Author: Daryl Baswick

Daryl lives on Vancouver Island. His essays and short fiction have been published in The Globe and Mail, The Victoria Times Colonist, Canadian Running and Island Writer. Follow him on Twitter @Reader_Runner

Light Pokes Through

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November rain didn’t fall on Vancouver Island this year.  At least, not as often as it usually does.

Instead, our days have been cold and clear. 

The nearby trails have been icy instead of muddy.

I’ve needed sunglasses more than a rain jacket.

Those trails have been a lifeline over the last few months.  Our family has experienced two significant health challenges.  In both cases, the worst may be behind us, however, the stress has been significant and ever present.  And it continues.

At the best of times, November darkness and gloom weighs me down.  This November was not the best of times. 

The sunshine couldn’t have come at a better time.

But the days are short, and the sun is low – very low – in the sky.  And that has affected my runs.

I’ve been exploring near our home.  Trails I have never gone down before. Heights I’ve never reached.  Views I’ve never seen.

So often, over the last few weeks, I’ve turned a corner and found sunshine streaming through canopies of green.  Shade surrounds me, yet the light streams through, and, behind it, the sky is as blue as the air is cold.

The light that makes it through is indescribable and special.  It’s ethereal.  Almost holy.

It stops me in my tracks.  I breathe it in. 

And I stop running, pull my beat-up old phone out of my running vest, and take photos which don’t do justice to the beauty of what I’m experiencing.

As is so often the case, I’m writing this on a Sunday morning.  One floor down, my daughter plays her electronic piano and sings ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’  I’ve never heard her do that before.  Her singing is more precious to me than the light streaming through the trees.  More precious than anything.

The rain was late but it’s here now.  An ‘atmospheric river’ hammering the island.  The sun won’t be shining through the trees today.

Maybe that’s a good thing.  If it happened every day, it wouldn’t be special.  It wouldn’t be magical.  It wouldn’t remind me that light pokes through.

The People Around Me

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Midway through the last long weekend of the summer, our neighbourhood was still and quiet.  People were camping and travelling – the last flurry of activity before school started.  I was also still and quiet which allowed me to hear sounds hidden in the background – birds, a neighbour tinkering, a dog barking.  Nothing moved except trees and bushes swaying in a gentle breeze.  The air was warm even though it was early evening.  I sat on our front porch, hidden from view behind lush leaves and pink flowers.  My wife sat beside me, a glass of wine in her hand.  

Our home is usually a cacophony of sound – often emanating from, and around, our daughter.  She is rarely still or silent and her presence envelops my wife and I in her world.  But that Saturday night she stayed with her grandparents and her aunt.  The timing was good.  I love her more than anything in the world.  Even so, she drained me that day – physically and mentally, and my dad battery ran low.

Two days have passed, and now it’s Labour Day.  The unofficial last day of summer feels like the unofficial first day of fall.  I’m back on the front porch.  There’s no warmth in the air.  Grey clouds hide blue sky.  It’s not quite as quiet.  Kids have returned to the park across the street.  Distant traffic is louder.  A pink pick-up truck I’ve never seen before just drove by our home.  There’s gloominess in the day, or in me, or in both. 

We all grow up returning to school in early September.  It’s familiar and comforting.  I live it now through my daughter’s eyes and her emotions – an amalgam of nervousness, fear and excitement.  My little girl, who once weighed less than four pounds and spent her first few weeks in an incubator in an intensive care unit is about to start Grade 2.  It’s a mix of emotions for me too.  Gratefulness for her sheer existence.  Wonder and awe as I watch this little person grow and develop and change every single day.  Thankfulness that she is still young and naïve and plays with dolls and loves mermaids.  Concern for her gentle soul as she grows up in a world where not everyone is fundamentally kind, or inherently decent.  I remind myself that most people are good most of the time.

Many of those good people live in our neighbourhood.  Kindness abounds and is often centered around our daughter.  We returned from a walk this morning to find a bag of cookies on our doorstep, made for her by a thoughtful woman who is a masterful baker and gracious person.  We were returning from that walk because we’d borrowed ‘Skye,’ a little terrier whose owners allow us to walk their dog, to help my daughter overcome a fear of dogs.  Our living room now has a miniature dollhouse thanks to another neighbour who needed to find a home for his 98-year-old mother’s family heirloom.  That this man thought of my daughter and reached out to us so she would have that dollhouse meant the world to me.  Several weeks ago, our family “camped,” when a good friend parked his 40-foot motorhome in our driveway for the weekend.  His generosity made for sheer joy for my girl who is desperate to camp, and saddled with parents who are not desperate to camp.  Roasting marshmallows in our driveway was as special to her as a trip to Disney. 

