AGE IS A funny thing. Some people say it’s all relative, that you’re only a sold as you feel. Others claim we end up childlike again as the circle of years nears completion. I’m never sure which of the many aphorisms to lean on. My personal take is that aging is gravity having its way with you. As you mature, there are moments when you swear you can feel parts of you dropping.
There’s a noticeable sag to the buttocks, for one thing. Somehow you’ve developed a portly droop to the abdomen. Where the firmness of youth once held sway, there is now only sway. Everything eventually heads south on us, and if there are jiggles accompanying our formerly insouciant saunter, we call them “fab flab” or “love handles.” That’s on good days. On bad days, we pinch a couple of fingers full and shake our greying heads.
It’s a harder slog than it used to be getting up the timber road that leads into the mountains behind our house. When Deb and I ski, I have to stop for arest on the longer runs. My talk is peppered with phrases like “you wouldn’t believe it now, but . . . ,” “back in my prime” and “you should have seen me when . . .” Age and gravity are relentless yanks on our lives.
When I turned fifty-three not too long ago, we had a quiet celebration. No big party or dinner, just a calm recognition of time passing and a life fleshing out at the edges. There was no need for extravagance. Here in the mountains, days are merely days. In the relaxed plod of them, we find parts of ourselves that were lost in the frenetic pace of the city. I have become more accustomed to the soft glow of a morning fire than to the roar of traffic on a freeway. I’ve grown more attuned to the symphonic clarity of a sunset than to the raucous clatter of an urban street. But as I settle into my favourite chair, sometimes I find myself longing for the more elastic, more exuberant man I used to be.
My recollections are mostly about sports. Maybe it’s typical guy thinking, but I can’t resist the urge to measure the current me against the nimble, devil-may-care athlete I once was. When I played hockey, I was always the fastest skater on the team. Mind you, I was never more than a rec-league forward, but I loved it. Something in the power and grace of skating has always called to me.
The winter I was fourteen, I happened upon a crater the size of a swimming pool at the construction lot down the street. When the freeze came, it became my own private rink. None of the other neighbourhood kids had discovered it. I would go there at night and skate in the dim glow of distant street lights. I couldn’t see very well, but I didn’t need to.
I left my stick in the snow bank and flashed around that small stretch of ice in circles, figure eights and quick lateral dashes. I practised moves I’d seen in televised games, learning to turn and stop and change direction at top speed. After that, I taught myself to thread the puck between my legs, curlit on the blade of my stick and skate with it through turns and twists, dipsy-doodles and spins. I felt as though I was inventing the game for myself.
I got to be a very good, very fast skater on that construction lot, and the skill stuck with me through the years. I never mastered the other parts of the game, never scored goals by the bushel, but I could skate like the wind and make deft, accurate passes.
As often as I could, I found a team to play on. I’ve played on frigid outdoor rinks where chunks of the boards were missing and the area behind the nets was strung with chicken wire. I’ve played in modern arenas before hundreds of fans. I’ve played in public tournaments and in 2:00 a.m. beer leagues while a yawning attendant waited to clean the ice. On every team, it was my speed that marked me. On a lumber camp team in the 1980s, they called me Feel the Breeze Wagamese. Someone wanted to put that on the back of my jersey—they said a breeze was all you could feel when I blazed past.
My cousin Fred vanished with my hockey gear one year, and that was it for my playing days. The seven hundred dollars’ worth of equipment was too much of an investment to make all over again. But I still can’t look at a stretch of ice without thinking of the game. I can’t watch more than a few minutes of Hockey Night in Canada without missing it. On cold winter nights when the sky is purple and frost curlicues at the edge of the windows, I’m still Feel the Breeze Wagamese, that jubilant kid waiting to lunge over the boards.
The particular joy of growing older is the pocket treasures you carry with you. Their power transcends the effects of gravity and time. A part of me will always be streaking forward into the fray. Living in the promise of the future, I can only look back and marvel at my incredible journey, the places I’ve been and the names I’ve carried. Feel the breeze. These days it’s fair and warm.