Trophy Daughter

A few weeks ago Jillian and I traveled back to Cincinnati to visit with old friends and attend Reva's second birthday party (stories from that event still to come ... writing once a day means dragging things out a bit).

We stayed with Dave and Stacy Lunn and their precious two kids. However, this post is not about that. You see David and I are ultra-competitive idiots, especially with each other. With all due respect to my own brother, and to Dave's as well, I don't know how we are NOT related. We could literally be twins because our personalities, mannerisms, stale jokes are all the same. Not identical twins, mind you. I'm obviously better looking, but you can tell that from the photo above.

Up until January when we moved to West Michigan, Dave and I had visions of our daughters playing sports together, and crossyourfingerssupertight, maybe even enjoy golfing with us when they got older. Well, I moved, but thankfully his parents live nearby so we're at least still connected to each other for a few golf weekends during the year. To help keep us connected I bought a silly $5 plastic trophy complete with 'gold' plated golf guy on top. Whenever we played, the winner got the trophy. Well, over the summer I was 0-for-5 on my quest to win the trophy. Dave gloated. He shared pics with his daughter wielding the trophy. And I bit my tongue. And waited. Well, in our last outing of 2009, and thus when the victor can lay claim to being the best golfer (of the year I would claim) I came out victorious and was able to teach my daughter lessons on perseverance and humility ... well, maybe perseverance at least.

It was nice to show my daughter I could win something, and if it comes at the expense of Dave, all the better. But in all seriousness I have already purchased Megan a kid size putter that she can use in our living room. Only recently has she done anything with it even remotely resembling a putting stroke, but she's improving and makes contact quite often. I haven't really said anything to her yet, just treating like any other toy in her overflowing box of goodies. But inwardly I hope she wants to play the game. Selfishly it's a sport I know I can continue to play well into my later years and I would love to have golf be a connecting force between us that allows us to spend several hours together, isolated away from the demands of our ever-growing, demanding life. But that's light years away.

For now, she's just a girl enjoying her first trophy.