We are the Champions

It is with delight that I report here the Cinderella story that was my ice hockey team's victory last evening in the one-game final match of the summer season. It was my fortune as well to play a key role in salvaging a victory from what in the waning seconds of the match seemed like certain defeat for our force.
It is easy sometimes to dismiss the results of this or that match, or season, as the accident of the moment. Perhaps more so when the result does not go ones way. It is perhaps equally tempting to ascribe fortuitous results such as that which we experienced last evening as being the product of some larger approbation, particularly given the circumstance in which our unlikely victory took place, i.e. in the face of an intimidatingly superior opponent.
In any case to the victors go the smiles, and when the dust settled we had pulled off an incredible come-from-behind victory. Down 3-1 with three minutes left, we fought back to score first one, and then the equalizer, with 1.3 seconds left on the clock, to send us to overtime. We fought through an overtime in which our opponents prematurely celebrated upon striking the crossbar with the puck and then buried them in a shootout.

The cards we are dealt

One of the largest changes I have seen in myself as I struggle to complete the transformation from being focussed on myself to conducting myself as a class act is my ability to tolerate and forgive others for their self-indulgence.
A frequent, convenient and effective apology mantra I find myself citing is that we all (struggle to) play with the cards we are dealt.
Some of us start out with a full house - productive societies, functional and loving parents, cohesive  communities, forward-thinking role models. These are treasures whose value is both immense and difficult to measure.
Others are not so fortunate, and as they struggle to cobble together the kind of stable base that the fortunate among us were blessed to begin with, they make painful and sometimes repetitive mistakes.
The road to functionality is through a minefield, and it is tempting to deride those who resort to the more basic coping mechanisms, who have failed like so many before them and beyond them who failed despite all efforts to adopt more advanced techniques.
But no one, not even the most seemingly despicable person, is deserving of derision. They deserve respect. They are playing with the cards they were dealt, just like oneself. It is easier to build a robust structure when your footing is a solid foundation. And those who start with such head starts are demonstrably more inclined to success. But the others are not to be dismissed, derided or disrespected. No matter how despicable their behaviour appears upon manifestation, it is easily ascribed to the paucity of the cards in their hand. Contempt for the outcome of their actions is best directed at their origin.
And if you, like so many among us, are one of those who are struggling with a dubious hand, take heart: no one is beyond salvation. It takes a focussed and determined effort, but anyone - and everyone - is capable of finding their way out of the corner into which they have painted themselves and doing the difficult work of shoring up their base and building up to the sky.

Expanding Horizons

A few weeks ago a friend of mine with whom I play pickup ice hockey with once a week invited me to participate with his Saturday team in a hockey tournament. I have played pickup with him for a few years and we have some common hockey friends but off the ice we have had little opportunity to connect over the years. He is a goaltender, and his team was going to be short a few defencemen, so he asked me to come along. I have always enjoyed playing in front of him - I have even said that he is likely the best goalie I have played with - so I was pleased to infer that he had similar appreciation for my abilities.
The theme of the tournament, and the participants, was sort of artsy, and the majority of the teams came from the artsy city in which I live, but that is not to discount the many teams who came from much less urban and urbane environs, and from much further afield - all the way from the east coast in fact.
It spanned the Easter weekend, and one of the highlights of the tournament was the talent contest, which was held as usual at a popular divey bar in the edgy part of downtown.
As if to take the irreverence to another level, my adopted squad had teamed up with a co-ed team and as part of the entertainment portion for the Saturday night, were doing a performance piece wherein the players dressed as either choristers or sisters and went on stage to belt out a number of erstwhile reverent, but mostly irreverent, numbers along a vaguely religious theme. It was hugely entertaining, and a good time was had by all.
I played well and even notched a couple of key goals. And best of all, despite all expectations, my adopted team fought its way through to the Sunday morning finals, which ironically enough were scheduled not in the godless suburban rink in which the rest of the entire tournament had been held, but downtown at the gorgeous wooden-raftered and 60s-era home rink of one of the two biggest Catholic schools in the city, the proving ground of so many hometown heroes over the years.
It was a glorious place to play and an unforgettable Easter Sunday, winning the championship with my adopted friends. I am not sure if anyone else saw the irony.

