Infinite Hockey

Every so often, a childhood memory unexpectedly appears in the middle of a shiatsu treatment. Before anyone accuses me of turning wooie woo on you, even science has proven that memories are stored (storied?) in the body. I’ve been asking myself this week why my return to hockey is making me so freakin’ happy, and the following memory arrived in full colour while my wonderful therapist, Roman, worked on a nasty blockage behind my left ear:

I am two years old and skating on a frozen pond with my father. The paleness of the sky, snow, and ice blend into a single bright light. An infinite glow. Everything looks and feels bigger because I am small and new.

In the white, my two year old mind interprets: I’m back in heaven. I’m home.

I also remembered the confusion when I realized that I was still on Earth. It felt wobbly and I remembered what it feels like to be a toddler. Like this:

All emotions and sounds and senses and connection. But padded and dreamy like a Fisher Price Roly Poly Chime Ball.

During my first skate with my new team last month, I made it part of the way back to heaven. Hockey moves too quickly for the left brain, so intuition takes over. It feels like the space I’m in when writing and making art, or for that matter, doing anything as long as I’m in the moment. Playing with the kids. Running. Even doing the dishes. Most of my default activities involve me being quiet and alone. Hockey represents collaboration to me–teamwork. I’ve actually been craving artistic collaboration for the first time, after I had lots of fun creating a visual response to some poems by Natalie Zina Walschots.

Anyway, I’ve been inhaling hockey books this week: Twenty Miles by Cara Hedley, Saving The Game by Mark Moore, Lorna Jackson’s Cold-Cocked, Dave Bidini’s The Best Game You Can Name, and Hockey Dreams by David Adams Richards. I think if I ever write a hockey book (a collaboration?), it’ll go something like Jane Siberry’s great song, “Hockey.”

Don’t let those Sunday afternoons
Get away get away get away get away
Break away break away break away break away