Amazing. Grace.

It's difficult to remember exactly when, but I think I was about five years old when I first experienced one of the more delightful benefits of joining the human race. That is to say, I discovered there was clearly something wrong with me. I wasn't as tall as the tallest kid, I wasn't as short as the shortest one either. I wasn't the fastest runner, nor the slowest. I knew some things, but some things were new to me. I was (gasp) average.

Horrors! How was I to live with this awful curse?

Oh sure, being average sounds benign enough, but in human society, average is a problem. It seems that average is perceived as the borderline between exceptional and delinquent. The landscape of which is sharply tilted towards the latter. Which means at any given time we are at risk of sliding uncontrollably towards the depths of delinquency, and perhaps whatever dark evil lies beyond (cue the lightning flashes and organ music).

Once thing is apparent, borders are no place to live. So we either glide down the slippery slope, or we push ourselves upward, but under no circumstance should we remain in place.

The good news is, there's no energy shortage when it comes to voices reminding us where we should be going. It all starts in school with the little note in the report card: "Satisfactory, but needs improvement." Parents chime in with "you could do better if you just apply yourself." Then of course there those among our grade school peers who seem particularly adept at pointing out every possible perceived weakness: "your ears are too big," "your nose is too big," "you're fat," "you're skinny," "you're a geek" et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.

As a parent I discovered that this invisible measuring tape surfaces even before we are born. First the charts to measure fetal development. Then, should you manage to pass this test, arriving cold, wet and naked into the world, you are greeted with the expectation of obtaining the highest Apgar score. After that it's "Is the child breast feeding yet?""Is he/she breast feeding enough?" "What color is his/her bowel movement?" Quick, fire up the spreadsheets!

The prize for somehow managing to muddle our way to adulthood is discovering that the intensity and number of voices increase exponentially. We are bombarded with suggestions that we're not working for the right company, we're not putting our kids in the right schools, we're not saving enough for retirement, we're eating all the wrong foods. Television, radio, newspapers, all reminding us of the vast abundance of things we ought to be doing, the issues we are ignoring, the unhealthy lifestyles we lead. Should we have the audacity of getting frustrated, and perhaps even angry, we are then reminded that our suffering barely competes with the suffering of others much less fortunate than us. Somehow, we can't even get angry right.

Deep in the television archives there is an interview with Leonard Cohen in which the interviewer (who clearly thought Mr. Cohen was a socialist-hippy-freak) asked the singer what was his first thought when he woke up in the morning. Cohen thought for a moment, then replied "I ask myself if I am in a state of grace." The reporter was flustered, not knowing how to respond, and fumbled to find some way to express what was wrong with this answer.

I often think of Cohen's answer, which was in fact a question. Perhaps not every morning, but many times I ask myself if I am thankful for what I have. Do I live that thankfulness every day? To me, this is a fundamental question that outweighs all others. Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no. But here's the thing, you can't measure this because it's all in asking the question.

Today I went toboganing with my son. It was a perfect winter day, filled with smiles, laughs and squeals of delight. Me, an average guy, with average faults, with my child, who like both my kids, I flatly refuse to describe as average. And the worst of it was...psst come closer to the screen...I was content.

Yes, there's clearly something wrong with me.

Hockey Day in The Burbs

I'm not a morning person. Never have been. I envy those who just wake up at six in the morning and start their day like they were turning on a light switch. For me, waking up at six a.m. is about as much fun as a mid-winter skinny dip in the St. Lawrence river, and almost as painful. Yeah, yeah, all you morning people are tsk, tsking. I don't care what you think, mornings are meant for sleeping. Period. "Oh, but you're wasting half the day," they say.
"No," I reply to my invented stereotype of a morning person, "I'm saving time for tonight."

Night is cool, mornings are for chumps.

Lately though, I've come to see a unique benefit to rising early on the weekend. This form of torture is usually reserved for the summer season, wherein the pain of an early rise is easily offset by a round of golf followed by the soothing reward of a cold beer.

Last summer, when basking in the evening sun, watching my five year old chase a soccer ball around a field with the rest of his peers, my wife leaned over and spoke the words I had been dreading since I became a dad. "I think we should register Noah in hockey."

My heart sank. I knew what this meant. A lifetime of rising early on frigid mornings, hauling bags and sticks into frigid cars, to drive to frigid arenas, dragging our poor child reluctantly along. Now, I have no illusions that my child, as unbelievably incredible as he is at everything (which is true because he's my kid), will one day be centering the Habs on their way to their 30th Stanley Cup...although it could happen. My primary motivation is to expose him to hockey and hope, at least, that he will experience the same joy playing the game as I have.

I lamented to friends about my impending plight, and most, who had lived through this experience prior to myself, were sympathetic. There was one, and see if you can guess if she is a morning person, who raved about how wonderful it was for her. Rising before the sun on a crisp winter morning. Arriving at the arena before anyone else, watching her son skate onto a fresh sheet of ice. There was nothing like it.

Yeah, I know, cuckoo.

So, bullet firmly clenched in my teeth, every Saturday and Sunday I drag my pathetic butt out of bed, dress my child in full gear, looking much like a Hobbit knight, and plod off to the local arena.