This morning I contemplated leaving our neighbourhood.   After we’d walked the dog and found the cookies, I hopped in my car to drive by a house for sale.  It’s not far away. Ten minutes maximum.  But the home is on a steep hill, in a subdivision built on a dramatic incline.  The subdivision has beautiful homes, many with ocean views.  The home I drove by is newer than ours.  It’s bigger.  It’s near a pathway that leads to the ocean.  I miss living a short walk from the ocean.  I tell myself that I should “want less” and I know there is much truth and wisdom to those two words.  Yet, I’d like to live in a home that’s a little bigger, with a yard that is a little smaller, and needs less care. 

I wrestle with what’s the right thing to do.  What’s the right thing to want – or not want.  When I drive in that area, when I walk in that area, it does not feel like a neighbourhood.  It feels like a collection of houses that happen to be in the same location.  The steepness of the streets make it so much less walkable than where we live now.  And walkability breeds contact and conversation – kindness and friendship.    

There is so much value in taming our desires and being grateful for those things we have.  I would miss this neighbourhood so much if we ever left it.  I do feel drawn to the ocean.  It has always had an almost mystical allure for me.  But if we moved to be closer to the Pacific, I would leave behind the trails, hills, and mountains which are so close to me now.  I can run from my home, and, in less than five minutes, be totally alone in nature.  That is another gift which our neighbourhood gives me, every single day. 

Yesterday, I hopped on my bike and escaped high up in the forest.  I rode, and hiked, and found myself alone, and elevated, surrounded by acres of trees, with a spectacular view of mountains and the ocean.  Maybe that’s all the ocean I need.

It’s still Labour Day.  It’s still gloomy. And I’m still on the front porch.  I hear a basketball bouncing.  I see children riding their bikes.  I know school lunches are being made, and backpacks being packed.  And I’m thankful for where I live and the people around me.

I Did Not Run

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After a couple weeks of constant heel pain, I stopped running and vowed to take a week off.

That was last Sunday. 

My heel is no better.  But I might run anyway.

Strangely, I don’t miss running. At least not the act or sensation of it. I’m not pining for the trails.  I’m not desperate to run long and slow, or short and fast.

But something doesn’t feel right.  Inside me.  I’ve felt it all day.  Call it depression, melancholy, ‘the blues.’  I’m not myself.  Not today.

I’m not sure why.  Usually a “weighted hike” helps.  So I tried that.  I put a dumbbell in a backpack and set off through the forest.  I ate fresh blackberries, sat beside a stream, and watched a fly land on a perfect green leaf. 

A weighted hike usually does the trick.  The dumbbell gets harder and harder to carry.  The shoulder straps dig into my skin.  I lean forward, seeking a posture where everything hurts a little bit less.  At the end of a weighted hike I’m in physical pain. But I feel better.  On the inside.  Nature, solitude, and decompression lift me up from within.

That didn’t happen today.  Today I got home and still felt blah.

I’m not sure why.  It could be because there is nothing I have to do today. The lawn doesn’t need cutting.  My daughter does not need to be dropped off at a birthday party.  My wife and I don’t have to go shopping.  No distractions to distract me from whatever I’m feeling inside.

Maybe it’s shift work.  Two long days followed by two long nights.  Four days of sleep deprivation and a messed up body clock.  The aftereffects carry into my days off.  I feel jetlagged.  I feel hung over.  I feel short tempered. On my first day off, I am mindful of how I speak to my wife and daughter because my fuse is short and my patience is thin. 

Today is my second day off.  I slept long and well.  I’m weary but not exhausted.  I’m well on the way to the feeling of “normal” that usually returns by my third day off.

Maybe it’s the work other people do.  My job title is Watch Commander.  I supervise approximately twenty-five uniformed police officers.  I sit behind a desk, while they are on the street, doing the real work of policing.  I hear it all over the radio.  Assaults, thefts, domestic disputes, overdoses, and a seemingly endless stream of mental health calls.  There are so many broken people, and the police officers I work with spend large parts of their days trying to help.  They work hard, and virtually everything they do is because something bad has happened.  Earlier this week a senior citizen was the victim of an unprovoked violent attack.  Her injuries are life altering.  The cops I work with arrested the offender and went with the victim to the hospital.  It happened at 7:00 o’clock at night, in a nice part of the city, on a beautiful summer’s evening. 