Conference Contrast

I attended a conference this weekend for front-end developers. It  would be difficult to overstate how dissimilar the audience, not to mention the material, was from the political conferences I attended two weeks ago.
Nonetheless I enjoyed it and was once again inspired. It may be difficult for many contemporaries to imagine that anyone's calling could come somewhere between conservative politics and front-end development, but that is the course I have charted.

Second-guessing skating on the canal

Following a fabulous weekend at a political conference, I met with S. on Saturday for one more, non-political, night in the nation's capital. Well, mostly anyway - there was a passionate discussion over dinner with S.'s uncle, who shares my passion for politics, but certainly not my party affiliation.
This morning, following a visit with her grandmother, we discussed stopping to skate on the canal, which had uncharacteristically been reopened after having been closed once already, but in the end we elected to skip it and packed up and headed off for the four-hour plus trip home. Once we were on the highway, however, I realized that I had left my overcoat at her aunt's.
After we turned around and retrieved it, on the way back home once again, I made a unilateral decision to not skip the canal the second time past, and I steered us into a parking garage downtown. We walked the short distance to the canal, donned our skates and went for an enjoyable trip, complete with fried pastry, on one of the most spectacular skating facilities in the world. There were no regrets.

Manning Up

This weekend I traveled to our capital city for a conservative political conference. This was my second consecutive year attending the national conference for this organization, and I was enthralled and inspired by the experience. I met many enthusiastic people from different parts of the country and was encouraged to return to my city and take up the torch.

Ice Ice Baby

My friend PL set up a rink in his back yard this winter and I went to his house on Saturday night with SR for an inaugural skating party, which he dubbed the Winter Classic. It was a mild evening, which is to say only a few degrees below freezing during what has been quite a cold spell, and we had an enjoyable and unforgettable evening. It was an introductory night for SR and PL, which is as hard to imagine as it is shameful considering how long I have known them and how much I cherish them both. It had been far too long, but as it always is with good friends, the years quickly melted away and we had a fantastic evening of skating and playing and falling down before retiring inside his impossibly tiny apartment for a taste of his finesse as a DJ. I was extremely and almost awkwardly inspired by my friends PL and SC and delighted to share the same with SR, as well as pleased at her enthusiastic response.

Duck duck goose

For many years I struggled with Christmas: when I was a cynic, I had a simple, dismissive response to it. when I was a small child, I loved it, as do all small children - do they not?

As soon as I was old enough to be cynical however, I became cynical, about Christmas among other things.

I accept it now, but I also accept so many things now which I found so difficult to accept before.

For Christmas this year, SR was rather determined to cook a goose. I was delighted to support her in such an expedition and in fact the only impediment to the entirely appropriate expression of her heritage was her grandmother who made it clear that turkey was the only dinner she would entertain on Christmas. So turkey it was, and goose.

The Ice Storm, part 2

On the Monday before Christmas, we were invited to my friend P's to join P, P, L and J to watch The Ice Storm, which was as fantastic as it was appropriate. I had such fond memories of that film from when I was so bitter and unsatisfied, and of course it is a tragic movie.

Blessed by the calendar

For me, Christmas, and its close cousin New Year's Eve, are inextricably tied, and in a good year overshadowed by, my birthday, which falls a few days before the big day, and in fact on what those of us in the Northern Hemisphere of this mortal coil would dub the shortest and darkest day of the year.
I have nevertheless been blessed in the past two years, as the calendar has favoured a celebration of my birthday: last year it was on a Friday which also coincided with a failed doomsday scenario, but which nonetheless made for a fantastic celebration.
This year was somewhat more subdued but it was still a party, and it was still an ice storm, and despite the large number of regrets, those who attended shall not forget it.

