Old Boston Garden. Bobby Orr. Noel Picard. Did you know “The Goal” was scored on May 10, 1970, almost 41 years ago? If I want to think of how old I am but not how old I feel, I remember what it was like at 14 years old, a Bobby Orr fan, if not a Boston Bruins one, that’s another story, to exult as Orr is in the act of scoring, upended by Noel Picard, soaring in flight over the ice as only he would, as only he could, and the shot by Ray Lussier, staff photographer of the bygone Boston Record-American, captures something of that moment but not it all because I close my eyes and I can still see him, as if time stands still, and Orr is suspended there, an angel, not a hockey player, this Orr, from Parry Sound, Ontario, on the other side of Georgian Bay, under the elephant’s tail (see RFYL: Why Run III), a place, home to another boy’s fancy, a Grade Eight speech in 1967, Orr’s rookie year in Boston, and a quote that resonates even now, and why I sit to watch, even the most banal of games, the Rangers vs. the Hurricanes, the Devils against the Wild, Islanders/Coyotes because there on that ice is a piece of home, where as a thesis graduate of Carleton Journalism, I return again, this time to write the script for a radio broadcast on the retirement of Boston’s hockey idol, Bobby Orr, with a memory of his brother, Ron, aboard the Zamboni, cleaning and flooding the rink at the Bobby Orr Community Centre in Parry Sound, and even in these mid-season games, the players show it to me again and again, so that if I can I won’t miss it; the quote: “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” You’ll see what I’m talking about when he shoots and scores. The boy in the sideyard rink that my dad made. Shooting, then leaping as Orr did. Again and again and again. He shoots! He scores!
Running for Your Life: Mental Landscapes
I don’t think of space in the same way as I used to. As children, we need to be constantly watched. In the city, a child will bound into traffic, in the country, toward a precipice in a flash. Thurber, the puppy, will race up the side of blizzard snowbanks, only to plunge a long leg in a soft spot, and, a second later, do the same thing again, as if he has learned the sum total of zero, his life force taking over, the landscape, treacherous or not, a non-consideration, all is subservient to play, in service of adventure, dependent on those who steer him away from the barreling down SUV, the cliff edge, but our purchase on landscape is no superior to his. We must only keep him safe, embracing him as he is.
Running for Your Life: The Blizzard and the Buddha
Sunday night of the New York Blizzard, M and I turned on the TV set and “The Buddha,” a PBS special was on. The following Monday, she is off to India, to lands that Prince Siddhartha roamed, on a personal quest of her own.
I am moved by “The Buddha,” but curious. I feel the excluding of family in the Buddha’s teachings because, it is written, that at twenty-nine he abandoned them to meditate on the suffering of mankind when, even though he is an affluent prince of the warrior caste, he is bringing on – certainly – sufferings to his own young family by abruptly leaving them to go on his vague quest for the path to “happiness” for all men (and women.)
Windows rattle with the wind. I’m home from work just as the worst of the blizzard hits. Slumbering Thurber, who can sleep through a sidewalk jackhammer, is stirring on the couch.
I am moved by “The Buddha,” but curious. I feel the excluding of family in the Buddha’s teachings because, it is written, that at twenty-nine he abandoned them to meditate on the suffering of mankind when, even though he is an affluent prince of the warrior caste, he is bringing on – certainly – sufferings to his own young family by abruptly leaving them to go on his vague quest for the path to “happiness” for all men (and women.)
Windows rattle with the wind. I’m home from work just as the worst of the blizzard hits. Slumbering Thurber, who can sleep through a sidewalk jackhammer, is stirring on the couch.
Running for Your Life: Why Run III
“Happiness is having Doug Marshall (1) sign your Caravel (high school yearbook) twice. Doug Marshall (2)”
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In “Black Swan Green,” a year in the life coming of age novel by David Mitchell, Jason Taylor takes us on a journey – the voice of a boy whose perfect pitch, seizing of irony, wins us over at least once, sometimes multiple times a page. Mitchell guides us back to our own times because we all knew a Jason, a boy with inner sight, who if we had the luxury of getting to know him would instruct and delight and amuse us, and whose example even in such a short time as a year would stay with us as an inspiration for a lifetime.
Such were the qualities of Doug Marshall. Or Marsho, as we called him.
*
In “Black Swan Green,” a year in the life coming of age novel by David Mitchell, Jason Taylor takes us on a journey – the voice of a boy whose perfect pitch, seizing of irony, wins us over at least once, sometimes multiple times a page. Mitchell guides us back to our own times because we all knew a Jason, a boy with inner sight, who if we had the luxury of getting to know him would instruct and delight and amuse us, and whose example even in such a short time as a year would stay with us as an inspiration for a lifetime.
Such were the qualities of Doug Marshall. Or Marsho, as we called him.
Running for Your Life: Why Run II
The life of Kate, my daughter, (the touch in the rain, below right), is a great lesson of love to me. From the beginning, from her first breath, Kate has been her own person, and if we, as parents, see our role as doing the best to guide her from odds-on danger, our utmost to show our love for her so that she is as close to us today, going on a quarter-century, as she has ever been, then there is a better than average chance that she knows what love means.
My parents’ love is enough, too, so that I have felt safe in my choices, in my impulses. So that I’m able to feel, if not know, because that is too much to ask, that I am born to write, to read and to run.
My parents’ love is enough, too, so that I have felt safe in my choices, in my impulses. So that I’m able to feel, if not know, because that is too much to ask, that I am born to write, to read and to run.
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