Maybe it’s the work I do.  Like a contentious situation which I could have handled better.  Or sensitive information which gets shared with me because of my position.  Or decisions which I make that affect the professional lives, and personal well-being of the police officers on my shift.  Men and women I’ve come to care about deeply since I started working with them earlier this year.

Or maybe it’s because I haven’t been running.  I biked this week.  I went to the gym.  I stayed active.  But I did not run.

It seems too coincidental that I would feel run down after a week of not doing something I usually do almost every day.

It’s funny, because last Sunday, when I decided to take a break, I was out on the trails in behind our home, and I wasn’t loving the run.  My heel hurt, and my motivation was practically nil.  I’d entertained trying a two-hour run, and knew I didn’t have it in me.  I just didn’t want it.  Which was unusual, because often I look forward to two-hours as the perfect amount of time to be out there on my feet – to challenge myself without overtaxing my system. 

So last Sunday, when I decided to take a break from running, I felt kind of proud of myself.  I felt like I was listening to my body and my mind and it was the perfect time for a break.  A week for my heel to heal and my running mojo to recharge.

And now six days later, I feel the opposite.  A reminder that running for me is about so much more than physical health.  And it’s not just central to my identity.  The blah I feel today is a reminder that running is essential to my  well-being.  Physical tiredness and work stress are nothing new.  They are essential elements of policing.  Nothing about this past week was fundamentally different than the last 23 years of my career.

Except it was one of the few weeks in which I did not run.  And today I’m paying the price.

Impermanence

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My fiftieth birthday recedes daily, but it’s never far from my mind.  If I live to be one hundred, then less than half my life remains. 

I am impermanent, and the recognition of this impermanence colours my life.

I’m declining.  Physically and mentally.  Science, physics, and Arthur Brooks say so.  In his book. From Strength to Strength, Brooks writes abut how our mental and physical capacities inevitably fade with time.  However, Brooks, describes how the back half of our lives – the older years, can be filled with happiness and deep purpose, because the older we get, the better poised we are to serve others by mentoring and teaching, and as he writes, “to face decline – and even death – with courage and confidence.”  [From Strength to Strength (arthurbrooks.com)]

Brooks writes about Buddha.  Over the last year, I have become increasingly drawn to Buddhism, not as a religion, but as a system of thinking and way of being.  Impermanence is at the heart of Buddhist philosophy.  Both Buddha and Brooks caution us to be wary of attachment to things, be they cars or careers, because all things are fleeting.

I’ve attached myself to reading, writing, and running.  I’ve defined myself in those terms, whether naming this website, or describing myself on the dating app in which I met my wife.

All three are at the core of my life, yet I could lose any one of them, at any time.  Accident or injury make all three tenuous.  One bad fall on a steep trail could crack my skull and rob me of reading, writing, and running.  I can’t imagine life without them.

Actually, I can.  We’ve been travelling this last week.  Eight nights in Ontario, visiting family and friends. 

Over the last week, I have not been a Reader, Writer, or Runner.  Instead, I have been an Eater, Drinker, and Driver.

I let go of my attachment to clean eating and gorged on fried food and ice cream.  I felt ill every time I did it.  And did it over and over again.

I drank more over two nights than I have in the last six months.  Gin and tonic, beer and wine, rye and coke.  I drank only in part because I enjoy those tastes and flavours.  I drank to let go. I drank to decompress.  I drank for the buzz.  I drank to enjoy a night with friends.  A night I didn’t want to end.  An evening later, and many miles away, I drank because my wife and I played ‘Name that Tune’ in a bar along a canal in the small town where I grew up.  I drank there because it was fun, and I drank there to release my inhibitions, so I would get up and dance to earn extra points for our team.  I drank because, a night of drinking the night before created momentum and it was easier to say yes to drinking because I’d said yes the night before.

I drove a lot in Ontario, mostly on the busy streets of Brampton, an endless processions of red lights, and constant gridlock.  Two days of driving in Brampton, contributed to more than two strong drinks in Guelph, a picturesque city just outside the orbit of Toronto area traffic.  I relished the drive to Guelph, through small towns and the countryside.  We stopped in Rockwood, at a gazebo beside a river.  We visit this park every year because it is lovely, and water flows alongside it. 

