My most memorable round of golf ever was about four years ago on a warm day in May.

It was a group outing – two other women, their husbands and several other men.

The golf course was about a half hour away so we met at a central location and carpooled. Before I even had a chance to take my clubs out of the van, things became very interesting.

One of the other women was angry. Very angry. Her husband had forgotten to put her clubs in the car for her and didn’t apologize. He suggested it was ultimately her responsibility to bring her own clubs.

She got in the car and raced home in anger to get her clubs. I thought she might not bother to return but she did.

We three women decided to carpool together and an extraordinarily honest conversation transpired, even though these women weren’t my BFFs (although the other two women were good friends with each other).

As is usually the case when someone gets angry about something, her anger wasn’t ultimately about her husband’s failure to remember her golf clubs.  It was pent up anger about all the struggles of recent years.  Struggles of a financial free fall and the subsequent feelings of humiliation and despair. Shattered dreams.

The conversation was peppered with, “I bet YOUR husband would NEVER…” and “Oh yes he does…” type statements. Vulgar language was used, even though the three of us are ladies who are usually all about dignified concealment in public. The preconceived categories we had previously assigned to each other, and to our spouses,  slipped away.

On the golf course we let the men go off in their own group and we proceeded to laugh a lot at our golf game…and at the men, whenever we would notice one of them make an errant shot, which was quite often.  It was therapeutic.

I think part of what makes a golf course a place where confidences are more freely shared and where laughter comes easily is that you get to make a fool of yourself whenever you hit a bad shot. Golf is a great equalizer. Whereas in most other public settings one doesn’t usually have opportunities to put one’s ineptitude routinely on display and therefore it’s easier to look like you have it all together.

The flip side of that is impressing everyone with the occasional amazing shot. Everyone who golfs usually hits at least one amazing shot per round, even if by accident. It’s always fun to hear praise over a great shot and it lifts the spirits. In the real world that kind of praise doesn’t come so easily.

The other thing that helps make the golf course a comfortable place to talk and laugh is that you aren’t next to each other or face to face the entire time, like you are when you go out to lunch or are at a party. You have to go off alone a lot to find your golf ball (if your golf shots are like mine that includes traipsing through woods or looking in streams). There is a lot of built-in solitude even as you are golfing with other people. So there is no forced conversation or awkward silences.

At the end of this memorable round of golf we stopped for a late lunch and a margarita, which I drank too quickly because I was thirsty. I felt the effects of that margarita for the rest of the day but our conversation continued to be very open and honest.

After this day of confessions the three of us didn’t go off and become BFFs and we haven’t golfed together or had a conversation like that since then. You can’t plan such things nor can you recreate them. It was a one-time thing – like a curtain was parted for a time and the three of us just happened to be there to peer in and see that we all share the same struggles more than we realized before. Golf made this possible even though it ultimately had nothing to do with golf.

Several months ago I gave a copy of Kitchen Table Wisdom to my daughters’ pediatric endocrinologist.

Yesterday she told me she loved the book and will ask some of her staff, medical students and daughter (who is a pre-med student) to read it. She is also checking to see if the medical school here is one of the medical schools in the US that uses Dr. Remen’s curriculum.

After the conversation I figured that I’ve given away about 5 or 6 copies of Kitchen Table Wisdom in the past six months. Almost all of these people told me they have turned around and given copies to people with cancer, a cancer center library, etc.

A book discussion group I’m part of talked about this book earlier this year.

All of this because I discovered the book in a footnote in this book. It was several months before I finally checked Kitchen Table Wisdom out from the library because, judging from the title, I feared it might be sappy. Happily I was wrong.

I say this not to make a sales pitch for the book (although you’re more than welcome to read it) or to show how generous I am (used copies only cost $5 or less, including shipping) but simply to encourage you to do the same with books that have changed you.

You can do so by:

*Writing a blog post about it.

*Writing a review on Amazon about it (a confession: three years ago I wrote a review of Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style (Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style) and am pleased at how my review is still the #1 review there, with 219 helpful votes. Now if only I could have lunch with Tim Gunn someday… but I digress).

*Giving a copy to someone.

Or you could be weird and have a “book group” discussion like a friend and I have had. While reading Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir by Christopher Buckley a year ago I kept thinking of a friend of mine because the dry wit in the book made me think of her. She lives at a distance so there was no way to discuss the book with her in a normal book group setting so I underlined my favorite parts and wrote notes in the margin directed to her.

I mailed the book to her and she read it, underlined her favorite parts, responded to my margin notes and also wrote her own margin notes. Then she mailed it back to me and it was so much fun to go through the book and look at her comments. I can’t think of a more engaging way to read a book.

