Skating is in my blood. Exactly thirty years ago, I laced up my first pair of skates. On that day, I fell and hit my head, resulting in a goose egg-sized bump above my left eye (wearing helmets was not yet enforced the way it is nowadays). I didn’t really feel the pain because all I was thinking about was the next time I could get out on the ice.

One fortunate element to our Canadian winters is the wide access to outdoor rinks. I live in Toronto and almost every city park has one. To this day, I still trek to my local rink, brave the cold, and step on to the ice. Getting exercise is a great by-product, but I’m also there for other reasons.

The rink is where I seek council from my father.

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A couple of weeks ago, I woke up too early in the morning and couldn’t open my right eye. It wasn’t your usual sleepy-eyed I just woke up kind of thing. When I tried to open it, it was so painful that my lids involuntarily snapped back shut. It felt as though something sharp was cutting across the cornea of my eye.

As the body does, it tried to expel the foreign object, and tears started rolling down my cheek. My left eye must have felt left out because it also started to ear up, even though there was nothing that felt like sharp cat claws scratching across my eye the way my right one did.

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We all make mistakes and can’t be everything to everybody, no matter how hard we try. This being said, as I get older, I’ve seen in real time the necessity of showing up for people. Big ways or small ways. Some people have this ability built in, and fundamentally know what to do when someone needs help. Others have to get a bit of shit thrown at them as life moves forward in order to snap outside of themselves.

I’m really not talking about anything specific right now. This is just something I’ve been thinking about for the last little while. Or maybe I am thinking of something specific? How you can let people down unintentionally, that you can really try your hardest, and yet still things don’t work out in the right way. But what is the right way? Isn’t whatever happened the thing that was supposed to happen?

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I send out a newsletter every month with information about what I’m up to. It’s fun and short and I’d like to try and interest more people to join. For the next few months, I’m going to post what I wrote in the newsletter the week after it’s sent out. You can have a look and see if this is something you might want to appear in your inbox every month. Scroll to the bottom to sign up.

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