![]() All of us: four kids, three spouses, two grandchildren, dug, watered and planted a ten foot “Autumn Glory” next to a dramatic lichen-covered rock outcropping at the edge of my front lawn. It was a beautiful September weekend, the only thing Dad wanted to accomplish was to plant a red maple in honor of Mom. Dad was failing fast, and for the first time since my mother’s death six years before, we all gathered at my house. The second Mother Memorial Maple was planted at my home in upstate New York. It felt like a personal insult to both of them. He was hurt and outraged that the club hadn’t taken the time to water it rigorously after all the years and money they’d spent at that club. The Zerbes, a childless couple who’d formerly owned a bar in LA and boasted a passing acquaintance with Ronald Reagan, began drinking in the afternoons, and soon my mother joined them.Īfter my father moved to Alameda and stopped being a member of the club, the red maple died. Her serious drinking had begun when, fifteen years before, the Zerbes moved in across the street – next to the fence that marked the border of the golf course. That was against the rules, but I believe the other women knew that her role at the club was one of the few remaining tethers holding her against the alcoholic tide that was more and more eroding her. Golf had become my parents’ main activity in their later years, and my mother had been captain of the women’s golf league two years in a row. She herself had golfed that fairway hundreds of times. My mother would sit for hours at her kitchen table playing solitaire, watching the golfers tee off and make their way down the fairway. The kitchen window of my parent’s house overlooked that fairway, an inviting greensward bordered by eucalyptus, sequoias, and live oak. The first Mother Memorial Red Maple, a twenty-five-foot “Red Sunset” was planted at my father’s behest on the 9th fairway of the Sequoia Country Club in Oakland, California.
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