Whatever you do, don’t forget that whenever you read a book that changes you, there’s the potential to change someone else’s life too.

This Mother’s Day thought from Peacebang wouldn’t work on a Hallmark card but acknowledges the complexity and compassion often missing from typical Mother’s Day sentiments:

For all the ones who are hurting today: missing their mothers, missing children whose Mother’s Day greeting they long to hear, grieving cold and rejecting women who could not mother them, and those who want to become mothers and whose dreams are not yet fulfilled.

Please darlings, avoid sentimental cliches about mothers today; or at least recognize that mother love is not forever, unconditional or instinctual for all mothers. Remember those who are grieving today. Give real, live women (and all those born to them) space to accept the reality of mothers. Leave the saints for the Church.

On a happier (although still not Hallmark-y) note, check out the below video. A 12-year-old with Asperger’s interviewed his mother and StoryCorps set the audio to this animated video:

Q&A from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

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Vintage advertising comics are always fun to read and this one about Folger’s Coffee is a hoot. Who knew a cup of coffee could solve all of one’s marital problems?

It’s funny.

As important as golf was to my friendship with my high school best friend, you’d think my college best friend and I would’ve raced out to the golf course together right after learning we both played golf.

That’s what normal friends would do upon learning they have a shared interest.

Except we didn’t do that.

In fact, we both seemed to go out of our way to not talk to each other about golf after that.

We lived together for three years, spent tons of time together and were very open with each other about everything…except golf and our grade point averages. Those were the two great undiscussed topics.

During the spring of my junior year we worked up the nerve to confess our grade point averages to each other. We braced ourselves, fearing the other person would have a much better GPA. We laughed and laughed when we found out our GPAs were identical.

After that confession it became easier to bring up the topic of golf again. We sheepishly admitted to each other that the reason we never talked about golf, much less golfed together, is because we were afraid we would become competitive on the golf course and that it would harm our friendship.

We laughed at the silliness of that. You’d think we would’ve set up a tee time after that, but no. We were still afraid that golfing together would be all about golf.

Finally, FINALLY, about 12 years after college graduation, we decided to be brave and go golfing together at a golf course somewhere near the Twin Cities.

We laughed uncontrollably many times at our silly shots. We kept score (I won by a few strokes!) but it didn’t matter. Besides, we did so much cheating anyway so the scores were’t all that precise.

We laughed so much I think I was literally high on laughter when we finally walked into the parking lot after our game. It was the most fun we’ve ever had together and the most fun I’ve ever had on a golf course…and it had nothing to do with golf.

I was an avid golfer for ten years, from the ages of 12-22 years old.

It occurred to me recently that playing golf had NOTHING to do with golf.

Instead it had everything to do with my father, a dead ten-year-old boy and my high school best friend.

When I was 12 years old my dad took me to the driving range.

I had never held a golf club before so he gave me a little lesson. I’m sure I was fascinated by hearing my taciturn father speak so many words in a row.

I teed up my first shot and knocked it about 150 yards. He was most impressed.

Not long after that I scored a 65 during my first round of nine holes and he seemed pleased.

He was not a man to dole out praise so no doubt that’s what fueled my interest in golf in the early going.

Plus I impressed the heck out of the neighbor kids when one of my errant tee shots knocked a squirrel out of a tree. I lived off that story for quite a while.

Anyway, it never occurred to me to ask my best friend to golf with me. It didn’t seem like it would be her thing at all. She was into horses and stuff.

Then, one Friday in May 1982, I cheerfully said “have a great weekend!” to her as we boarded our respective school buses.

Later that evening she hitched her horse up to a wagon and set out for a wagon ride with her parents. Her 10-year-old brother Jeff hopped on his bike and joined them.

He raced a little distance ahead of them. It was near sunset and a driver’s eyes were temporarily blinded by the sun as he drove down that country road where Jeff was pedaling.

His car hit Jeff and killed him instantly. My friend and her parents arrived on the scene a minute or two later.

The next morning my friend’s grandmother called my mother with the news.

My mom came to the table where my 11-year-old brother (who was friends with Jeff) and I were eating breakfast and told us what happened.

My brother started crying. His tears literally splashed into his cereal bowl and he kept eating cereal as he cried, as if he was in shock.

For once, I wasn’t irritated by his noisy way of eating cereal.

For once, I didn’t roll my eyes at the sight of him crying.

It was the first time I saw him cry for selfless reasons. It’s a mental snapshot I feel privileged to have tucked in my memory.

Then came the visitation and the sight of Jeff in his Cub Scout uniform in his casket was too heart-wrenching.

