playing once with him, taking about 30 strokes to get to the hole, then putting what felt like a long way to me to to the hole on the green, and sinking it.

but what i remember more was sunday afternoons when he was home, and i watched golf with him.

daddy went to wake forest when arnold palmer was there. they didn't know each other, but when i was growing up, Arnold felt like family. he was one of us, a demon deacon, about the same age as daddy, and whoever was playing in a tournament that week, well, we were pulling for arnold. it was just right.

daddy and i last watched the masters together with any vengeance in 1980.  i remember sitting in our family room during those final moments as seve ballesteros sank the putt that would win it for him, and i actually said to daddy: i wonder where i will be during next year's masters?

that master's for us was one more benchmark that another year had ended — the long winter over and new life just about to begin. 

that spring, i was hoping for some sort of new life myself. i was searching — just a year out of college — for i didn't know what. after graduation, i'd found a job at a small daily newspaper, but as a photographer, not as the writer i longed to be. so when the job grew stale i pulled together my pitiful resume, typing it out on my trusted olivetti, sending it out blindly to the n&o, the atlanta paper, charlotte, anywhere to get myself out of eastern north carolina. i'm sure if i could find it now i would be embarrassed.

that summer of '80, i called (yes, people actually called other people in those days) the placement office at the j-school at carolina, asking if they had anything — i might even scrub floors to get out! — i could apply for.

oh, yes, said the woman on the other end of the line. a classmate of mine was working in augusta as a feature writer, and her department was looking to add a writer.

augusta. my mind thought back to that sunday afternoon in april when i'd watched the tournament with daddy and it felt like fate. the azaleas! the green lawns! the clubhouse! what fun!

i whipped out the olivetti and banged a new resume out, pulling together the very best clips i could find. (aka those with as few typos as possible) put a stamp on it, dropped in in the mail and prayed.

some days later, i got a call from the editor. could i come for an interview?

three weeks later, there i was, a working writer on my first assignment. wouldn't you know the husband of the woman i was interviewing for my story had once been an assistant football coach in my home town?

(a side note, though this i not part of the story: i met a rakish reporter my first night there. a year later we married, celebrating at a reception in my parents' back yard.)

that next spring i found myself standing in the clubhouse at the master's, and there they were, all of daddy's friends: arnold palmer in his hot pink golf shirt, gary player, jack nicklaus. even sam snead. all of them close enough for me to touch. my job that day was to report the color of this storied golf tournament, and all i could think of was the story i would tell daddy when i got to see him next.

that afternoon at sunset, i sat with my editor on the front lawn at augusta national, gin and tonic in hand soaking in the sunset on one very pinch-able day.

+++

when the hospital speech therapist first put the speaking valve on daddy's trach she asked him what he like to do now that he was retired. 

'read. play golf.' he said. 

'what kind of golfer are you?' she asked.

'not a very good one,' he said.

on saturday, daddy and i watched the masters together again for the first time in a very long time. as the old guard — player, palmer, nicklaus — teed off to open the tournament and new names took their places on the greens, i asked him if he remembered that day in 1980 when we watched balesteros don the green jacket. he shook his head, and so i reminded him, then shared my story of the 1981 clubhouse crowd once again.

'i think tom watson won that year,' i said and his eyes told me he didn't believe i could remember it right after all those years, so google answered the question for us. 

on sunday, when adam scott sank his putt in the pouring rain to win this year's event, i was back at home, imagining daddy's eyes glued to that sudden death putt. it was among the most memorable tournaments in master's history, the pundits all said the next day, and it was indeed. but for very different reasons to me.

daddy's old clubs are collecting dust in the storage house that holds all of his tools and the blue wagon he used to tote the grandkids around in with the riding mower. though he has not played golf in a good long while and he has a newer set, these are the ones i remember. 

tomorrow daddy comes home, a place he hasn't seen for 67 days.

i think about his homecoming, and in my mind, i can hear the crack of the wood against the ball, see it soar through the air toward a perfect line drive. hear the whir of the golf cart as he heads up the fairway to take that next shot toward the green.

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

I could never fit into the dress anyway

When I first labeled my freelance writing business, I got a vanity plate: WRITEMCH. My father stood behind my car, puzzling over the letters.
"Does it say Write Me a Check?"
Well, that would work, but since so many writers I know will work for food have day jobs to support their art, I have never been too much of a check expector for my creative work.  The writing is its own reward, right?