The following day, on our way to the Niagara Region, we sat in traffic for what felt like forever, when an unseen accident, or the sheer volume of cars, ground the Queen Elizabeth Way to a halt.  After more than five decades of life, most of them living in Ontario, and hundreds of trips on ‘the Q.E.W,’ it was my first trip on that highway since the Queen’s death.  We finally escaped bumper to bumper traffic when an exit ramp led to fried food and ice cream, and an extreme hit of salt and sugar.  Junk food momentum had attained peak velocity.  My stomach still hurts.

Impermanence comes in handy when it comes to eating, drinking, and driving.  I know that when we get back to Vancouver Island, my meals will be fresh, my drinks will be ice water, and it will take me a month of commuting to encounter as many red lights as I did during a week in Ontario.

Impermanence will remain on my mind.  One of the best sports writers in the world is Joe Posnanski.  A few days ago, he did not write about baseball or athletes, and instead about his now adult daughter, and how they went to a Taylor Swift concert together, and how Swift’s music had been the soundtrack of his daughter’s life, since she was a little girl.  And while he loves his adult daughter more than anything, he misses his little girl. [Taylor-Made – by Joe Posnanski – JoeBlogs (substack.com)]

Every second of this trip I was conscious of the preciousness of having a young daughter.  A special seven-year-old who crammed a year’s worth of fun, adventure, and tears into a single week.  She shopped at a thrift store with her grandma and bought a five-dollar porcelain doll which she immediately treasured.  Two days later that doll’s head was crushed by a reclining car seat.  I saw her face the moment it happened.  Pure distilled sadness.  An ocean of tears.  Tears that halted when our good friend, who also saw it happen, entered her home, and returned with another porcelain doll.  One that had belonged to her mother.  A doll that was decades old – a Barbara Ann Scott figure skating doll.  A family heirloom passed from our friend’s family to ours.  Barbara Ann is on the plane with us now.  Likely her first time flying, en route to her new home in British Columbia.

I saw a lot of tears this week.  My daughter was disconsolate when she had to say goodbye to her aunt.  An aunt with whom she’d camped overnight for the first time ever in a Port Colborne backyard with a campfire, marshmallows and no mom and dad. 

More tears flowed at The Mandarin restaurant when a straw and some Coca Cola dislodged a loose tooth.  Blood streamed from her mouth.  Not a lot, but enough to scare her.  Mom took care of that quickly.  Then I joked with her about how blood gushed from her mouth and people fled the restaurant in terror.

A few days later, in Niagara Falls, the Maze of Mirrors, induced real terror.  Mom and Dad missed the clue in the title – MAZE!  We thought we were entering a fun house where mirrors would shrink us, expand us, and make us laugh.  Instead, it was an almost impossible to escape building, where mirrors made it appear as if we were everywhere all at once.  My daughter shrieked and cried.  We latched onto another dad and his little boy who were maze veterans and we exited on their coattails. 

Laughter and fun overshadowed tears. My daughter went on the Ghoster Coaster at Canada’s Wonderland.  She was scared, and she did it twice.  It was her first roller coaster ride ever and I was proud.  She played Pac Man for the first time.  She swam in the hotel pool.  The three of us jumped together at a trampoline park – the closest thing I got to a workout all week long.  She hugged everyone over and over.  She ate almost as much ice cream as I did.  She said she wanted to move to Ontario.  She didn’t want to leave her family behind.

All impermanent.  She’s growing up, just like Joe Posnanski’s daughter.  And the laughter and tears of this past week are already in the past.

We will land in a few hours and life will return to normal. Our home, our meals, our routines.  I’ll be at work in a few days and my stress will return.  My wife will return to her own more than full time job – managing the operation of our home and family.  Her stress will return.  My daughter will resume summer vacation, which as an adult, in retrospective, seems idyllic to me, but as a dad, I know will mean more moments of stress and tears for my little girl.

Every moment with my family and friends in Ontario was special.  I miss my parents, and my brother and his wife and children.  I miss them desperately and I miss them year-round.  I entered this trip drained after a few months of nightshifts, and the stresses of a new job. 

I finish this trip with a healthier soul, infused by family and friendship. 

I finish this trip knowing I will return to reading, writing, and running.  Despite their impermanence.

The Broken Bridge

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We can look backwards in time.

Every time you gaze at the stars you are inside a time machine.

The light you see took years – anywhere between four and four thousand – to reach your eyes.

A star that you can see tonight may have exploded thousands of years ago, and no longer exists.  It is gone.  But you can see it.