Even my dad cried. It’s the only time I’ve seen him cry. Another mental snapshot that I gently filed away in my memory.

Then came the day that I was anxious about, when my friend returned to school.

What would I say to her? I couldn’t just pretend that life was normal. Plus, I still had a little brother…and she didn’t.

I was only 15 and didn’t have enough life experience to have anything profound or comforting to say.

Inexplicably, I ended up inviting her to the driving range and she accepted.

I gave her a little lesson at the range and she knocked a 150 yard drive before we were done.

A neighbor gave her an old set of clubs and we proceeded to play golf together as often as possible during the next several summers.

Golf gave us something to do with our hands as we talked and laughed. And dissed the Illinois golfers who would clog our southern Wisconsin golf course on the weekends. And rolled our eyes at the drunken twentysomething male golfers who would hit on us sometimes.

Golf also made it easy for us to be quiet together.

In short, golfing had NOTHING to do with golf.

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Tomorrow’s golf story will be more upbeat. Stay tuned!

Today Rod Dreher encouraged his blog readers to post photos on their blog of the books on their bedside table.

Because my choice was to either do that or work on a writing project, of course I chose the former.

Except I don’t read books in my bed because I fall asleep if I do that. This time of year I read my books outside, if possible, so I took a photo of my stack of books next to the purple phlox flowers I usually sit next to while reading outside:

Here’s the list of titles:

Personality Fulfillment in the Spiritual Life by Adrian van Kaam

Finding Happiness: Monastic Steps for a Fulfilling Life by Abbot Christopher Jamison (click here if you’d like to see the posts I’ve written about this book).

Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States by Kristin Celello

The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion Through the Art of Storytelling by Annette Simmons

The Feast of Friendship by Paul D. O’Callaghan

Damn! Why Didn’t I Write That? by Marc McCutcheon

The Intrigue at Highbury: A Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery by Carrie Bebris

How To Succeed in Business by Breaking all the Rules by Dan Kennedy

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

If you were to surmise from this list that I’m a writer and entrepreneur with a strong interest in sociology, psychology, religion and mysteries, that would be accurate.

Tag, you’re it. What’s in your stack of books?

Today I’d like to address this  question from Snoopy:

This comes from the series of Peanuts strips about tangerine pool tables in yesterday’s post.

A reader wrote to me and said what she’d really like to see is pink golf courses.

So that set me to thinking…and Googling, of course.

It does not appear that there are any pink golf courses. Alas. There are the expected references to breast cancer awareness and golf. This site about pink golf is kind of cool.

So I’ll make my own case for pink golf.

Although I’ve been a devotee of Flying Lady pink golf balls for many years (even before breast cancer awareness), what I mean by pink golf is more along the lines of what Erma Bombeck once said: golf is something women do with their hands while they talk.

This is why I usually only ever golfed when I’ve had another woman or group of women to golf with. Golf is kind of meaningless for me otherwise.

On any given day I’d tell you that tennis is my sport of choice because, unlike golf courses, tennis courts are free,  the fast pace and quick-thinking required in tennis supposedly helps prevent dementia, in just a half hour you get an outstanding workout (golf isn’t much of a workout) and doesn’t take up half the day the way golf does, etc., etc.

As much as I like tennis, however, I can’t say I’ve ever experienced deep conversation, side-splitting laughter… and even healing… on the tennis court like I have on the golf course.

That’s because when I play golf it has nothing to do with golf. Whereas tennis has everything to do with tennis.

I’ll share some golf stories  in upcoming posts. Stay tuned!

I had not really thought much about the difference between housewives and at-home moms until I read this Caitlin Flanagan article in The Atlantic Monthly back in 2003.

Because there are so many differences between the two, and because the housewife era was so short-lived (about 20-30 years post WWII), it’s worth revisiting that article.

(It also gives me an excuse to talk about tangerine-colored pool tables but more on that in a minute. )

Perhaps the biggest difference between housewives and today’s at-home moms is that housewives were focused on house and husband and didn’t trail in the wake of their children  - the children trailed in their wake.

At-home moms tend to be more earnest and defensive than the housewives were and marinate in anxiety about their kids.

The Peanuts comic strip captures the housewife era so well by not ever showing a mother in any of the strips, the way so many modern day strips do, such as Baby Blues. There were no helicopter parents in Peanuts.

Here is a fun series of strips from 1962 where the characters talk about how their mothers are addicted to using the Van Pelt’s tangerine colored pool table:

I want a tangerine colored pool table!

As a work-at-home-mom I’ll never be as competent around the house as most housewives were but I like to think that maybe I could master the backspin on a cue ball too.