Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 59: reappearing act, disappearing act, class act

It feels difficult and wrong and even obscene to fiddle around with three little things when such big things are going wrong, and when ordinary people are forced onto the unarmed road of flight. But I am grateful for my little life. I hope it can stay this way. It is heartbreaking to see everyday lives clawed apart by the powerful. Against the historic backdrop of our dark times, I offer this week's Three Things подкаст.

1. Reappearing act  

The doorbell rang. Our friends Lori and Murray were on the front step, carrying a gift from the beyond. Back in the 2000-2001 minor hockey season Murray coached the KC Annunciation Rink Rats novice team on which our son Alex played. Coach Murray had things under control, including the most important thing for a coach to have under control: himself. He was calm and knowledgeable and made the season fun for the eight- and nine-year-olds and their fans. He was in it for the team. (The mistakes I would go on to make as a hockey coach I wouldn’t have made if I was more like him.)

2000-2001 was the year Auntie Shelagh and I put out the weekly Rink Rat Review. It was a one-page newspaper of great plays, however big or small, that each player had made in the last game, along with shenanigans from practice, team announcements, trivia about the players, tournament times, fundraising details and little stories about the parents. Each week, each player got a copy and got to see his name in print. It was a bound collection of the season’s Rink Rat Reviews that Murray and Lori had come to the house with. I opened up the past and read out loud the first entry I saw. Titled Icing Call, from the December 10, 2000, edition, it went like this:

Lori Hayes brought in a cake to celebrate Murray’s birthday after Monday’s practice. There was a polite rendition of Happy Birthday and a rousing version of Tony Chestnut. And then another one. That night Alex Kubish’s little brother, Michael, named his new teddy bear Coach Murray.

As minor hockey parents in the thick of it, you’re always on the clock. When’s the next practice? When do I have to sell 40 boxes of chocolate almonds by? When do we have to leave to get to the tournament in Rivière Qui Barre? Can we hold onto the lead? How much time is left in the game? As minor hockey parents out of the thick of it, you still wonder how much time is left. Second by second by year by decade, those boys are now men. Except in the Rink Rat Review, where Tyler will always be #10 and Alex #11 and Sin Bin Flynn #12. Print stops the clock. Friends have a knack of knowing when you need to press rewind. Thanks, Lori, thanks, Coach.

2. Disappearing act 🔈

That astute observer of human life, the Yale English professor John Durham Peters, was present at La Crema Caffe in St. Albert last week. By present I don’t mean he was there there. It was just me, Shelagh, our coffees, the front section of the newspaper I had brought, three other couples, the barista and the woman singing and playing guitar at a table by the window while the snow fell. It was like a scene from Gilmore Girls, actually. Or a page from a Peters book (The Marvelous Clouds) where he talks about the human voice.

No, no, that’s not a precise way for me to put it. He isn’t talking in the book. Authors don’t talk in books. If they talked talked in books, their words on the page would de-materialize as readers read them, which is what happens to words uttered when people do talk. Talked words vanish when the waves that carry them break. Being witness to continuous disappearings is what it means to be alive. Peters says life, like fire, means stuff burning in the air. Like the smoke of speech, he writes. Or like the steam from my coffee. Or the beautiful voice of the troubadour. Or like the sound from the body of her guitar. Exactly not like the fixed print in the New York Times or the table where we sat with Professor Peters while the snow papered the parking lot outside.

3. Class act 🥌

His sides are heaving. His knees have buckled. He’s in a crouched position. He steadies himself with a hand on the floor, which stops his swaying, but not his sobbing. This is the picture of agony. This is Brad Gushue, the Canadian men’s curling skip collapsed at the Athlete Moment board in Beijing. The board’s camera and screen connect him live to his family and friends watching in Newfoundland. It’s a technological innovation at the Olympics that typically captures moments of shared elation for viewers to peek in on—people jumping off couches at home, athletes blowing kisses to the screen, that kind of thrill-of-victory stuff. This isn’t that. Gushue’s team has just lost to Sweden and will not get the chance to play for the gold medal. The skip missed what my curling friends would call a run-double that was, as my curling friends might say, over-carved a bit on the sweep. In any language, it was a shot that almost worked. And now here is the skip almost on the floor, crushed not only by the open wound of loss but by the consolation of love. At least, that’s what I make of the seven long seconds the camera stays on Gushue in his grief. Viewers get this shot because a real-life videographer on the scene and a real-life director in a control room somewhere are reading and reacting to the sudden sight of the fallen hero. Yes, it is an excruciating intrusion. No, it’s not life and death. Yes, it is as close to sculpture as a televised sports image can be.

Have a good week noticing what you notice.

Peace.