Intelligent, highly educated people spend their lives studying these things.  Quantum physics.  String theory.  If you Google, “why there is no such thing as touch,” you’ll learn (but like me, perhaps not understand) that there is no such thing.  I thought I was sitting on the couch writing this.  Not quite.  Instead, “when you plop down into a chair or slink into your bed, the electrons within your body are repelling the electrons that make up the chair.  You are hovering above it by an unfathomably small distance.”

At the subatomic level, a particle can exist in two places at the same time.  A measurable thing that exists can be in more than one place at once.

Does any of it matter for any of us?  Arguably not.  Whether we know, or do not know these things, hardly effects our lives.

I do not think about them every day.  I rarely think about them at all.

Why did I think about them today?  Because I was straining for an analogy to help explain the unexplainable.  There is a broken bridge near my home.  Surrounding it are forests, and streams, pathways and fallen trees.  This little clearing in the woods is alive with birds and bugs.  I’ve never seen a bear there, but every time I go, I expect to.  It feels like exactly where a bear should live.  I am drawn to this place. 

In a subatomic world, where I can be in two places at one time, a part of me would always be at the broken bridge.  It exudes peace.  Sometimes I stand on the bridge and hear the water that runs below.  Sometimes, I sit on a log and just listen.  I’ve meditated there.  I’ve walked beyond the bridge and discovered a trail I did not know existed.  The broken bridge is the place where my inner voice yells the loudest, and the broken bridge helps give me the resolve to listen to it.  The broken bridge is the place that I limped to last week, when an old hip injury flared up, and I worried that, not only would I be unable to complete the Vancouver Marathon, but that weeks or months of pain loomed ahead. [I finished the marathon.  And my hip still aches].

When I walked there last week – “layered” is the word that stuck in my head.  The broken bridge and the world around it are layered.  Vibrant greens contrasting with dull greys and browns; chirping birds interrupting pure silence; trees reaching for the sky hovering above dead ones that have yet to fall.  All those things interact with each other.  Infinitely.

The day after the marathon we returned home.  We’d spent three days in Vancouver, in a busy downtown hotel, in a large city.  We were always surrounded by people and noise.  After we got home, I walked to the broken bridge.  I was alone.  The day before, I’d been one of thousands of runners. That morning, we woke up in a city with hundreds of thousands of people.  Hours later, I had the broken bridge to myself. 

The broken bridge always looks the same and is always a little different. It’s magical, like looking into the past, hovering on a couch, or being in two places at the same time.  I see it.  I’m immersed in the beauty.  But I can never explain or fully understand exactly what I’m experiencing and how it makes me feel. 

Your Inner Voice

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Before I became a cop, I was a graduate student at McMaster University.  My studies were going well.  I was on track to complete a doctorate.  Academia was my future.  Teaching and research loomed.  I enjoyed the teaching part.  Less so the research, because the ultimate goal was to write obscure, footnote laden articles and books which only a handful of people would ever read.

As the months ticked by, and I got closer and closer to finishing a Ph.D., my inner voice intervened.  What began as a gentle whisper became a fierce scream.  My inner voice reminded me that I was studying Canadian history and was about to make that my profession, but, I wasn’t passionate about it.  At the end of a day of studying or writing, I would never pick up a book about Canadian history and read it simply because it interested me.  The fire had been extinguished – if it had ever existed in the first place.

There was a raging fire though.  I’d wanted to be a cop for as long as I could remember.  As I came closer and closer to finishing my studies, and my 30th birthday loomed, I realized it was now or never.  Go after the thing I really wanted, or continue along the path I was on.

I went for it.  My friends and fellow students at McMaster were shocked.  They had no idea – none – that another side of me existed.  They had no more envisioned me as a cop, than as the Easter Bunny.

My family was with me all the way.  They knew what I’d always wanted.  They encouraged me to chase my dream.

Maybe it runs in the family.  My dad began his working life as a steelworker in Hamilton, Ontario, working grueling shifts under the inferno of a blast furnace.  He wanted more than that.  He enrolled in teacher’s college, studying at McMaster decades before I arrived there.  He went on to teach elementary school for years.  And then his inner voice became another inferno.  He felt called by God to become a minister.  Teaching had gone well.  He was on track to be a principal, to have a successful career, and a secure pension.  Instead, he listened to his inner voice.  He was true to himself.  And he and my mom sacrificed as a result.  For three years my dad had two homes, spending his weekdays at Knox College in Toronto, and his weekends with me, my mom and my brother in a small town in Ontario where he served as a minister at two rural churches.  My mom and dad must have spent those three years physically and mentally exhausted.  And now, 45 years later, as he nears his 80th birthday, my dad is still a minister, preaching on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day of his year, my mom at his side. 

