Me, my dad, and Tiger Woods

Every year when The Masters golf tournament rolls around, I think about my father. This may seem odd since he never played a round of golf in his life. I doubt he ever watched it on television either.As for myself, once or twice I have driven around in a golf cart drinking beer and watching friends play golf, but that is about the extent of my own interest in the game.

But on Sunday, April 13, 1997, in a Denver apartment, I spent the day with my dad watching golf on television as 21-year-old Tiger Woods destroyed the competition at The Masters. Until today when 21-year-old Jordan Spieth won The Masters with an 18  under par, no one had recorded a lower score than Woods on that day. No one has ever won by a greater margin than he on did that day. We might not have understood the nuances of the game, but my dad and I understood that Tiger Woods just kicked major ass on a golf course that was part of a country club in Georgia that would not have admitted him as a member a few years earlier. That’s not an exaggeration for effect. The Augusta National Golf Club did not admit black members until 1990 (or women of any color until 2012).

The karmic social justice and Tiger Woods’ epic day are mostly incidental to this story, though. On that day in Denver, my dad was a 57-year-old construction worker who lived in Oregon and was temporarily in Colorado on a crew erecting cell-phone towers. I was nearly 32 and had recently quit my newspaper job to start graduate school at the University of Wyoming. While our relationship to that point had been functional – my dad usually called me at least monthly and we saw each other every year or at least every other year – I still resented him for my parent’s divorce when I was 13. He had been working construction in another state and met someone else. The divorce from my mother was not amicable.

Over time, it wasn’t so much the divorce that most bothered me, though the divorce of course sucked at the time. As time passed, it hurt more that he moved far enough away that my brothers and I basically saw him at Thanksgiving and spring breaks, and big events like state basketball games and high school graduations. Then I moved from the Pacific Northwest to Texas for college and saw him even less. As a young adult I resented late night calls when he was drunk and wanted to tell me he loved me, that he loved my brothers, that he missed seeing us, and repeat stories that I’d heard from him during his last late night call and the one before that. I never refused his calls or asked him not to call, but I mostly dreaded the awkward conversations. From my perspective, he was seeking reassurances from me while I was not willing to give up on my resentment. None of this was stated, but this was the subtext to every call, and every visit.  I clung to my disappointment in him. After all, if he loved me so much, why did leave? Why did he move so far away? Again, these questions were unstated, but they presided over every single aspect of our relationship.

As I worked my way through my twenties, though, I began to understand that the world is not neat and tidy. In fact, more often than not, the world is one hot freaking mess. I began to appreciate that life can be complicated, that our lives play out in various shades of gray. I better understood why marriages sometimes fail (including one of my own, at age 24, although thankfully no children were involved). With maturity and life experience, with time and distance, I gradually judged my father – and people generally – less harshly. Everyone has their own struggles and secrets. The border between good and bad is not always well defined and we can often be both. And while I began to view my father in a more forgiving light, I still struggled to square my acceptance of him as a father with the fact that he left.

Then one day in Denver I watched Tiger Woods blow up The Masters on TV with my dad. It was special to watch an amazing and historic moment with someone who appreciated that moment as much as I did. Feeling comfortable talking and laughing with my dad seemed natural. The day reminded me of all the things that I appreciated most about my dad. His wit. His smile. His laugh. His skepticism that stopped just short of cynicism. His curiosity – he asked questions, he talked with you and not at you. Even though he left when I was a kid, I could still recognize some of me in him. It was the day I started to allow my lingering resentment to slip away, to not matter. To love my father for who he was and to accept the good with the not-so-good. All of it was part of him, much of it is part of me.

I never said any of this to my dad that day, or any other day, to be honest. I don’t think I realized myself how I had changed that day until sorting out my thoughts with my wife, Carissa, probably the only person I trust completely with my inner thoughts, on our drive back to Laramie from Denver that evening.  I had a sense of peace and relief that was unfamiliar after time with my dad. On the three hour drive I began to identify and sort through those emotions and feelings. I know it’s a cliché, but it was liberating to stop hoarding my collection of blame and resentment toward my father and let it go. (Fuck, I sound like a Disney movie.)

I didn’t know at the time but that day in Denver watching The Masters would be the last day I would spend with my father in person. He died the next summer at age 59 at a hospital in Oregon of complications related to heart failure.

My father died three days before I started my first year of law school and nearly three years before the birth of my oldest daughter, who is now 13 – the same age I was when my parents divorced. Carissa and I have a second daughter who is seven. I hope my own daughters remember their childhoods warmly, as I remember most of mine. When I think of my dad, which I do often, I don’t forget the darker times, the times with a father that never were because he wasn’t there. But I also think about the better times and I hope that perhaps there are lessons that I can learn from both. I remember times, before he left, how he could make me feel proud of myself and safe and loved unconditionally. Every year during The Masters, I think about my dad.

I don’t pretend to know what it all means, my dad's conflicted legacy as a father and how it affects or doesn't affect me. But when The Masters rolls around each year, I think about my dad and our day in Denver, and am not above shedding a few tears. Some because I miss him, some because I love him, and some because I’m a parent and love my girls. I know he would be pleased if I do a better job at being a dad than he did. And in turn I will be pleased if my girls love me in spite of my flaws.