That's why I harbor no resentment toward my husband, who long ago as a reporter for several daily newspapers racked up press association writing awards out the wazoo. But  I was a better writer than he was  Surely that was my editor's fault. Maybe she didn't nominate me. had only been writing professionally for a couple of years at that time. And the fact that now, in 30+ years I have never been noticed with anything framable for a single word I put on the page, no, that does not matter to me. I'm a big girl. I did get honorable mention once waayy back in jr high school for a short story I wrote in green ink. Does that count? If I still have it?   I know I'm good.


I have won a couple of things, but not for the word thing. Two tickets to Cats in 1986 in Atlanta, which, because I am not really all that fond of cats, I am a dog person, was exhausting. A house portrait, which I love, though I do admit to stuffing the ballot box on that one. And I though I never was even on the Homecoming Court in high school — my lifelong deepest desire at that point in my life — I did win one other prize (see #7, in the list below). And no, I didn't stuff the ballot box or give favors of any kind to the players. 


The fact is, in my writing life, I have been stuck in that grey middle area of award dumb award-dom, that place outside the red carpet reserved for the almost rans. Somewhere between "we just love you," and "we want to reward you for how much we love you, but.." And with money. 


My father always told me when people said: you are so great, that I should counter with, ok, so why don't you cross my palm with green? I think that was after I had gotten glowing reviews for my first few months as a daily newspaper feature writer, and then was promptly given a $9 a week raise. Oh, I know it was 1980, but still. My future husband at The Augusta Chronicle the same nameless newspaper, got at least $10 a week more than I did that year, or maybe even $20. Oh, yeah, now I can hear ya. He was a man more experienced than I. At what? Reading the newspaper? Probably. I'm a headline comics horoscope letters-to-the-editor reader but noooo, he has to actually read the news. And the financial page. After my non-existent raise, he had to pay my parking tickets buy my groceries a time or two because I was feeding him in hopes of winning his heart.  I honestly married him for his money. Wasn't that nice of him?


(I eyed him, scowling across the breakfast table from me this morning, his head bent over the News & Observer newspaper that held my mug — not mugshot, mind you —  once upon a time. It was my dream job as an essayist and netted me $150 a pop, once a month, though I did get hundreds of emails and a few dozen hand-written letters. But press awards? Mais non! Again, my editor's fault.


And that's fine. Really. It was enough to be nominated for that story waayy back in jr. high. And I treasure all those letters people wrote to me, only one of which was truly hateful critical of me.


So of course, just as I had finally rested on the laurels of my clip file, well, whattayknow? Seems the ol' reward fairy has finally done and caught up with me. Somebody out there in the blogland has given me an award. APPLAUSE IS APPROPRIATE HERE.


Let me be serious for just a few: It comes from Alana, whose eloquent writings about grief and hope after losing her baby boy in utero, are remarkable. I stumbled on Alana's blog in December, when I participated in Reverb10. Read her post about a moment in her year when everything shifted, and you cannot break away. Each of her posts shows her beauty as a mother, a wife, a woman, who questions the turns of her life, all the while celebrating the fact her life has turns, and that she has the voice to say something about it, for herself, but also for thousands of other mothers like her. It's a silent epidemic, and Alana is giving it a strong and steady voice.

Oh, and by the way, we have never even met. In person at least. But it seems that Alana thinks I am a pretty Stylish Blogger. Well, how about that? 


She admits in her own blog about getting the same award, that it feels a little bit like those chain emails that say: tell us a gazillion things about yourself we don't give a flip know, then forward to another gazillion of your friends and either a) see how much green crosses your palm what happens on the 11th day at 12:22 p.m., or b) risk a very bad horoscope day take your chances if you don't.


I almost always hit DELETE on those crazy things. I HATE chain letters, perhaps because way back in jr. high school, carried away that my honorable mention might have actually made me popular I may have sent one to my so-called friends and waited for all those books/recipes/dollar bills/younameits to come in the mail and none showed up. So there. Stopped me right in my tracks.


And yet. It feels pretty good to think that somebody out there in blogland thinks I'm stylish. And I don't have to fit into find the right dress for the red carpet to accept. Thank you, Alana. My muffin top thanks you.


There are strings is a caveat being a stylish blogger — I am supposed to tell you mindless minutia about myself nobody cares the least bit about seven things you don't know about me. (see, I told you so.) The fact that 99.9 percent of the people reading know me as a tireless self-promoter family/neighbor/friend, I can tell you nothing I haven't already put out into the world for all to see. I mean, I wrote about my husband's boxers, for heaven's sake. 