Some of the strongest memories of my childhood center around Easter weekend.  There was chocolate of course.  An avalanche of chocolate, coloured eggs, and hot-cross buns.  But I also remember the rhythm of that weekend.  Good Friday was a solemn day.  A day of great sadness.  I remember how draining that day always was for my mother and father.  Saturday was anticipation.  Sunday – Easter Sunday, was joy and celebration.  Those memories are forty years old.  Yet the emotions they conjure in me are as real as the glee I saw in my daughter’s face this morning as she hunted for Easter eggs.

Easter weekend remains an incredibly special, even spiritual time for me.  It is always a time for reflection. 

Yesterday, as I ran near our home, over a bridge, I saw water flowing gently on one side, and raging on the other.  Underneath the bridge was a transition point, where smooth water began to churn.  That water reminded me of the inner voice, how it is always flowing within us, and how sometimes it becomes so strong it’s impossible for us to ignore.

For a Moment…

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My daughter is seven. 

I turned seven in 1977. Toronto Blue Jays’ bleacher seats were two dollars.  Jimmy Carter was President.  A soldier who’d fought in World War I and World War II visited our home.

My dad turned 7 in 1950. Harry Truman was President.  The Korean War began weeks after my father’s birthday.

My Dutch grandfather turned 7 in the 1920s.  Born during the Great War, that 7-year-old boy did not know that he would live under Nazi occupation and that his daughter, my mom, would be born as fighting raged around them.

I have no idea when my great-grandparents turned seven.  It must have been in the late 1800s.  I know nothing about them.  They are as mysterious to me as medieval peasants.  Their lives mattered.  And they are invisible to history.

Last year, a friend at work gave me a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.  A pillar of Stoicism, Aurelius and the Stoics encourage us to recognize and embrace our impermanence.

I think about impermanence daily. I always have.  But becoming a dad heightened that tendency.  Being a dad is like impermanence on steroids.  Every day my little girl grows up a little more and becomes less of a little girl.

She talks a lot.  Like when I’m sitting on the couch, trying to write this.  Part of me, inside, screams in frustration, yearning for silence so I can concentrate.  And yet, every word is precious.  Every silly, nonsensical thing she says, like, “what squishy butt isn’t marshy.”  (The answer is marshmallow). 

Impermanence is everywhere.  Yesterday I found a photo of myself from almost ten years ago.  I looked at it and thought, ‘I look pretty much the same’.  I showed it to my wife and she said, “You look so young!”

A few months ago one of my favourite trails was closed when an old-growth fir tree toppled in a windstorm.  For years, that tree had clung to the side of a hill.  It was massive and precarious, leaning at an angle that suggested it would fall any moment.  It did not surprise me that heavy rain and high winds sent it crashing to the ground.  It may have been hundreds of years old. 

Last fall I planted a sapling in our backyard.  It didn’t survive the winter.

 Marcus Aurelius  wrote, “Our lifetime is so brief … Consider the abyss of time past, the infinite future.  Three days of life or three generations; what’s the difference.”

I’ve gravitated to the trails over the last few years.  In part, it’s because the dirt paths are much gentler on my aging joints than unforgiving pavement.  But there is more to it.  Our forests are a never-ending reminder of impermanence. 

Stoicism invites us to put impermanence front and center in our lives.  To live neither in the past, nor in the future, but in the moment.  It is not a cliché to say that this moment, is all we truly have. 

And yet these moments span generations.  I look at a picture of myself beside the fallen tree and I see an expression I recognize as my father’s in my own face. 

This morning my daughter commandeered a bathroom.  She put a “Keep Out” sign on the door and told us she was turning felt into silk.  She called out for purple and yellow markers, scissors, and tape.  After thirty minutes she emerged and handed me a paper tie to wear when I dress up to go out for dinner tonight.  On the tie she’d written “you are the best dad ever.”

My daughter is seven.  This morning, for a moment at least, I was the best dad ever.  I know that too is impermanent.  A few years from now, a teenage girl may feel dramatically different about her father.

Stoic philosophy reminds me to accept and embrace the reality that trees grow and trees fall.  Daughters are young and silly and daughters grow up.  Dads age, and dads hobble and dads look more like their own fathers.  Each of those moments is all that we have.  And yet, those moments bind us to the past and anticipate our impermanent futures. 

A Perfect Day

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Yesterday I ran for 30 minutes, and my legs felt like they were encased in concrete.

Tomorrow, I have to do a 16-mile run.

Today my legs needed a break.

