PopcornJackTerry

I was playing golf a few days ago with my friend Tim. We play every couple of weeks, or at least try to. Sometimes it’s every week, sometimes it’s once a month. Basically it boils down to what our schedules look like and if we’re available at the same time. The thing about playing on such an irregular schedule is that it is easy to lose track of how often we play or how much time has passed since the last time we were out there. As such, I hadn’t realized how long we had been playing together until I saw the dragonflies.

I distinctly remember them from last summer. They hadn’t been out the first few times we played, and then one day they were everywhere. It almost felt like suddenly I was cast as an extra in some b-grade science fiction movie, with the dramatic conclusion being a mutant breed of dragonflies raising their flag over the White House. These things were everywhere! Swarms of them on the tee box, on the green, in the rough. (I’m assuming there were also lots of them on the fairway, but my style of golf doesn’t involve a lot of hitting the ball there.) The first time, it was weird. But the next time we went out, it just seemed natural. A few more times, and then just like that they were gone.

Funny thing is that I didn’t think much about them after that. In the end, they hadn’t been anything more than an oddity. Why would I spend a lot of time concerned with them? They hadn’t affected my game, hadn’t changed anything. They were no different than the iguanas and ducks that roam the course. Something to acknowledge and then, just as easily, put out of my mind. So when I saw them again the other day, they caught me off guard. But ultimately not for the expected reason.

The passing of time haunts us in different ways, and we often lose sight of it in the bigger picture. Daily becomes a routine, and we know the time passes by the days we mark off on a calendar as we march toward the weekend. Annual events offer us an ability to reflect a little more deeply, but just as easily the ritual of the celebration is no less a routine than the rest of our lives. It takes something a little deeper and out of the ordinary to make us realize just how much time has passed.

I used to dread April 9th. That’s the day my father passed away, and the first couple of years afterwards I was a mess. Some of that was my own doing-I made a production out of my loss-but some of it was unprocessed anger and sadness. As time passed, I dealt with it better and better until one year, I had a message on my answering machine from my brother, just calling to say hi. Neither of us are big phone talkers, so I was puzzled as to why he would just casually call, until I saw the calendar. April 9th. Likewise, when I first lived down here, the first part of my awakening to just how lost I was in my life was seeing a new batch of people moving down here for the busy season, just like I had done the year before. I started to realize that a year had passed, just like so many others before it, and I was no closer to being who I thought I was. That started me down the slope that ultimately bottomed me out. (If you read the book then you know what I’m talking about.)

These events serve as signposts outside the normal days and dates on a calendar. My father isn’t (obviously) going to die every year, and so that date maintains a uniqueness in that it is specifically tied to a year, and any reflection it brings up in me takes me all the way back. The migration of people down here doesn’t move with the same force every year, and some of the people are no longer new faces but returning ones. Each year is different, and as such so is how I look at it. In that sense, even though they are seemingly so much less substantial, the dragonflies are no different.

It is only by taking the time to stop, breathe, and focus to see where our lives are going. Without something stopping us, whether it be something tragic, triumphant or trivial, we lose the ability to discover who we are and who we may be becoming. It is easy for us to let traditional events dictate this for us-raise your hand if you make New Year’s resolutions-but it is events that resonate with us personally, for whatever reason, that will touch us deeper and give us a better chance to grow. Seeing the dragonflies reminded me of just how long Tim and I had been friends, and helped to give a weight to the friendship that I previously hadn’t acknowledged.

I won’t be playing golf this week. Too busy with a play I’m doing that runs this week. (Stop by the Red Barn theater if you’re in town.) But I’ll probably call Tim over the weekend and see if there’s a day we can get together to play. I’m pretty sure the dragonflies will still be there. If my memory serves me right, they hung out for a couple of months last year. Which means, based on our past history, by the the time we play again, they may well be gone. And knowing me, I’ll probably fail to notice.

I’ll be too busy trying to find my ball in the woods.