20th January

19:22

Ever seen Happy Gilmore? As a young teenager, this ranked comfortably in my top ten of favourite films.

The story follows Happy, a failed ice hockey player with a powerful shot who turns to golf to raise money for his dispossessed Granma. Happy is blessed with a long drive, but little short game. During one particular match, Happy drives comfortably onto the green. But his woeful putting takes him back and forth past the hole. His well-meaning coach eases the tension by suggesting that the hole is the ball’s home, and that Happy simply needs to ‘send him home’.

After numerous further attempts, Happy explodes “Why won’t you go home! Are you too good for your home?”

Bizarrely, I find myself revisiting this scene in my mind as, yet again, Solomon’s crying takes me to his cot-side, to find him entirely detached from his blankets, and residing at the opposite end of the cot. Credit where credit is due: at his age he is nowhere near being able to crawl, and yet as the light is switched on, he is simply not where he was left. I can only conclude that he has been conversing with a middle aged friend of ours who, as a child, competed as an Olympian in the ‘living room swimming’ event. By all accounts, this particular gentleman would propel his body forward upon a carpeted surface, solely by persistently carrying out a front crawl motion. This would appear to be the same propellant motion adopted by our young son.

But back to the point at hand.

I find myself questioning why it is that our young man cannot simply lie, and sleep, where we have left him. Is he, like the golf ball, too good for his home? For his blankets, for that end of the cot?

Perhaps it is that, through the course of his life, he will not always stay where we would like him to stay, go where we would like him to go, and do what we would like him to do. Perhaps if he did, we, and he, would not experience the full richness of life. For surely it is through the unexpected that we learn something of ourselves and our loved ones. Through the unexpected, we tunnel deeper into the relationships that matter most to us. When the light is switched on, and things are not where we left them, things are not as we planned them to be, expected them to be, hoped they would be, is it possible that they are in fact better?

After all, the hole is not the home of the golf ball. The air, the fairway, the rough, the bunker, the tee, the lake. These tell the story of the golf ball. These are the homes of the golf ball.