So, I walked, slowly and alone, on trails near our home.

Not my usual running trails.  For those I head uphill towards the Malahat mountain.  Between logging roads and side trails, I can choose at least a dozen different routes.

But I walked south.  Downhill.  Less choice.  Infinite beauty.

It wasn’t a perfect day for a walk.

It hailed minutes before I left, and rained on me the moment I left the house.  But without the music that usually accompanies me on my runs, I listened to rain pitter pattering on my jacket.  Minutes later the sun came out.  By then I was in the forest.  It was lush and green, and everything shimmered.  The shimmering stopped when the hail came again.  It pelted me before it turned to rain.

It was not a perfect day for a walk.  But if my legs needed the rest, my head needed the space, fresh air, and solitude.  It had been a challenging 24 hours as a dad.  And when I wasn’t focused on parenting, work usually found a way to slip through the cracks of my mind.

Running can be great in those moments too.  But running is different.  Running is always about getting from Point A to Point B and back again.  Running has a physical purpose:  intervals; long and slow; hill repeats.  Even when I’m just out for an easy run, there’s a purpose behind that run.  It’s part of a larger training program.

A walk is different.  There’s no set time.  No exact mileage I need to hit.  I walk to move and breathe and immerse myself in beauty. 

When I run, I barely ever stop.  Stopping defeats the purpose of the run.

Walking is different.  I stop frequently.  At the edge of a cliff, or at the foot of a fallen tree.  I pause near a stream and listen to the water flow.  I step around a damaged bridge and wonder if it fell victim to ice and flooding, or teenagers and booze.

A few minutes after I’ve left the house, my daughter texts me messages of love and nonsense words.  I text back, and when the texts keep coming, I call her, tell her I love her, call her crazy, and say I’ll see her soon.  That wouldn’t happen on a run.   

Sounds, sights and smells are more intense on a walk.  There’s time to absorb them all, instead of running through them.  Walking is peaceful.  It is gentle on the body and gentle on the mind.   

I’m not looking forward to my 16-mile run.  The best part of a long run is finishing it.

I am looking forward to my next walk.  It might even happen later today.  I’ve invited my wife and daughter to come to the bridge with me.

It’s a perfect day for a walk. 

Even Freya

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I’ve never written about Freya. 

She’s young, energetic, and getting fat.  When I wake up before dawn she follows me into the kitchen, meows at the pantry door, and fixates on her bag of cat treats until I open them and shake some on the floor.

Freya climbs up onto the bed and sleeps on my wife’s head.

Freya’s a little scared of my daughter and my daughter’s a little scared of her. 

We’ve had Freya for almost a year.  She makes me smile.  I love her.

But I’ve never written about her.

We live together but she’s on the periphery of my life.  I allot a small amount of my physical and mental energy to her. 

These few sentences may be all I ever write about Freya.

Yet she is a living creature.  In my home.  A creature whose fear when she first came here was so overwhelming, she hid behind a couch for days.  A creature whose capacity for love and attachment is so strong, she follows my wife throughout the house, day and night.

I take Freya for granted.  She adds happiness to my life, for a minimal price.

It’s easy to take things for granted.  Those things, big or small, that together, are the fabric of our lives.

In my last post, I wrote about how I was leaving the homicide unit where I’d worked for years.  I’m gone now.  And people keep getting killed.  The unit is very busy.  I know my friends are stressed and exhausted and giving everything, they have.  I spent a significant portion of my career working with them.  And now that I’m not, I think about them, especially when collectively, they are being pushed to the limits of endurance. 

Careers evolve.  I work with a new team now.  Uniformed officers on patrol in Victoria –  a city of extremes – where beauty and disorder co-exist.  Our team is filled with young men and women who are starting their careers.  They’re talented, enthusiastic and committed to the fundamental precept of policing – helping people.  Our team has veteran officers too – like me, these are cops with decades of experience.  We look at the ‘kids’ and we want them to have fulfilling careers and happy lives.  Their passion for the job is inspiring – it reminds us of why we signed up to be cops, years and years ago.  In turn, those of us who have been around for awhile, hope that the youngsters will benefit from our experience and example.  Maybe some lessons we learned will make things a bit easier for them.

One lesson I’ve learned is the importance of connection. My days, and nights, at work start with coffee.  Three or four of us get together.  We seek out quiet places, although, being in uniform, we always attract attention.  We huddle together around a table.  We laugh, plan the day, debrief things that have happened, talk about stuff that needs to get done.  Some of us have known each other for years.  Even so, this time together, coffee and conversation deepens those friendships.  Not everyone has worked together before.  We’re forming new connections.  Getting to know each other – professionally and personally.  In one breath we’re talking about sick kids.  A moment later it’s the robbery that the entire shift worked on the day before.

