The Masters

To say I had the best time in Augusta is only half the story. I don't remember why or how I fell in love with golf. As a young girl, part of my house chore was to take our carabao to pasture. It is important that the carabao eats well because it supports the family by plowing the field. I would be perched on its back feeling tall with the wind blowing in my face as it took me to a greener pasture, the Cebu Country Club. We lived next to the only golf course in the island and I would take my carabao there because the grass next to the fairways were always green and abundant. Most days, when I found stray golf balls, (mostly from the Japanese golfers) I would collect them and take them home for my brother to break open and pry out the small bouncing rubber ball inside. We had no use for the golf balls as we didn't have any friends who played golf-we had no rich friends. But we could play with the bouncing little rubber ball.
Fast forward to a few years later, I got a job, moved to Manila and acquired an American boyfriend to boot. Besides drinking, he loved to scuba dive but talks and breath golf most of the time when he was not talking about a "racehorse." Translation : good looking women.
One afternoon he took me to this country club called Wack-Wack, to claim his prize; a thermos bottle. My first time inside a country club so I tried to act like how people act in a country club. Like I'm used to it. It did not feel right --feeling tall even without the carabao?

Twenty five years later, the now ex-boyfriend, ex-golfer, took me inside the grounds of Augusta National for the 2007 Masters. I was overwhelmed with emotions I could not come up with the right words to justify what I felt. I was elated for the experience of being inside, but also, there was this tinge of emotion that was hard to discern. When he put his arm over my shoulder to point my attention to the pine needles neatly raked in to an almost decorative pile, I felt a different surge of emotion. The momentary weight of his arm on my shoulder was comfortable. I felt at home.

It was great watching the pros'- the heralded and the unheralded do the practice rounds . It was fun eavesdropping on peoples conversation too. One woman asked her husband what Tiger Woods babys' name was. He didn't remember, he said. Came to find out, Tigers wife is not even due til July. As we got to our seats at the bleachers, 2 men sat in front of us. I got hungry watching them eating eating an egg salad sandwich and pimiento cheese sandwich. But then the other guy started talking out loud about everything; from his homosexual neighbor to global warming. If they pay him 150k, he would find global warming, he assured his buddy. I did not know you are supposed to find global warming. His annoying subjects turned my hunger into anger, but in that environment I found it hard to really be angry and mean it.

Inside the Augusta National, there was much to savor. My eyes could only look at so much and my heart can only feel so much. I am just now beginning to describe them in my minds eye and gently trying to preserve the pitter- patter in my heart. Gently, least I wake up.