The TV screen’s vibrant colors were the only break in the inky blackness that would soon transform because of dawn bringing about another day.

But in those moments, the near-darkness and the calm allowed my mind to wander, to reflect and come to some understanding of the past months, the tragedy and the human kindness and the pendulum of emotions that were settling into a simmer but still years away from being fully processed.

My week-old daughter was in my arms, the first extended period of time for just the two of us. She slept against me. I positioned my arms to feel her chest move and her heart beat, a reminder of the gifts and greatness that can come from any situation. The television sound was off, but I observed as fathers and their children shared experiences that would become lifetime memories.

It was the Drive, Chip, and Putt National Final at Augusta National Golf Club, and I watched the kids compete, but the competition was far secondary to the personification of the bonds between the participants and their parents.

I softly spoke to my daughter, Carly Ann, telling her we could try that one day, that I would introduce her to my primary hobby. Yet what I was really saying was a prayer and a promise, to cherish her and to make the most of our time together, to maximize the good out of the situation that brought her to me, to help her find her passions and her purposes in life and to do my best to make her proud while understanding the past that came before her.

That early morning was four years ago, the final moments of months of volatility, an anniversary of sorts that I’ve celebrated each year since then, requesting Carly Ann watch the youngsters take on Augusta with me.

But this year there isn’t a Masters in April. There’s not a Drive, Chip, and Putt the week prior, and there’s not an Augusta National Women’s Amateur that has sparked so many girls and young women to dream of an opportunity that was once void of reality.

I have my Masters memories, as do all golf fans, but the lack of a Drive, Chip, and Putt National Final during this part of the calendar is a much bigger personal loss, pushing away that set date for me to make new promises and resolutions in my parenting while also remembering the difficulties that brought Carly Ann and I together.

In early April 2015, an anniversary of a different kind, I didn’t know anything about NICUs, mini syringes filled with breast milk or the scrubbing in required that now gives me quite the expertise and understanding as our world fights back against COVID-19. No one expects a problematic pregnancy until one hits you right between the eyes.

I still remember the call. I was finishing a soon-to-seem-meaningless baseball interview when the world shifted all over the place in a matter of minutes. The 23-week routine appointment discovered dire complications.

There was a problem, an emergency, and I needed to come quickly. The next hours were a blur, as Kara was admitted into the hospital, a fetal specialist delivered the grim news and there was a lot of waiting for what seemed like an inevitability.

Clark was growth-restricted down to 20 weeks and Kara was asymptomatic, not feeling the immense strain on her body that could risk her life if the baby wasn’t delivered within hours instead of days or weeks. A day and a half later, with preeclampsia and insane protein levels making any further wait a potentially fatal game of roulette, I donned scrubs and stood behind the C-section.

“We’re hoping for the best, and I don’t know what to say except I’ll give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down when we try to intubate,” the doctor told me before it began, sending honesty toward me and shivers down me as I’d soon find out if my son was alive. The thumbs-up came, as did a breathing 11.9-ounce child, the smallest successful birth at that hospital, we were told.

Each day from there brought about more patience, panic and milestones. There were no brain bleeds or other maladies that were expected considering the situation. Each small success brought about hope of this being, perhaps, the one-in-a-million success. As we watched his breathing daily and hoped for other progressions, the hospital staff nicknamed Clark “Superman” for his tiny body beating the odds through the first 14 days.

Then day 15 came. The NICU called my phone early that morning, and there are no words to explain what your heart and mind do when the number pops up. The negatives far outweigh any other possibility, and that was the case here, as well.

Come quickly. Something is wrong. As I drove the 45 minutes, the phone rang again. “We’re pedi-fliting to Memphis, so go there instead.” Minutes later, one more call: “No, we’re staying here and waiting on you. Come as soon as you can.”

It was the only time I didn’t wash my hands. I burst through the doors of the NICU and everything was darker. Not just emotionally or ominously but literally. Fewer lights were on, activity wasn’t filing about in the same ways as other days, and there was a concentration of people around the only home Clark would ever know.

An intestinal failure because of a meconium plug had changed the semi-optimistic prognosis.

This part is in segments in my memory, a cacophony of moments, not a continuous reel. Our pastor performed a baptism. A NICU doctor fought for a pedi-flite to Le Bonheur as a last resort. There was an agonizing wait — sitting in an empty hospital room — to see if he made it alive before we traveled ourselves.

Seeing the helicopter climb and remarking at least Superman got to fly. The hurried trip that still carried with it that inevitability. The surgeon saying nothing could be done. The NICU protocol at a new hospital that had me numb and irate simultaneously while we waited for red tape to clear in order to get to his bedside. The outpouring of community support that sent a silver lining about the good of people and how they care. The question I’d been hoping for in a situation I I hoped would never come.

“Do you want to hold him,” the NICU nurse said, signaling that it was a first and final opportunity to spend time or say words to him without a transparent, glass shelter shielding him from the outside world. Weeks later I’d notice a small stain on my shirt from that day, a drop that fell from him to me during those minutes together. It sits in my closet. I don't wear it. I don't throw it away.

That night crying and embracing my father who would pass away five months later and hearing the sound of frozen syringes mimic shrapnel as they were thrown against the garage wall.

Days ran together, one after another without color afterward. Grief, useless routine and necessary tasks took up time but didn’t move anything forward mentally. I altered my daily jogs because there’s a car tag with a Superman logo in the neighborhood, and I couldn’t bear seeing it, but otherwise I was a shell on the subject — not communicating or expressing my thoughts to anyone, a debilitating and oblivious compartmentalization that would mostly continue for years.

Several options were available for how to move forward from a family perspective, and when we chose adoption a couple months later, the agency suggested patience because it could be a years-long journey to find a match. Instead, in a matter of weeks, I was on the 18th hole of my local golf course when my phone rang.

“I’m not making promises, but what if this moved quicker than anyone thought,” the social worker said. Through a series of serendipitous circumstances, a birth mother selected us less than two months after the initial paperwork to start the search. And seven months later, on a Thursday night, I rushed out of the Ole Miss baseball press box during a game against South Carolina, and Carly Ann was born at 10:54 p.m. She was with us a half hour later and has been ever since.

It was a week later when I found myself with her in my arms and that golf event in front of me. I caught myself anticipating the Drive, Chip, and Putt the next year, as well, sitting Carly Ann down and sharing thoughts and memories with her. I told her about golf and Clark, following the same outline of a conversation as that first time we relaxed together waiting on dawn with green and azaleas serving as the backdrop.

It began a tradition of a safe space for me to say things I’d left unsaid to anyone else and to explore my own mind as I gave her snippets of what was in my past life and what I want for her future one.

And so it went each year… until this one. There’s no built-in occasion, but there’s plenty of opportunity during this isolation period that's changing all our lives. I was in the same chair a few days ago, and the same morning daylight was near but not yet present. Carly Ann ran in from her room, up way earlier than usual, and climbed into my lap, looking at the computer I had open in front of me, the 2004 Masters broadcast playing out in front of us.

“You’re watching golf," she said, as she settled into my chest and pulled a blanket over her body.

“Yes, I am. Let me tell you a story.”