Those moments are precious and special.  When I’m at work I miss my wife and daughter.  I want to be with them.  But that time together with my friends and colleagues adds richness and texture to my life.  When I leave policing, those are the moments I will miss.

It’s all too easy to take life for granted.

I started writing this piece a couple of days ago.  This morning I woke up to learn that two members of the Edmonton Police Service had been shot and killed.  Two young men murdered on duty.  That’s seven cops killed across Canada in the last six months.  Murdered for wearing a uniform and doing their best to keep people safe.

Sometimes writing helps me make sense of things.  But there’s no sense to be made of these tragedies.  Good people die and the world keeps spinning. 

My house is chaotic right now.  My daughter is giddy.  A category 5 hurricane ripping through the house.  She’s chasing Freya.  I just heard my wife say, “don’t go near her!”  Category 5 hurricanes don’t respond well to direction.

My daughter is very excitable.  We’re different.  I like quiet.  I’m not a talker.  She’s the opposite of both of those things, even when she isn’t giddy.  To finish this piece, I had to walk away from her and close a door.

I worry that I take her for granted sometimes.  This beautiful, precious child, and sometimes I feel too busy, or too stressed, to just be in the moment with her and give her my attention.  When I choose not to spend time with her, I feel so guilty.  A little girl asks for her dad, and sometimes her dad says no.  Even when I’m doing it I feel awful.  Afterwards, I just want to be with her and throw my arms around her.    

Life happens every day.  The big and the small.  The things that happen to us, and the things that happen to others, hundreds of miles away.  It all affects us.

I feel tremendous sadness for those fallen officers.  For their families.  For their friends and colleagues. My heart is heavy.

And I’m thankful, so thankful, for the love in my life.  My family.  My friends.  Even Freya. 

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The Phone that Might Ring

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I’ve spent most of the last seven years in a homicide unit.  The work is often intense.  There’s always pressure – on some days the vice grip squeezes harder than others – you always feel something: a horrific scene, a family’s grief, the urgency to prioritize public safety, the slow and often frustrating grind of the court system.  The phone that might ring.

That was the hardest part for me.  Being on-call.  I tried to be stoic.  I often reminded myself that I had no control if my cellphone rang.  By that point someone was already dead.  All I could control was my reaction.  Answer the phone, be professional, and begin the investigation, an investigation that almost always takes many months, if not years.

That mindset – controlling what I could control – helped.  But it was a constant challenge.  My phone was always with me.  In the bathroom, beside my bed, jammed in the center consul when I was driving anywhere.  A day off never felt like a day off when I was on-call.  I could not relax.  When I was on-call my wife and daughter were on-call too.  Every family decision or plan had to take into account – what if the phone rings?  What if I must leave immediately and be gone for days on end? 

That phone accompanied me on countless trail runs.  We live in a neighbourhood surrounded by trails.  The cell service is exceptional.  I could be alone in the woods, confident that if someone called, I could answer.  Trails runs when I was on-call were not the same.  I’d stuff my running vest or backpack with a pen, paper, and a cheat-sheet to remind myself of the questions I had to ask, and the direction I had to provide, if someone called me and told me there’d been a murder.

Dozens and dozens of trail runs while on-call.  Sometimes the phone rang, but I was never called out for a homicide while running.  In fact, it was while running, on the trails, that I came the closest to being able to relax.  The magical quality of putting one foot in front of the other again and again sometimes made me forget that I was on-call at all.  That didn’t happen often, and when it did, it might just be for seconds or minutes at a time.  But it did happen.  Running has that power.

This was my last week in the homicide unit.  I didn’t say “goodbye” to anyone.  I don’t like that word.  There’s a finality to it.  Saying goodbye might have brought the simmering sadness I felt to the surface.  I felt the weight of leaving a group of friends and colleagues who experienced the same daily pressures I did.  The experiences we shared created bonds that transcend time and space. 

In a few days I return to nightshifts.  I know lack of sleep will affect my body and my mind.  My family will be effected.  My daughter has never known a dad who is gone all night and sleeps during the day.  There will be adjustments for all of us.

I also know that on days when I’m tired, with brain fog that feels like a hangover, I will head to the trails.  I will put one foot in front of the other. And the magical power of running will help restore me.