Category: Parenting

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.

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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I Used to Watch…

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I used to watch ‘Meet the Press’ every Sunday without fail.  A political junkie, I relished my weekly immersion into U.S. politics.

I used to watch Sunday night baseball on ESPN. The Yankees and Red Sox.  The Cardinals, Dodgers and Giants. Every game was an opportunity to relax, and a reminder of my childhood.  When all that mattered was baseball.

I never watch Meet the Press anymore. The closest I get to it is the fading coffee mug my wife bought me years ago.

Baseball comes in snippets.  Five or ten minutes at most.

Life changes when children come.  That’s normal and to be expected.

However, most dads aren’t 45 when they have their first child.  I had four and a half decades of mostly living for myself.  Doing what I wanted when I wanted. 

That’s not easy to give up.  I have an innate selfishness.  I like to get what I want when I want it.

There’s a reason this blog is titled, ‘Reader, Writer, Runner,’ and not “Political Junkie and Baseball Fan.’  When life required me to prioritize, politics and baseball went out the window. 

Reading, writing, and running sustain me.  They nourish the essence of me.  My aging essence. 

Every day I’m conscious of my age in a way that I wasn’t in my thirties and forties.  There’s a starkness to being in my fifties that doesn’t go away.  I’m reading a book about an ultramarathoner who ran a 50 miler in 2001, weeks after September 11th.  The runner had just turned 60.  Which means, he’s over 80 now, if he’s still alive.

Twenty years doesn’t seem very long ago.  Maybe because September 11th is seared into our collective consciousness.  Twenty years is sobering.  Twenty years from now I’ll be in my early seventies.

Twenty years from now my daughter will be twenty-six years old.  An adult.  Forging her own path, with the confidence and vibrancy of youth.

Now though, she’s still just a little girl.  Instead of watching Meet the Press on Sunday mornings, I watch ‘Come Play with Me,’ a YouTube show about dolls.

Instead of watching baseball, I’m in the park, playing with my daughter.  If there is anything better in the world, I don’t know what it is. 

One of my favourite podcasters, Martin Yelling, talks about the seasons of life.  I love the analogy.  It helps me accept being a slower runner, and a reader who is helpless without his reading glasses.  Time takes a natural toll on speed and eyesight.

Time offers gifts too.  It was a gift that I became a father late in the seasons of my life.  I’m a fifty-one-year-old dad who bought his daughter a book about fairies a couple of days ago.  When I gave it to her, she squealed with absolute and pure joy.

This morning instead of Meet the Press,we may play croquet on our back lawn. Tonight, instead of the Yankees versus the Red Sox, we’ll be at the park.

There isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.

Ashes

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Ashes

It’s been almost a year since a vet came to our home and put Maggie down.  She lay on the floor in our living room.  The painkillers, which had given us a few more months with her, no longer worked.

The morning she died, she walked into our bedroom.  A room she wasn’t allowed to be in.  Later, she nudged her way into my bathroom.  Also off limits.  She did it to be closer to me. 

Two unmistakable signs that the time had come.

I said my goodbyes on the living room floor.  My daughter, Molly, hugged Maggie.  Told her how much she’d miss her.  Molly was four, Maggie thirteen.  Molly had never known a world in which Maggie did not exist. 

This was pre-vaccine.  Only one of us was allowed to be with Maggie at the end.  I took Molly upstairs.  My wife, Sonja, stayed with Maggie.  They loved each other very much.  I’d had Maggie for years before I met Sonja.  But Maggie became her dog – Sonja spoiled her, spent her days with her, spoke gently to her, and not surprisingly became the primary recipient of that sweet and strangely morose golden retriever’s affection and loyalty.  I’m thankful Sonja was with Maggie at the end.

I carried Maggie’s body to the vet’s van parked in our driveway.  A neighbour, walking her own golden retriever, saw me carrying the white shroud and knew exactly what had just happened. 

A week later, Maggie came back to us.  Ashes in a cannister.

I didn’t know how to tell Molly about cremation.  I didn’t want to tell Molly about cremation.  So, I fudged the truth.  I told my daughter that the vet had used chemicals to transform Maggie’s fur into little white particles. 

Sonja loved Maggie, but not Maggie’s ashes.  So, Molly and I took that cannister, walked the trails near our home, and scattered some of Maggie’s ashes in a stream where my girls had spent countless hours playing.

