Golf Sunday and Helping Lisa

I intended to continue last week's stellar golf performance today, especially since today we have our full complement playing (Greg, Scott, Chris, and I). What I did not count on was that I would get a parenting lesson too right there on the golf course. We ended up getting a 5th player, which was this young girl named Lauren who we had played with before on this course. Back then she was accompanied by her grandfather who was coaching her. He was Filipino (she was clearly hapa). I remember he made a tweak on Greg's fairway irons shot and it worked for him. He made suggestions on my tee shot swing and it did NOT work for me. Anyway I remember that Lauren played well that day.  And she seemed on her way to doing the same, at least after the first hole. She had this beautiful chip from the edge of the sandtrap that just stopped spinning 10 feet from the hole. I wish I knew how to make the ball spin like that. As it was I did not start well. I was lucky to get a 6. Chris won the hole by hitting par. Lauren though missed her putt. I mean missed it barely. It was in and then just popped out. We were uneventfully walking to the 2nd hole tee box when we noticed Lauren't grandfather kept talking to her about the shot. It would seem Lauren had gotten upset at missing her putt. And now her grandfather was almost lecturing her about the fact that she was crying. And he kept going on and on. And even brought us into the fray, almost asking us to talk to her. A couple of things came up in my awareness at this point. (1) that Filipino way of lecturing was something I got to experience too I think many a time when I was Lauren's age (2) I thought about Johnnie and the times he would get frustrated and upset with himself at something. All he really needed was a hug. Some reassurance. The last thing he needed was a lecture about repressing his feelings.  And so the grandfather's "coaching" bothered me. It clearly bothered Lauren too because she could never get herself to stop crying through the 2nd hole. So much so, her grandfather simply chose to take her home midway through the hole. I felt so bad for her. I made a note that this would be a reminder for me in the future when I am dealing with frustration and upset from Johnnie. I had a terrible 2nd hole, probably still thinking about the episode. Didn't have a good one on the 3rd either. In the meantime, Chris was on fire. At one point he had won 5 of the first 6 holes, his streak only being broken by Greg's win on Hole 4. Gone was the groove I was in last week, and I simply could not focus on raising my vibration. That was clear because I was missing much more than usual. I at least won Hole 7 outright. And it would be the only hole I would win too. At least I was not shut out. Chris won easily 7-2-1. Greg won the last hole to win the 2nd place sweepstakes. Interesting morning. Bad golf but a good life lesson for parenting. And the golf lesson? I simply was not able to slow myself down today. And so the old patterns crept back in. Gotta work on that.

So I grabbed a quick lunch at Ralphs (fried chicken) and by the time I got home which was 12:45 Lisa had called. She was expecting me to come over to help her move in course as we had discussed last night. I was already on board with that. I had already cleaned my house yesterday, I was done with laundry, I was good to go. I packed up some drawing materials for Johnnie and then headed over. Mom and son were still in pajamas, something about this being THEIR routine on a Sunday. I didn't care actually only that it appeared Johnnie hadn't eaten lunch yet and it was already well past 1 PM. But it was also clear Lisa was already caught up in "moving in" mode and was putting up her dozens of pictures on various walls all over the house. I was happy to help her spot the pictures, but she was doing fine putting them up on her own. In the meantime, I put the TV and the electronics in the living room together, which took all of 10 minutes. And then the whole purpose of that was so that she could get her books arranged which were all in the garage. Didn't seem to be complicated to me but I reminded myself Lisa has a process on how she does things, including when and how to put the books up. And that much i know and if I agree to do anything with her, I also implicitly agreed to do it her way. Still, I moved her books, a couple of other heavy items inside and upstairs when asked and by the time 5 PM rolled around, she even requested I take Johnnie for a couple of hours so she could finish doing more stuff. Nothing doing. I made it down the block before i hear Johnnie's soft breathing in the back seat. He had knocked off to sleep. Well of course he would do that wouldn't he? I brought him back, took him upstairs to his bed and then told Lisa I'd be back to bring her some dinner. Reciprocity right? What I did was go to Whole foods, get some ingredients and even though I didn't want to dirty up my just-cleaned kitchen, I cooked up fettuccini and salmon and mushrooms. And brought it to her still in the pan.  Hey she wanted a home cooked meal? That's what she got. And so we shared another meal together she and I. It was almost like she was now beginning to remember pleasant memories between she and I. She brought up her wedding ring and how much we went through to have one made...right at the Westside Pavilion. Why she would bring that back up I don't know.  She talked about how moving in this time around reminded her of our first move-in in this house. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was one of the bad experiences that I try to forget and push aside. I left it at the fact that today she and I enjoyed dinner together. No expectations, no nothing. Just dinner. Because she made me dinner last night. She asked me to come back for breakfast tomorrow so I could yet again watch Johnnie while she finished moving in. Hey I had the day off. Why not? Tonight I went to bed happy that the weekend wasn't over yet. And it had been a pretty full weekend already.