Early mornings notwithstanding, watching these little ones fumble and stumble around the ice is extremely entertaining. Over the passing weeks, their skills have improved remarkably fast, they've become more confident on their skates, they handle the puck without falling over, they even show glimpses of the kind of player they will one day become. The coaches, who are the picture of dedication, run the kids through playful drills, like freeze-tag, torpedo (it's more fun than it sounds), and red-light green light. It's just plain fun.

Something happened a couple of weeks ago that changed everything. Noah had a practice at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning. My wife, who is a nurse, was working the night before, so it fell on me to deliver our little man fed, dressed and presumably ready to practice at the arena. When the alarm pierced my deep slumber at 5:50 a.m., I thought my heart was going to explode into a million gooey pieces. If there was any consolation to this grievous assault on my senses, it was that Noah awoke with a smile and a generally happy disposition. It was a plus I thought, but it didn't do much to take the edge off my grump.

The stars must have aligned, in fact I think I saw them on the drive to the arena, because we arrived before anyone else. I pushed Noah's skates onto his feet, performed the cursory tugging and twisting and yanking of laces until they were firmly, but comfortably, affixed to his feet. As we emerged from the stale air of the locker room we were greeted with a large, glassy and empty sheet of ice.

My boy, my little man, was the first to skate out onto the ice. He moved tentatively at first, then soon began to skate in wide circles, looping and sprinting, gliding freely without boundary or constraint. A few moments later a coach dumped a bucket of pucks onto the ice. They clattered and clacked, bouncing and skittering across the clean, fresh surface. If someone had taken a picture of me I am certain that my eyes would have been as wide as saucers, and my jaw would have been somewhere around the tops of my salt-stained Cougar boots. She was right, it was truly wondrous.

It seems lately, that the game of hockey in Canada has become more soap opera / epic movie. With the Canadiens melodrama playing out in wailing voices of overly obsessive fans and media, the recent near-tragic example of a head-shot that has pundits and analysts buzzing, and the impending Olympic games in which we have placed outrageously high expectations on our national hockey team. Much of this has been far short of wondrous.

Today, the CBC will celebrate the game we love with its day-long Hockey Day in Canada program. It is an opportunity to revisit that which we love about this game and why it is a unifying force in this country. What we hope to discover is that all the machinations of the hockey business world, salary caps and trade deadlines, playoff races, plus-minus's, these are not the things that define the game. I like to think that despite the cynicism and the high-stakes money games, that when the pros step on the ice today, a part of them will think of the first time they stepped onto a fresh sheet of ice, skating tentatively at first, then looping and sprinting, gliding freely as the pucks clattered and clacked and skittered across the surface.

Simple, really; everything new, anything possible. A fresh start. Which is why I woke up this morning at 5:50 a.m., excited to get to the rink early so that my son could be the first one on the ice. Yeah, I know, I'm a chump.

Why should you care?

I begin this foray into the blogosphere by attempting to answer the question posed in the title. Why should you care? Well, specifically about this blog, there are easily far bigger fish to fry (or broil, which is my preference) but then, that really isn't the question.

If I was talking about global events, like the tragedy in Haiti, the answer would be relatively simple. People are in need, people are desperate. They are our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, so of course we should care. For the vast majority of us, it isn't a question, and therefore not the answer I'm seeking.

As a friend once said, life isn't about the big moments, be they tragic or glorious. It is about those cold, dark Tuesday mornings in February, when we rise grudgingly from our beds and set ourselves to the menial tasks of the day. It's about the people, community and environment around us that we know are important, but are often taken for granted.

We sometimes find ourselves plodding along, feeling adrift, while trivial annoyances and distractions poke at our patience to the point where we snap at the nearest person, or inanimate object, for no particular reason.

There are a couple of key elements that make up that fine line between being a responsible, functioning and quasi-rational human being, and walking the streets shouting at lamp posts. One of them (and try to constrain your gag reflex) is love. As cheeseball as it sounds, love, in its various forms: intimacy, compassion, security, forgiveness, etc., is one of those tenterhooks that keeps us from tumbling into the abyss.

The other, if you hadn't already guessed, is laughter. No, not the laughter of the megalomaniac supervillan (although still entertaining), nor the laughter of derision that comes from watching another person's spectacular failure (which is mostly funny because we're glad it wasn't us). I mean that full-on, deep in the gut, let-loose, belly laugh. It's the laughter that, in spite of how horrible the situation, somehow makes us feel better. It's the laughter that helps us accept how imperfect we can be; that unlocks the grip of ego, and frees us, at least momentarily, from the world's perception of who we should be.

Think of the last scene from "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World". If you haven't seen it, finish this blog then immediately go and get a copy, you will not regret it.

True, the catalyst for that laughter came at someone else's expense, but at its core, it was all about letting go of the past and lifting the weight of the present.

So, why should we care? Well, we just do. We can pretend we don't, but it's just a put-on to appear strong. We get annoyed, frustrated and angry because we care. We care about injustice, we care about the economy, we care when our hockey team loses two games in a row.

We just do; and that's okay. Otherwise we're Dexter, driving around town with duck tape, plastic sheeting and shiny cutting tools in the trunk...and that just ain't right.

So that's it, this blog is about caring. No, silly goose, it's about the pushing back against all those things that pull us away from what really matters in life. Filling the spaces between celebration and sorrow with something meaningful. Looking into the abyss, and laughing our arses off.