It was a big cannister.  And there was another special place where Maggie needed to be, and where I needed to take her.  Victoria, and the ocean, along Dallas Road.  One of the most beautiful places in the world.  Maggie and I had lived in that area for years.  In different homes, at different stages of my life, she was my constant.  My faithful companion.  We’d walked hundreds of times along that stretch of beach.  I’d thrown thousands of stones for her.  She chased every one of them with abandon.  In my darkest hours she was my confidant.  When I felt alone, she was by my side, figuratively, and literally – on the beach and in the ocean, swimming near me as I threw one rock after another, she never gave up hope that just once, she’d catch the rock that splashed in the ocean, right in front of her.  Without Maggie, I wouldn’t have met Sonja.  My online dating profile picture was a photo of me and Maggie.  Maggie was indisputably and infinitely better looking than me.  I rode her coattails into Sonja’s life.

That’s why I wanted to spread the remainder of her ashes along Dallas Road.  But life intervened.  As it usually does.  So, for the better part of the last year, the remainder of Maggie’s “fur” remained in that cannister, in our garden shed.  Sadly, and honestly, a little forgotten.  I walked in there many times, grabbed a shovel, or the lawnmower, and never once thought about Maggie.

Last Sunday, on a sunny, summer’s day, we took Maggie back to Victoria.  Maggie’s remains accompanied us as Molly fed the ducks, ate French fries, and played in two different parks.  And then we headed to the ocean.

It was very windy.  I pictured Maggie’s ashes blowing back into my face, and hair, and covering my clothing.

Leave it to a five-year old to come up with the perfect solution.  While Sonja watched, Molly and I dug holes in the sand.  I poured Maggie’s fur into those holes.  We covered Maggie with sand, and then, covered the sand with stones. 

And then we walked away.   Before the tide came in.

I didn’t want to see it happen, but I knew that the ocean would wash over those stones, and take the rocks, and Maggie, back out into the water.

That had been our special place.  It always will be.  And I know that every time I return, I will look at the beach, and the water, and the mountains in the distance, and I will know that Maggie is a part of that splendor. 

Scattered Bones

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Evidence of a kill. 

At the end of a side trail, not heavily used.  I might have been the first person standing there in days, weeks – maybe even months or years.

Scattered bones – bleached white.  A deer ripped apart, the spinal cord severed, a piece of a jawbone, a smattering of teeth.

An awful death.  Perhaps, mercifully, a quick one. 

A vivid reminder that our forests and trails, so near to our homes, are a different world.

I’d hadn’t gone this deep into the woods for weeks.  Since I’d seen a bear just minutes from our home.  That was six weeks ago.  On a well used trail at the junction of two paths.  If I left my home right now, I could be there in five minutes.  Or less.  My bear encounter happened at midday.  A warm day.  The perfect day for a quick workout.  Hill repeats.  Up and down, up and down.  Strengthen the legs, stress the lungs, tune out the world.  Music blasting in my earbuds.  I stopped tuning out when, on the last downhill, I glanced to my right and saw a black bear ambling up towards me.  Maybe 30 or 40 feet away.  A scenario I’d imagined a thousand times. I stopped running, pivoted, walked backwards down the hill.  Slowly.   Yanked out my bear spray.  Pulled the cord on the noisemaker clipped to my chest.  Knew in my head that black bears rarely attacked people.  Feared in my gut that this one would.  Kept retreating.  Got to the bottom.  Saw the bear at the top.  It looked at me, curious and calm.  And kept on going, towards the woods, away from me.

A few days later, I ran again on the same hill.  Head on a swivel.  No music in my ears.  A little scared, but knowing the longer I waited to go back, the less likely I would be to do so.  Still, that was close to home.  Close meant comfort.  At the junction where I’d seen the bear, I could see dozens of houses and cars passing below.  It was practically my backyard.

The side trail with the dead deer was not my backyard.  I’d planned this run for days, and then talked myself out of it the night before.  Because I was scared.  Scared to venture far from home.  Far from houses and cars and a pretty subdivision.  Into the land of cougars and bears.  I talked myself into a safer run.  Along well traveled roads, to a public park filled with hikers and mountain bikers. 

Then I woke up.  And talked myself out of the talking out. 

Maybe it was because an article from a trail running magazine popped up on my Twitter feed with an article about the rarity of bear attacks and the effectiveness of bear spray.

Maybe because I thought of my daughter.  The fears of a five-year old can be overwhelming – unfamiliar situations, unexpected change, a bug on our trampoline – overwhelming and every bit as real and powerful as the primal fears of an adult.  When my daughter is scared, my wife and I encourage her to face those things that frighten her.  To gain strength, incrementally, by winning small battles against little terrors. 

