Being adorable, during the summer that golf was a thing.
The end of the saying I’m referencing in the title of this blog post is pretty damn grisly. In retrospect, I probably should have changed it. I mean, yeah I am still typing and could easily swap it out for something else, something less suicide-y but instead I leave it/have left it in. I don’t know what that says about me. Maybe that I’m lazy. Maybe a touch too dramatic. Maybe that I suck at SEO. All of the above, probably.
What I’m trying to say with “How Much Rope” is, really, how much time, energy and cash do we extend to and on behalf of our kids when they are small and/or small-ish, for them to dabble in potential passions and discover possible hobbies? When is enough, enough?
The Bear isn’t a golfer and likely won’t be the next [insert famous rising young female golf star here]. But she maybe could’ve been. Past tense on purpose. There is closure, it feels. She had the focus, attention to tiny details, and drive to be great at golf…and she’s also, still, the owner of a naturally beautiful golf swing. You can’t teach that shit. I mean, okay, maybe you can, technically speaking. I dunno for certain, but regardless, she’s got herself a nice, steady, and pure stroke. It’s real pretty to watch.
Thing is, she doesn’t love golf. So we don’t see that pretty swing much. And by that I mean, ever.
We confirmed what we already sort of knew, after hundreds of dollars were sunk into group golf lessons last summer, after she’d expressed an interest in giving the sport a shot. It had been a few years since anything loosely defined as ‘group activity with some kind of instructional component’ was greenlit by our first born, so we ponied up the coin because that’s what middle-class-and-up parents do when their kid wants to try something. We pay, we buy outfits and equipment, we watch, we photograph and film, we encourage, and we go out for ice cream afterward. Extra sprinkles? Go for it. You earned ’em today, kiddo.
But compliments, well-received constructive feedback, and obvious inherent skill logged deep in her genome from pop pop (it must’ve skipped a generation) can’t make you love something. If you don’t, you just don’t, no matter how many stories of young ladies making millions and being adored are told to you in earnest by old white men. Whatevs. There is no love, so there is no golf. Done and done.
There’s also no more gymnastics, karate, or acting. No more soccer, sewing, or pottery. These are all camps, lessons, group activities with some kind of instruction that have been funded with the promise of passion found and flourishing. But no, nothing there.
And I don’t know when to stop writing those checks, despite my daughters having not cashing a single one of them to date.
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