Winter Rules.

I thought maybe I'd stop and putt at the golf course on the way to the grocery store, but it was too wet. There were puddles on the practice greens and rain clouds in my head.

It was a bad day. So gray, so wet, so cold, so empty and so sad. I’d woken from a worrisome dream, and it was still troubling me as I drove past the golf course, the tires zizzing through standing water.

I’d heard one of my kids whisper urgently in the darkness at my bedside, like they did when they were little. “Dad…Dad…” I rose on my forearms and looked, but of course no one was there. I laid back down and closed my eyes. A second later, I felt a distinct tug on my nightshirt sleeve, on my right forearm.

I half-rose again, swivel-headed in the dark. Maybe our rowdy cat, Gus, tapping my arm to wake me up and let him out? Maybe someone standing there…

Nothing.

When I got up for good, my right forearm and wrist hurt like hell. I put it down to the work I’d done the day before: lifting a heavy wooden door off its brass hinges, twisting a screwdriver on tightly burrowed wood screws and assisting my younger and stronger neighbor as we eased a solid wood desk out of the Mazda, into my house and down my basement steps.

I swallowed some ibuprofen and rubbed CBD cream on my wrist and forearm but they ached most of the day. I messaged my kids. I knew where one of the four was — sleeping just 20 feet down the upstairs hallway — and I saw the youngest had responded that morning in some other family message thread. My older boys hadn’t responded yet, and one of them was in fuckin Thailand.

Driving toward the golf course, I figured the only practice I could do that wouldn’t hurt was putt. I enjoy practicing golf and I often stop at the public course near me for a little chipping and putting on grass when I’m on my way to other errands. Practicing on grass, not those driving range carpets, is the best way to improve. I had a shag bag of beat-up balls in the Honda with me and my sweet old Ping Anser 3 putter, which I bought used 30 years ago. Love that bronze-headed old thing. Elegant and accurate both.

But there were lakes on the practice green. Winter weather sets the rules, I guess, so I kept on driving to the grocery store. Westward to Winco, I thought to myself, because I invent bombastic slogans to describe everyday things, sometimes. All Hail Hummingbirds, I said last summer.

It was a deep down day, a sink in silence day. The dream bothered me. What if one of my kids was in trouble? They had needed me then, hadn’t they, when they were little and whispered at my bedside. I wasn’t always there, was I.

What if they needed me now, and woke me to tell me so? Like I said, it was a down day, a deep day. Depression got in the car with me, uninvited, and sat tight-lipped in the passenger seat as I drove Westward to Winco. Guilt, Shame and Regret sat like sullen triplets in the back, glaring at me.

There wasn’t much I could do but drive. Get to the store. Push my rattling cart. Check my shopping list. Do my errand. It was kind of like in golf when they say you have to play the ball as it lies. You put yourself in this position, deal with it. Hack your way out of it.

But golf has Winter Rules, and maybe they apply to other expressions of life, too. Couldn’t they?

In golf, at least in wet Western Oregon, Winter Rules means you can lift, clean and place. Like if you tee off and your ball plugs in the soft ground. Normally you can’t touch your ball and you have to play it as it lies, see, but in Winter you can pick it up, wipe the mud off and perch it back atop a nice tuft of grass reasonably close by, but not closer to the hole. Then you can hit it again. No penalty.

The rest of life ought to be like that.

I don’t know if you shop at Winco, or have a similar store where you live. It’s a discount grocery chain — employee owned, by the way — with prices cheaper than anywhere else, especially on canned goods and wine. You see a lot of poor people at Winco. I see more people of color in an hour at Winco than I do in a week in my neighborhood, and way more poor people. Way more. That’s partly why I like Winco so much. I appreciate the company of people who are in the struggle but retain their dignity and their humanity. They say hello back, they remark on the produce or the weather. They acknowledge other people but they get on with their own business, too. For the most part they play life as it lies.

I wasn’t much in the mood for company when I got to the store, though. Not at first. I avoided smiling at the cute kids in the carts, even though I usually do. I didn’t say hello. The wine on my list, a smooth Oregon Pinot noir that I’d bought for months at the steal price of $16, had jumped five bucks a bottle — same as the fancier stores. So there went that.

But at the register, a couple came up behind me with just a couple things each in their hands. I came out of my funk enough to wave at my full cart and say they ought to go ahead of me. The wife said, oh, they weren’t in a hurry, and the husband kind of nodded. “You’re fine, you’re fine,” the wife said.

I said OK, but something clicked. I turned back to them. “But what if I’m not fine?” I asked.

They laughed and so did I, and the checkout woman asked me if I’d been able to find everything today. I said yes I did, thank you. I recognized her, she’s working just about every time I go there. Slender and professional. As I was bagging my groceries I heard her tell the couple she’d worked there seven years and it was a pretty good job. She said my total was $138.07 today, and I stepped back around to the card machine. I gestured at the couple and joked to the checker, “These folks said they were going to pay for it.” The checkout woman said Oh! and chuckled politely and so did the couple.

And the wife said, after a beat, “I would pay, if I thought you couldn’t.”

“She would, too,” the husband said.

And I believed them.

“I’ll give food,” she said. “But never cash.”

The exchange must have lifted me up, wiped me off and set me back down. All the rest of the morning, random things happened. Two oncoming drivers with green lights let me complete left turns when the signal turned yellow, instead of barreling on through and leaving me exposed in the intersection. The tall young sales guy at the auto parts place flatly advised me not to buy the store’s batteries because they’re junk, and gave me a detailed review of waterproof car covers. “I’m rockin’ this one,” he said.

This continued at my next stop, Trader Joe’s. A stocker on a stepladder advised me to buy the maple leaf-shaped cookies because he’d been there seven years and they always fly off the shelf, 30 cases a week. “You can’t go wrong with longevity,” he said, and I knew that was true.

In the checkout line, I asked the checker if her day was going weird, too. She dropped her duty face and said yeah, it was kind of an offbeat day. I told her I’d had a series of occurrences. “Nothing bad, but…” I said.

She grinned and said, whoa, hey, how about, how would you like — and she grabbed a bag of peanut butter cups and tossed it into my shopping bag. Free, she said. There you go. And she literally wrote it off on a clipboard, wrote down whatever its code was and her initials and $1.99, so it was officially accounted for.

“Keep the magic going!” she exclaimed, and I laughed and said you bet.

There were still lakes on the practice greens as I drove past on the way home. But tomorrow it might let up and drain some. Just now it started to snow, and I always welcome the sight of falling snow. I like it. I like my new wooden desk, too. It feels solid as hell, compact but muscular, all wood. I got it for $20 down at Oregon State University’s weekly surplus sale in Corvallis. It was made in Oregon in 1992, according to a little brass plate in one of the drawers. And, bonus, it was used in the College of Agricultural Sciences, my favorite department down there.

I never liked that cheap Ikea desk I had, no disrespect intended to that store overall.

It’s funny how the wooden desk, so heavy, fit in the back of the Mazda by a half inch and cleared the basement steps by even less. But here it is.

I expect I’ll finish setting it up today. I heard from all four of my kids. They’re fine, they’re fine.

And Winter Rules say you can lift, clean and place.