Or maybe it was just because I love to run on hard packed dirt, baked dry by a month of heat, in the midst of towering, never-ending evergreens.

So, I went for that run.  I added a knife to my arsenal.  Razor sharp, encased in a multi-tool which I carried with me for the entire run.  The multi-tool in one hand, a rock in the other.  I banged them together frequently.  “Make noise,” the experts say.  Scare the bears off before they see you. 

I made noise all right.  No earbuds on this run.  Blue Rodeo blaring from my cell phone.  My rock smashing into my multi-tool whenever I approached a blind corner.

I made noise, and scared a lot of birds, who flew off as I approached. 

I don’t know if I scared any bears, or cougars.  I certainly didn’t see any.

But I smelled death.  The unmistakeable odour of decomposing flesh hit me hard.  Twice.  The rotting carcasses must have been just meters off the main path that took me further and further out. 

Further and further out to the side trail, which ended with scattered bones and an awful death.

An awful death and a necessary run.

A run that replaced fear with confidence.

A run that reminded me of why I was scared in the first place.

Striving for Mediocrity

We live in a beautiful subdivision.  West coast style homes on large lots.  Perfectly manicured lawns and gardens abound.  Last weekend I watched someone vacuum their rock garden. (I once went 8 months without vacuuming the carpet in the basement apartment I shared with my Golden Retriever. … In my defense I did clean the bathroom weekly). 

I love our neighbourhood – a perfect mix of young families and vibrant retirees.  The park, the trails, the front porches, are all conducive to building friendships and creating a community.

There are rules though.  We’re governed by bylaws.  A long list of ‘though shall’ and ‘though shall not’ commandments dictate how our yards must look: our grass, our fences, what we park in our driveway.  Breaking the rules is a roll of the dice.  Maybe no one notices or cares.  Or maybe someone writes a letter to the council.  And they investigate.  And issue a warning letter.   Or a fine.  Maybe things get ugly.  It’s happened before.

Our home and grounds will never be the most attractive.  Our lawn is not perfectly manicured.  There’s moss, and dead spots from dog pee.  But we try.  We plant flowers, and hang baskets.  We grow vegetables.  We’ve trucked in yards of soil and mulch and spent thousands of dollars on cedars and shrubs.  In part we do it because we enjoy it.  It is satisfying and rewarding to beautify our home and our neighbourhood.  But there isn’t enough money, and definitely not enough time.  We’re treading water in the battle against weeds, erosion and decay.  We’re striving for mediocrity.  Trying to fit in, and not stand out for the wrong reasons.

I’m learning to accept that striving for mediocrity is okay.  It’s not the mediocrity that matters.  It’s the striving.

Before work I often run at Summit Park in Victoria.  This time of year, the sun rises as I run intervals on a dirt path around a reservoir in this hidden jewel of a park that overlooks the city.  This week the sunrise reminded me that our sun, and the universe, are billions of years old.  They will continue for billions of years after we are gone. 

In the time scale of the cosmos, you and I, and everything we do, are utterly insignificant.  We could not matter less.  Which, paradoxically, makes you and I, and everything we do, infinitely important.  Because our lives are miracles, precious and rare.  Every second matters.  Everything we do counts.

We cannot and should not strive to be mediocre in all we do.  Mediocre doesn’t cut it when it comes to being a husband or a father.  Our careers matter too – we have a responsibility to do our best when we go to work.  We owe it to our colleagues.  We owe it to each other.  We’re privileged to live in this country.  We all play a role in keeping it working – whatever work we do.

But life is too short to define it by our careers.  The universe is too big and too old not to pursue our passions.  Last month I went bouldering for the first time.  I’m scared of heights and I wanted to face that fear.  I’ve been three times now.  I love it.  Being sixteen feet off the ground, knowing a fall might mean serious injury focuses my mind and body more than almost anything I’ve ever done.  Talk about living in, and appreciating, the moment.  It’s impossible to think about work while lunging from one hold to another while dangling in the air.

Two weeks ago I bought a guitar.  I’ve never played an instrument in my life.  I have zero innate musical talent.  I can’t read a note.  I can’t hold a tune.  I’m starting from rock bottom.  I’ve played that guitar every day since.  I’m awful, as my neighbours will attest, because sometimes, when I get home from work, I play on the front porch or back patio.  If there isn’t a noise bylaw in our neighbourhood there should be.  They have every right to complain about my botched chords and terrible twanging.

If someone does complain, I’ll plead guilty and pay the fine.  I’ll never become a good guitar player, or even an average one, if I don’t strive for mediocrity first.

… Now, out to the garden.

