Gold Medals

I ran my first race in 2015, a half marathon, with my sister and her husband. I had started running two years before, but I've always been someone who uses my body to do hard things.

Tomorrow I'm running the Hypothermic Half in Oka, Quebec. Last year the race was in Montreal, at a nice flat loop on one of the islands. This year they moved it - after I'd already registered! And the new place is more challenging. Hills, trails, and the weather this year is definitely something to be reckoned with.

It's in the middle of my marathon training schedule and I am longing for clear sidewalks, or sunny trails, and less layers. But life is what it is, and I'll be wearing layers tomorrow, and cleats, and my lucky hanky will probably freeze.

But I'll wake up and have my regular race breakfast - a caffe latte and a bowl of oatmeal... and good to go!

Why do I run? Because I can. Because it's something I can do on my own. Because it reminds me of when I was younger and I'd hike in the mountains, accompanied only by me, myself and I. Because it gives me time to think. Because it's fun!

And the medals? They're an extra little bit of memorabilia that I can look at after my race.

At my cafe, we had a tough little time back in the fall, when we were in the middle of a big concept change, and our workload shifted big time, and I was always tired, and .... one thing led to another and I ended up getting a 2 star review! It was a shock to be publicly dissed, but also a shock to see how much I cared about what is essentially bullshit.

So we made a few changes, and now our cafe is working well, as well as it can and as well as we can, which is to say that we are more often crowded than not.. and I have decided that going after the stars or the gold medals, or the flattering comments, is a rabbit hole down which I don't really want to go.

Because, after all, it is YOU who decides whether you have succeeded or not. Our culture is full of advice about how to be the best, but none of it means anything in the end because you're the only one who can truly and effectively be you. Which is maybe why I love running, because I'm only racing against myself, and because essentially we all are.

So, remember, next time your buddy posts a picture of her amazing family, or someone calls you a bad name in public (read: on the internet), or your kid doesn't do well on a test, remember that comparing isn't worth it. Are you doing the best you can? Are you getting help if you can't? five stars for effort, and that's all any of us deserve!

Grateful for K

I am grateful for Kampala. I was born there, and that fact taught me a lot about preconceptions, judgement, belonging, wandering, colonialism, love, subservience, race, heat, memory, and dogs.

Preconceptions are sometimes funny. When my son says his mother was born in Uganda, they look at him in a funny way, and the cartoon balloon springing from peoples' heads reads: "you don't look very dark".  Also, people have thought that my parents were missionaries. That's a laugh too, especially if you knew my parents!

Judgement is one of those things we all do. I have my prejudices, although I'm not going to air my dirty laundry here, I know that I am judged for many facets of my existence. Being born in Kampala gave me an early insight into people's prejudice and knee-jerk need to pigeonhole.

Belonging, ah! belonging! A thing I've never felt. I spent my first three years in a paradise that was, as most paradises are, a touch unreal. From there I was swept off to Calgary, the land of snow, cowboys and Dallas gas men. I felt like the only girl in the whole town with crooked teeth and frizzy hair, and a dad who thought "puck" was a swear word.

Colonialism, that bugbear of the 20th century. I have though long and deep for much of my life about how colonialism has transformed our world. Of course, every generation always thinks theirs is the first to experience big events. I know that colonialism is an ancient practice that springs from one human's need to dominate another.

Love.

Subservience. In Malawi, when I was a skinny traveller eating mangoes, an older woman called me "memsahib". That was sad, and struck me down.

Race. Another place we can hang our coats of distrust, hatred, otherness, prejudice.

Heat! I love feeling the air at 37 degrees, or blood temperature. I love feeling sweat on my face, I love the sun, I love a rainstorm at 4pm, I love never having to wear a jacket.

Memory: When I finally returned to Kampala when I was 23, twenty years after I had left, I emerged from the plane and smelled a smell that felt like home. Fruit, sweat, woodsmoke, an unidentifiable perfume that the tropics emit. I went to the market in the center of Kampala - that was after Idi Amin but before the Ruandan genocide and before Kampala grew into the huge city it is now. I remembered the market. Nothing else remains in my conscious memory.

Dogs: When my mother was pregnant with me, her neighbor had two German Shepherds that were trained to kill anyone who entered the grounds of his house unannounced (read black Africans looking for work or begging). One grabbed her arm with his large teeth and wouldn't let go. My lesson learned was that dogs are very loyal, obedient, and can be killers. Ditto people.

Wandering - the opposite of belonging. Cavafy speaks better than I do on this one:

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley