Sisters’ friendship endures
Three decades ago Big Sisters introduced Wendy Sherlock to Sylvi Evans; a lifelong bond was forged
KITCHENER — A white ball sat deep in a first-hole bunker.
Sylvi Evans, learning golf at age 37, needed a sand wedge on a cloudless afternoon at Rockway Golf Course.
But which iron, hiding among the baffling assortment of clubs she had purchased on Kijiji for $120 was the sand wedge? To Sylvi, it was a mystery.
Her golf coach and 32-year life tutor, Wendy Sherlock, had to be consulted. “What does it look like?” Sylvi asked, searching for the correct iron.
“It has an ‘S’ on it,” Wendy said. Sylvi pulled out the sand wedge. “You don’t have to hit it hard,” advised 64-year-old Wendy, an experienced golfer and aunt of Stephanie Sherlock, a former golf pro.
Sylvi dug her white shoes into the hot sand and swung easily. The ball flew forward but caught the fat grass lip at the bunker’s edge and reversed direction. It landed a foot behind Sylvi in the dry dirt.
“Just about,” Wendy, a mostly retired teacher, said encouragingly.
“I’ll try it again,” Sylvi said.
Sure, why not? There was no rush. No impatient foursome was coming up behind them. The old inner-city golf course, for a moment, seemed to be theirs alone.
Just two ladies on a swingin’ afternoon stroll while a small twin-prop plane buzzed overhead like an oversized bumblebee.
The pair were both born in Thunder Bay and got pulled east toward Waterloo Region by family.
They got connected by the local Big Sisters organization when Sylvi was four. Wendy, embarking on a long teaching career at Waterloo Collegiate, was looking to give back to the community by becoming a youth mentor. Her sister had five kids. Adding one mini-me for Wendy couldn’t be that much of a problem.
“I had red hair then too,” Wendy recalled.
“We looked the same,” Sylvi agreed. “Both tall and thin,” Wendy finished. At their first meeting, Sylvi recalls being mesmerized by the multicoloured faux feather duster at Wendy’s place.
They first teed up together when Sylvi was 10 or so. Wendy took her to Tampa Bay to play on a golf course owned by Wendy’s brother.
Alligators, hungry for ball-hunting hackers, lined the water hazards.
“They should get some here,” Sylvi quipped. “Just to keep it interesting.”
Their latest nine-hole excursions, 26 years after they last golfed together in Florida, were Sylvi’s idea. The night owl bookkeeper who lives in Waterloo called Wendy, a chipper morning person who lives in Kitchener, and asked her to play a round or two.
“I wanted to pick something that Wendy could teach me,” Sylvi explained. “She’s good at a lot of things.”
They played once on opening day in April. They teed up again on a Tuesday, late in May. Sylvi’s first drive sliced right toward a foreign fairway. Her pink golf ball disappeared. She never found it.
“I lose the pink one every time,” Sylvi said with a laugh.
Their shared memories never disappear into life’s shaggy rough.
All those trips together to the Sherlock family’s Lake Muskoka cottage where Wendy took a young Sylvi water-skiing.
“I could never stand up,” Sylvi said. “I went water-skiing on my butt around the whole lake.”
They went downhill skiing too. And rode wave pools and roller-coasters and roller skates. They visited the African Lion Safari. They chomped popcorn at the movies and sunk holes-in-one at the local miniputt emporiums. Sylvi fed chunky peanuts to gregarious chipmunks at the cottage and rode a horse named Pretty Boy.
Sylvi and Wendy’s niece, Emily, would dress up and put on dance shows. They had big sister sleepovers. So many people mistook Sylvi for Wendy’s daughter. They laugh about that.
They went to church too. Sylvi even joined the junior choir for a bit, singing in a dress Wendy had sewn for her.
Sylvi’s sister Dawn had a few “big sisters” too. But they never connected like Sylvi and Wendy. These two had similar interests. They fit well with each other. Sylvi’s mom, Beatrice, was tied up studying psychology at university. Her dad was back in Thunder Bay. Wendy had no kids of her own and never married.
“She always treated me like I was her own daughter,” Sylvi said.
The teenage years, after they stopped going to “Big Sisters” events like Christmas parties, nearly took a tremendous toll.
Sylvi had a Goth phase. She dressed in black. She shaved her head. They stopped going to church together.
“I didn’t feel my attire fit in there,” said Sylvi, wearing a powder-blue golf ensemble.
Things got worse after the Goth stage. Sylvi lost touch with everybody, not just Wendy, for four or five years. Sylvi got into drugs in her early 20s. She was embarrassed by her crack habit. She kept it hidden from Wendy by pulling away. Eventually, she pulled herself out of it.
For Sylvi, group therapy didn’t help. She had to do it herself.
“For some people, the meetings work,” Sylvi said. “For me, they made me go back to them every time. Thinking of myself as not a drug addict was more helpful than thinking of myself as trying to quit.”
When she was clean, she called Wendy. She couldn’t wait to.
“I’m not going to wait until I’m like sober for a year. I’m just going to call everybody and start hanging out with everybody again,” said Sylvi, explaining her thought process at the time.
“It just made me try harder. I would never want to do drugs in front of anybody.”
Wendy had been talking to Sylvi’s mom — who became a detox counsellor — and sister, but didn’t initially realize how bad Sylvi’s addiction had gotten.
“Until it got really bad,” Wendy said. “Sylvi has amazed me with her ability to come through what she’s come through. Her courage, her ability to stick with staying off the drugs, it’s just been amazing.”
Eventually, their twice-a-year visits resumed. Sometimes at Thanksgiving or Easter or other holidays, depending on their families’ plans.
This year, a pair of golf games materialized. The solid foundation they had put down for their relationship over decades has proven unbreakable.
“She keeps me young,” Wendy said of Sylvi.
Back in the first-hole sand trap, Sylvi took a second swing at her ball. This time, she popped it up into the air and onto the grass in front of the green. Sylvi was out of trouble.
They both laughed.
“Wendy has been a very good mentor to me,” said Sylvi, straightening her golf hat. “She’s been inspiring.”