An Unnatural State of Being . . .

while driving golf balls into a corn field

I encountered a moment of nostalgia yesterday after reading the morning news (those two words conjure up a memory of sitting at the breakfast table with an open newspaper in one hand and a steaming coffee cup in the other – how I miss newspapers) about the TGL League, a new stadium-based golf league formed by golfers Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

The TGL League was created in cooperation with the PGA Tour to counter the threat posed by the recently formed Saudi-funded LIV Tour. This was before the two competing tours kissed and merged last month. As an aside, I am skeptical about the viability of stadium-based golf. It reminds me of indoor soccer. Okay to a point but not the real thing.

The confusing saga of PGA versus LIV seemed a bit amateurish to me considering that both organizations are for professional golfers. Their actions also reminded me how money, politics, and childish behavior ruin most things. Anyway, as I started to say at the beginning, I had a moment of nostalgia for the actual game itself and not for the monetized construct that we read about in our news stream.

I possessed a great talent for playing golf badly. When I would tee off, my friends would yell out Aquaman or Sandman depending upon where my ball landed. I was rarely called the Greenman even though I hit enough trees to have woken one up.

You might think otherwise if you consider that I started playing at age 15 and had two older brothers who played fanatically. My brother closest to me in age by 12 years played 54 holes one hot summer’s day. And he walked the entire three rounds. He was a pretty consistent golfer while my oldest brother played a more volatile game. Both were much better than me, which was to be expected considering the age gap, but I never had the patience to accept that I wasn’t as naturally talented as they were . . . until Parkinson’s showed up.

In my early version of Parkinson’s, I didn’t tremble or shake. I just had rigidity on my left side. One of my first symptoms was the reduction of movement in my left arm. The same arm that my brothers would holler at me to keep straight during my golf swing. Being the typical little brother, I ignored their advice and continued erratically slicing golf balls into the nearest lake, sand trap, or house while endangering other golfers near and far.

I gave up the game several times during my 20’s and 30’s. Then one of my nephews came by with a new oversized driver that he wanted to try out. He teed up a ball and hit it into the freshly plowed corn field beside my house. The ball flew perfectly about 275 yards before landing into a soft puff of red dirt. I asked him for the club, teed up a ball and had the same result. We drove so many balls into the corn field, that my farmer neighbor took to throwing them back into my yard (or maybe at my house) whenever he came across one.

Based on that performance, I started golfing again and was surprised at my newfound consistency. This was several years before my diagnosis in 2005, but I consider my improved golf swing as the true beginning of my Parkinson’s.

I played until 2008 when I was elected to the SC House. Golf became a distant memory as I juggled being a father, running a business, and politicking. Now that I have retired from politics, I found that I can still swing a golf club okay but my stamina has gone. I used to think that having Parkinson’s was an unnatural state of being. Maybe I still do but looking back on my golf game maybe my bad swing was unnatural.

The same could be said for my experience of being a father with Parkinson’s. Enduring Parkinson’s symptoms while chasing around a toddler is an unnatural state of being. Chasing one with Hemophilia is exponentially more so.

After admitting that I could not do the things with my son that I had always imagined, I changed my personal expectations and concentrated on what he needed from me that Parkinson’s could not interfere with. This has not been an easy road.

Parkinson’s giveth and Parkinson’s taketh away, but it does not have to be a zero-sum exchange.  I can look back on my positive experiences and admit that I have gained more than I have lost.