The Hard Miles

“The hardship of running somehow softens the hardship of life.  Running turns the madness into music.”

Those words, from the foreword to Phil Hewitt’s ‘Outrunning the Demons’ capture the essence of this book – Life is hard.  Running helps.  Hewitt himself was stabbed, beaten and left for dead alongside a South African highway.  He survived.  Running helped.

And inspired him to collect the stories of others who, in their darkest hours, found solace in running.  People shaken by grief, addiction, disease, injury, and mental illness – in the worst of their pain, running helped them survive.

As is often the case, I write this on the couch, my daughter beside me.  A mini-crisis has just passed.   Strawberry yogurt everywhere.  “Oh no, I got some on my pajamas,” she yelled.  A very big deal for her.  Less so for me.  I responded that if yogurt spilled all over the sofa, and covered her and painted the ceiling, it would be okay.  We would fix it.  We would survive a Yogurt Disaster. 

As the yogurt spill played out, I looked out our front window and saw a runner, in her bright yellow vest, racing along a path near our home.  I know her.  A little.  She runs every day.  I’ve seen her running in deep snow on days when I struggled for hours just to shovel our driveway.  In winter’s darkest days she is out there – in driving rain and howling winds.  I don’t know her story.  But I suspect she needs running.  Needs it just as much as food, and water and air. 

That’s how I feel too.

Not many years ago, someone very close to me was diagnosed with cancer.  I was terrified she would die.  It was a bad year.  Stress, worry, uncertainty and fear churned within.  So I ran.  Signed up for a marathon and trained for it not because I wanted to.  I had no time goal.  The distance was no great challenge.  I’d run marathons before.  I entered that marathon because I needed to.  A lot changed in my life that year.  But running was a constant that helped see me through the worst and emerge on the other side.   

The other side is a new life.  A life that might be very similar to yours.  A spouse, a child.  A career with constant stress, modulating daily, sometimes hourly, from moderate to severe.  Always present and always a roller-coaster ride. 

Yesterday was Easter.  My wife and I watched a day of joy unfold as our daughter hunted Easter eggs.  We watched as her grandparents and aunt showered her with love, and chocolate, and placed a pink Easter bonnet on her head.

And there was sadness too.  My parents are a long way away.  So is my youth.  I remembered Easter when I was a child.  Chocolate and church and sunshine.  Yesterday I wanted to hug my mom and dad and my brother and his family.  And be with them and tell them how much I love them.  And thank them for those wonderful memories.

One of those memories is music.  “Morning has Broken.”  A song for the ages.  A song that captures light and life and spring and sunshine.  An Easter song.  So yesterday, in the midst of it all, on a bright beautiful April day, I ran to the trails and listened to Cat Stevens sing that song.  I played it over and over again.  I found a valley and a lone daffodil.  Just the one, in a sea of grasses and weeds.  And I thought about it all.  And was thankful for everything.  Joy and youth, light and life, family and friends. Running and hard miles.

Every Second

“Travel is medicine.  It resensitizes.  It opens you up … It forces your childlike self back into action.”

… the opening lines of ‘To Shake the Sleeping Self’ by Jedidiah Jenkins   One paragraph in I knew I’d love the book.   I didn’t just read those lines.  I absorbed them. They shook me.  Reminded me of far away places and long-ago adventures.  Sunshine and excitement.  Relaxation and restoration.  One paragraph in, Jedidiah shook this sleeping reader.

Words that resonated, in part, because, for a year now, we have been unable to travel.  Robbed of the pleasure of planning that next trip.  Of exploring a part of the world we’ve never seen before.  Or returning somewhere meaningful and magical.  Somewhere guaranteed to restore the soul.

Yesterday we searched closer to home – driving four kilometers, instead of flying four thousand.  Low budget travel – a couple cookies, a thermos of coffee, and a bag of stale breads for the seagulls. 

We needed to be away from home, together.  Away from to-do lists that never ended.  Away from the television.  Away from minor tensions and an epic tantrum. 

We needed air and water and trees. 

We found them.  Along a shoreline so close to home we had taken it for granted for years.  Never stopped.  Never explored. 

Here’s something else Jedidiah Jenkins wrote: “When you are a kid, everything is new.  You don’t know what’s under each rock … So, you look.  You notice … Every second has value.”

The essence of mindfulness.  Finding value in every second.  That does not mean every moment is pleasant or welcome.  Every moment just is. 

Every day I struggle with being present in the moment. 

It’s worse than that.  Every moment I struggle with being present in the moment.  My mind races.  Five minutes ahead, five hours ahead, five years ago.