Ok. You twisted my arm.  


1) I can't fold a fitted sheet.
2) I sometimes often use my fingers to count.
3) I always in The Color Purple, when Celie and Nettie play the pattycake game in the field at the end. Something about sisters just gets to me.

4) I had a crush on Mickey Dolenz when I was 10. 
5) I hate to admit that my editors have (almost) always made me look better in print.
6) Once, in the middle of my Calculus exam in college, I left the room and begged the TA to let me pass the course. I did. Cross my heart no personal favors led to my grade.
7) I was voted Most Valuable Cheerleader, not because of my gymnastics acumen, but because I could shout the loudest from the bleachers. Anybody who knows me today would never believe that.


The final thing I am supposed to do, as per the terms of my contractual agreement with the people at Stylish Blogger  in accepting this treasured award, is to point you in the direction of five blogs I read and like. there is nepotism involved, I am no relation to anyone on this list. Well, only one of them.


1) Southern in the City
2) Mrs. Mediocrity
3) The Barefoot Heart
4) Shutter Sisters
5) 3x3x365

Maybe some of them already have awards of many kinds. But I just want them to know that I read them often and their creative efforts inspire my own.


Now, will somebody, somewhere, on this wide wonderful reading planet, listen for a second? My palm is wide open and waiting.

All it takes is to jump

Action. When it comes to aspirations, it's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. What's your next step?

My brother sent me an email the other day proposing a Christmas present for my parents. A tandem jump from Triangle Skydiving.. under $150. George Bush (41) had done it... well, not with Bar. For a moment I imagined my mother's gray curls waving in the wind, my father's grimace as he faced the ground. My grandmother never rode a bicycle, so given all the change in the world since then, why not this for a couple of 82-year-olds?

No. I want them both to live a lot longer.

I remember jumping. Way back when I was 23, I had an idea. Stuck in a mediocre (and poorly-paid) newspaper job at a very bad newspaper, I imagined myself as a "real writer," at a big city newspaper somewhere, anywhere, outside the town 30 miles from my parents and a relationship that really wasn't going anywhere. I pulled out my trusty Olivetti and typed up a bunch of letters to newspapers around. And actually mailed them at the P.O. The N&O, the Atlanta Journal, The Charlotte Observer, among others, telling them how much I wanted to work for their newspaper  —I had never even seen the Atlanta paper or been to Atlanta, and had only read the Charlotte paper in college — attaching copies of my poorly-edited clips with the typos I have now become famous for. I don't recall hearing from any of them... maybe a form letter from the N&O.  

Desperate for change, I called the j-school alumni office, asking them if they had a job, ANY job, I might apply to. Yes, they said, in Augusta, Ga., a feature writing job in the "Family" department. And guess what? Someone in my class was already there. And she loved it. All I knew about Augusta was that it was no place to be, but so was where I was.

So, that letter went out, with the aforementioned clips, and whattayaknow? I got a phone call. Come down, the editor said. So I did.

That visit would change my life. I got the job, found an exceptional editor who with some tough love made me the real writer I had imagined myself being. And I met the man that very day who right now is walking the dog in a very bad looking Russian hat. (wish I had my camera at home) I knew he would be more than important to my life when he was opening the passenger door of my editor's car, for me to slip inside.

Six years later, we left the Land of Adventure with our two kids and a dog, heading back to N.C. and yet another adventure. I began to write again after four years of not, discovered my voice, helped my children discover theirs.

Blink.

Today, it feels like I am on the cusp again, desperate for change. Not out of a bad relationship  or a dead-end job, but from myself. I hover, wading through my days but envisioning the sky jump I can't quite sign up for. I have two novels I haven't finished. A life that needs uncluttering. I have the ideas, but making them happen? I have a big ol' boulder on my chest weighing me down.

Today I have been thinking about that 23-year-old and what motivated her to step out of her safe but unsettled life and do something. JUMP! She had ideas, and somehow being stuck gave her the courage to  step off the firm ground that held her, hoping somehow she would land on her feet. She knew not one soul in Augusta, Ga., but it proved just the place to land, to be.

And so, as this year closes, I have a few ideas. I want to find that voice that says you have the parachute, now jump! The place where I can put one word in front of (or behind) another, to finish what I started. To imagine one more time to jump, to see where I am headed and to land on my feet.