The Ice Storm

While I would not say that the ice storm of 2013 came out of nowhere, as there was plenty of warning, we were nonetheless surprised but the intensity and severity of its effects. I for one, thanks to the irrepressible tendency of  folks given the chance to skew their anticipation on the side of disaster, have grown to expect less and less of a given dire meteorological prediction. In this case I was pleasantly and not terribly inconveniently surprised. The current was interrupted at my house for 24 hours, the vast majority of which was Sunday, and the entirety of which I was absent the abode.
The main interruption for me was that the storm (and more importantly, the forecast) arrived the evening of my birthday celebration at my apartment. It promised to be a legendary event and I do not mean to take anything away from that which it was, which was memorable in any sense, but the impending storm ate significantly into the attendance list and in the end the decent crowd who did make it were compelled to amuse themselves in the absence of those who somehow thought inclement weather legitimately excuses absence.

Opening Day

It is opening day at my new job, and so far so good. I had lunch on Friday with HR, my old boss, and while I guess you could not say we buried the hatchet, it went as well and any such thing could ever be expected to go, and I am proud of how it went and of how I chose to handle it.
Working up the courage to walk away from my engagement with HR had not been easy, but more important is how exactly I approached it. I felt that I handled it in a very mature way and in fact HR himself was left with nothing else to say other than "I don't blame you" when I dropped the bomb.

An Examined Life Worth Living

Tonight I examined the jewellery of my grandfather, which inexplicably ended up in my hands, by way of my mother, who despite being the oldest, was nonetheless one of only two girls among eight then seven children.

I do not not know my mother's father very well. I am impressed by how completely unlike my father he appears to have been. My grandfather, for whom I was named, left me an impressive collection of items, mostly tie clips and pins. A "Past President" tie clip from a valuable and forgotten group. A Legion of Honor pin for 50 Years of service to an organisation called AIME- The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers. Dog tags for his service in the armed forces. A beautiful and poetic reminder token from the First Presbyterian Church:

 Featuring perhaps a local Cathedral and a New Testament superfecta, the medallion

engraved in his name (and mine!) on the back side (not shown). 

I am humbled by the accomplishments of my mother's father, as evidenced by his modest jewellery collection.

One only need imagine a comparison with a typical and contemporary man's jewellery (and vanity) to recognise a discouraging contrast.

On again, Off Again

In the past, either to myself or in conversation with any of the various therapists or coaches I have worked with, I have often mentioned that my capacity to act as "me", the me I want to be, is a binary thing, distinctly tied to and essentially a manifestation of my mood, which is itself also a binary thing - essentially I am either on, or I am off, and that makes all the difference.

This summer I was off. The whole summer, unfortunately. It started in May, and ran until two weeks ago. I can even put my finger on it. I have struggled to put my finger on it in the past, but this time I can pinpoint it, the exact moment when it rolled over, like an automobile odometer going from 99,999 to 1,000,000 - all the columns in sync. Two weeks ago, on a Tuesday, after I met with a woman from the tax agency, it just turned around. Or I just turned around.

When I am off, I am off. I do not want to talk about it, I do not want to blog about it, I do not want to share it with my therapist, I do not want to share it with anyone or anything.

Ausweitung der Kampfzone

This morning I had an appointment with my therapist W. As is often the case, as I went in I found myself reflecting that I did not have a very clear idea what we were going to talk about, but as is always the case, we found plenty to fill the hour. My appreciation for the time I spend with him has not diminished even slightly from the first times, when I was in so much pain compared to now, to the later times when I was ebullient and felt as if I were walking on air, to the recent times when I am neither manic nor miserable but a steady somewhere in between.

I told him the story of going to the cottage with my father this past weekend and mentioned how I feel quite disconnected from him when I see him, and how I see him so infrequently as a result. I told him how lost he seems and how I felt frustrated and powerless to help him. Rather than dwell on that, instead he asked me to tell him about moments in which we had connected. I thought about it and told him the story of working on the cryptic crossword puzzle together and how we connected over the hour or two when we worked on that. He smiled as I related it to him and I am getting to know him well enough now that I am able to put words in his mouth almost - I illustrated for him for me with my hands the two verticals representing me and him and how I nonetheless stayed upright. He was effective at convincing me to look on the bright side as it were, and focus on the moments of connection. And I realised that the lesson for me was that I could safely attempt to extend the boundary a little bit the next time we are together, and see if I can carve out a little bit more connection at a time.