Reflections on the Twelfth Week of Spring – Celebrating Two Dads

Tiger Swallowtail on Dame's Rocket

When From You Flowers sent emails this week, I didn’t glower at their insensitivity in sending Father’s Day promotions to people with deceased fathers. I smirked. After years missing my dad and father-in-law while others celebrated with dads on Father’s Day, I had a better idea. I would celebrate my dads with activities they enjoyed.

My dad golfed.

He even took me golfing once. I’d been five or six. On the tee, he leaned down, looked me in the eye, and said, “If someone yells four, lay down and cover your head with your hands.”

My sister and I waited two yards behind Dad and his friends. A man set his golf ball on a tee, spread his feet, then swung his club back and fourth. “Four!”

I dove to the ground, put my hands on my head, and wondered how long I had to stay down.

Dad chuckled and lifted me off the ground. “Not on the tee. On the fairway.”

His friends laughed.

Eyeing Dad’s golf bag, I wished I could hide inside. Too big. And the breeze blew my bangs off my forehead. I couldn’t even hide behind them.

The men stopped laughing and swung their clubs. Swearing at balls, they rolled golf carts off the tee.

After that, when I heard four, I stood with my arms against my sides―ready to absorb the sting of an incoming ball. I needn’t have bothered. No balls flew near, and Dad let my sister and me take the flag out of the hole on the green. I had more fun holding the flag than the men had putting.

Sixty-some years later, I’d never golfed, but I putted―on miniature golf courses. I convinced my husband, who mumbled something about living with an obsessed woman, into an outing at Putt-It Miniature Golf in Meadville Tuesday evening.

That eighteen hole Putt-It would have fit on one of Dad’s greens. Blue, orange, and yellow carpets replaced the close-cut grass. Water replaced flags in the holes―Western Pennsylvania had more than its share of rain this season. Instead of fairways, we got a wagon wheel, a swinging faux-bowling ball, and an outhouse complete with shoes sticking out from under the door.

Feet together and putter snug against the ball, I studied the T-shaped first hole. Thinking more like angling a ball on Dad’s pool table rather than driving down a fairway, I tapped the ball out of a dent in the carpet. The ball rolled down the straightaway and stopped a foot from the hole―an easy par two for me. The succeeding holes with curves, speed bumps, and metal shoots proved more challenging. By the end of the first nine, I’d hit a hole in one, two scores of six, and every number in between except five. Spence covered the five score for me. And we tied, each fourteen over par.

I couldn’t imagine Dad, a man with high standards, scoring fourteen over par on those nine holes. He would have frowned at that score. Dad had scrutinized my report cards and said, “You could have gotten more As.”

Dad and Violets

Parring and bogeying the next eight holes, I imagined Dad’s face easing into his that’s-better expression.

Then came the eighteenth hole.

Spence and I waited behind the grandmother and her two grandchildren that we’d followed through the course. While five young boys and a couple teenage girls cheered, four adults angled their shots up the rise and into the slot of the upward-curving shoot―in vain. Balls rolled back to the tee or bounded off the course. The cheerers hooted and laughed. The line grew―a dating couple followed us, two millennial women came next, and a father-son duo waited last.

When our turn came, my ball rolled back to the tee, hit the side of the shoot and angled off the course twice, then rolled through the shoot and onto the green. But, with penalty shots for going off course, I’d already used the allowed six strokes.

I could hear Dad’s chuckle as loud as if I were on the golf course when I was little. This time I didn’t want to hide in his golf bag. I wanted to give Dad a hug. I hugged Spence instead.

Spence would have joined me when I celebrated his dad, but Spence had driven to Cleveland Friday, the day I made time after chores, kittens, and lap swim.

Harold, Spence’s dad, enjoyed walking through the woods in search of wild flowers.

Slipping into outdoor clothes, I stuffed a pad of paper, pencil, and scissors into my jeans pockets then headed for the woods. The most dramatic flowers grew out of a tree’s upturned root ball in Deer Creek. Dame’s rocket. A tiger swallowtail butterfly flitted from flower to flower sipping nectar.

Leaving the tiger swallowtail, I ambled along the path that Harold had mowed with his walk-behind tractor and Spence mowed with his pull-behind-the-tractor brushhog.

Some forty years earlier, when Harold and I’d walked this path, a garter snake wriggled through the weeds toward me. I stopped and stared.

Harold let loose his classic chesty laugh. “The snake’s more afraid of you than you are of it.”

I wanted to believe him, but the snake kept coming and crawled over my shoe.

Another laugh. “Garter snakes are good for the garden. They eat bugs and slugs.”

Passing fox gloves and wild roses, the only other flowers blooming in the woods, I strode to the field and garden. The Solomon’s Seal in the raised bed above the north garden had finished blooming. Harold used to point to False Solomon’s Seal in the woods and say, “That’s not the true Solomon’s Seal. It’s false. It’s Sealomon’s Sol.” Since he didn’t burst into his chesty laugh, I didn’t discover his joke until I came across the plant and its proper name in his wildflower guide years later.

Laughing for Harold, I listed twenty-eight flowers in bloom from alsike clover with its pink-tinged petals to yellow zucchini blossoms.

Since the memorial flower walk hadn’t turned up any flags or iris, my dad’s favorite flower, I straddled the drainage ditch along West Creek Road and cut ox-eyed daisies for him. For Harold, I cut a red peony and dame’s rocket―not the from the plant the butterfly chose.

Inside the log house, while kittens raced on and around my feet in the kitchen, I snipped and created bouquets for my two dads―more personal than From You Flowers could have arranged.

Happy Father’s Day, Dads, and thanks for all the laughs.

Harold in the Woods