Five.  Our daughter is five.  Yesterday, at the beach, she found value in every second.  She didn’t just feed the seagulls.  She made seashell sandwiches, fan-shaped shells, filled with water and layers and layers of bread.  The seagulls swooped in – fighting, clamoring, the winner soaring away with every morsel in its beak.  The losers squawking for more.

We discovered secret passages – pathways through dense trees.  We scampered up rocks and across logs.  We saw a sad face carved in stone, and memorial plaques mounted on boulders.  Plaques that showed that this had been a special place to others.  They too had come here and valued every second.

I’m still reading Jedidiah’s book.  He’s in South America now, nearing the end of a bike trip that began in Oregon.  A pre-Covid trip.  I envy him – envy his travels, his insights and his talent.

Soon after I met my wife, she travelled to South America.  She flew in rickety planes, ate great food, and experienced people and places that I – that all of us – can only dream of now.

Places and trips that happened years ago.  Places and trips that might happen again, depending on vaccines and variants.

In the meantime, I’m thankful that Jedidiah and my daughter remind me that every second has value. 

More Things Matter Less

Two people I didn’t know died recently.

I learned about them, their lives, and their deaths, from grieving friends.

Their deaths were unexpected.  One from a chronic health problem that deteriorated rapidly.  The second also “natural,” but without warning.  Both had young children.  Both left grieving families, friends, and colleagues

Natural causes.  A phrase we’ve all heard thousands of times.  Two words that don’t convey the pain death leaves in its wake.

I began to think of death a little differently not that long ago.  It was something I heard on a show that has become a big part of my life.  The Rich Roll Podcast.  Rich is an ultra-endurance athlete, a vegan and an inspiration.  He challenges himself and his listeners to be their best selves.  His guests share their lives with Rich because he’s authentic, curious, and humble.  He radiates warmth and trust.  He’s become a fixture in my life.  Like a friend I’ve never met.  Although I did meet him once.  Travelled across the country to hear him speak and met him briefly afterward.  Bought a t-shirt which I still have.  Very worn, and very torn, I still wear it proudly.

A year or so ago, one of Rich’s guests spoke about aging, and longevity – with a focus on people around my age – forty and fifty.  Not old, but not young.

The guest said something like ‘Nature doesn’t need you anymore.’

Thought provoking words.  Not spiritual, not healing, not sugar-coated.  Evolutionary.  We are all animals.   Dying is wired into our DNA.  And by our forties and fifties, most of us have had children, and aren’t going to have any more.  Nature – cruel, merciless – doesn’t need us.

A lot of things don’t need us.

Work doesn’t need us.  If we are lucky, we have careers in which we are fortunate enough to make contributions – to our co-workers, to our organizations, to the world at large.  But, at work, each of us is completely replaceable, regardless of what we do.  You and I might be missed.  But we’re not necessary.  Not essential.  We’d be replaced and the machine would grind on.

Things don’t need us.  We surround ourselves with so much that is non-essential.  So much plastic, so much made overseas, so much packaging.  Inert crap, that adds little value to our lives.

The news cycle doesn’t need us.  It gorges, spits out, and moves on.  Trump today – gone tomorrow. 

The planet doesn’t need us – alive, we drain it, suck out its exhaustible resources.  Every second we breathe, we’re part of the problem.  Dead, we return to the earth.  Giving a little bit back after all we’ve taken.

But if a lot of things don’t need us – a lot of people do.

Our communities.  Our friends.  Our families.  Our children.

Not knowing that I’m writing this – never knowing anything that I write about – my five-year old daughter just started talking about death. She said to me “I bet you die right now.”  I reassured her and told her that wasn’t going to happen.

I did not tell her that nature doesn’t need her father anymore.  She’s five.  She still needs her dad.  Needs to cover my face in shaving cream like she did a couple of hours ago.  Needs to paint my nails pink and spray me with perfume like she did right after that.

And I need her.  For as long as I can hang on. 

Which is another reason Rich Roll has become a mentor and inspiration.  Nature is merciless.  Accidents happen.   Diseases ravage.  Aging never stops, and always takes a toll.  But there are things we can do that increase our chances – increase our chances to live longer, be healthier, and find contentment in whatever path or paths we choose along the way. 

More things matter less than ever to me now.  Things I used to be passionate about like baseball and politics.  Not that long ago they were central to my life, now they exist on the periphery.

But if many things matter less, then a few things matter more.  My family.  My friends.  Seeking rewarding work – not working for rewards.  Reading. Writing. Running.

And living a life with pink nails, and a shaving cream head.