Riding the pine

Australian Rules football is a religion in most of the states of Australia except for perhaps New South Wales & Queensland where rugby still rules the roost so to speak.   Aussie Rules has become a lot more popular across all of Australia especially with professional teams located in each of the state capital cities - its a truly national sport these days.

Fraser Street - Clunes (main street) - yes, its straight
out of the 1850's...

As a kid growing up playing football in small town Australia during the 1960’s and 70’s it was 100% football (“footie” as its lovingly called - even today) all the time.  Back then footie was everything…and for the large part still is.  If you didn’t play you were considered weird and often shunned by your mates (peers group for those not in Australia!).  

To say it was a bit of a pressure cooker for a kid from a less than desirable family in a small town was an understatement.  Playing footie was the ultimate “leveler” from a social perspective – and every young boy was expected to play or at least try out for the local team. 
 

Clunes Football Oval as it is today (clearly in the summer time :-)

Like all junior teams there was the range of skills – from the very talented to the no so much.   To be honest, I was considered to be in the mid to lower end of the talent pool.   I'd like to think that it was mostly because I hadn't hit my growth spurt and therefore was both undersized and underweight for my age....but in reality not so much.   

I spent many a game on the bench eagerly awaiting my opportunity to play and prove myself to everyone around me…    There were some looooong seasons in my junior footie; all I can say is that I had plenty of splinters from “riding the pine”.  

As you can imagine I was less than thrilled but what could I do, I didn’t have a family pedigree from an established football family in town, in fact my dad didn’t play a game in his whole life, and therefore not a lot in the gene pool either.   So earning my spot was a humbling and often frustrating experience, but what I learned over those years were a number of things which I carry to this day (no, I didn’t say baggage – btw that’s your “outside voice” again  :-). 

Here are a few to let ruminate - “late bloomers” are often hungrier to play, as they know what it’s like to fail and struggle to earn a spot, they take nothing for granted and play each game hard cos they’re always out to prove themselves (for me this has been the story of my life - constantly out to prove myself) even to this day... 

Late bloomers more often than not have had little or no fanfare attached to their playing careers so their egos are often relatively healthy and intact - very workman like wouldn't you say?   This type of groundedness works well in a strong team environment, and hence I would contend is a better team player overall.

Interestingly if I look back to the so called “stars” of my junior footie, there was only one kid who went onto play at the top level (VFL) for St Kilda, unfortunately his career was cut short when he was killed in a car accident just as his career was taking off and he was on the verge of making his senior debut for the club – extremely sad given his talent.

Each Thursday night the team sheets were posted in the window of the milk bar on Fraser Street.   Okay so to translate from Australian to North American it’s like the local 7-11 or if you’re in the UK it’s the local corner store.  All three grades - Under 16, Reserves and First Grade.   As you can imagine it was quite a thrill to see you name in the starting squad.

Just another game playing at Clunes

The under 16 team trained Monday and Wednesday nights starting after we got back to town from secondary school, usually around 5:15 pm .   The closest secondary schools (High school and Technical college) were a 40 minutes train journey away, so after getting off the train we’d rush down to the town oval, which was about a mile from the station, sometimes I’d have to go home first which was another mile past the oval then come back again - my old bike got a good workout each week.  

On my way out the door from home I’d often grab a handful of biscuits (cookies in North America) to give me some respite against the constantly growling and empty stomach.  We’d train till 7:00 pm most nights irrespective of weather.   Surprisingly in those days it was colder and wetter than today so the mud was really deep, in fact at times it was so deep it would be over the top of your boots – almost to the quality and consistency of the Western Front during the Great War, with lots of slipping and sliding during practice. 

Most training sessions consisted of you quickly becoming caked with the thick black sticky river mud that served as topsoil on the oval.   And if it was raining, then you soon turned into a creature more akin to the “Creature from the black lagoon”.

The other thing was that how adept you became at practicing in semi darkness.   The local club didn’t get training lights till the mid 1970’s, so by the time we got down to the oval after school it was almost dark, and even with lights it was very hard to gauge distance and therefore could forget finesse or real skills work – every session was a no-frills survival of the fittest.

Aaahhh, yes all fun and games until you had to trudge home at the end of training in the pouring rain – just another mile, often soaked, filthy and starving (aren’t all teenage boys constantly hungry?)

Now I don’t want you to think it was a bad experience, quite the contrary in actual fact.  Out there on the training pitch and sometimes in games I felt like I fit in…finally!

Scars and scares...

Over the years you tend to develop a lot of scars, both physically as well as emotionally.  I guess in both situations the scars are noticeable, other times not so much. 

My most noticeable physical scar is on the front of my neck.  I hadn’t thought about it in some time, but for some reason I noticed the scar this past week.  It’s about the size of 25-cent piece (a “quarter” in the US & Canada, in Australia about the size of a 10 cent piece, and a one Euro coin in Europe).  It’s located at the base of my neck where the collarbone meets the mid line of my chest and neck.

I remembered back to when I first noticed the mole; it would have been in the late 1980’s.  I was surprised that there was this rather large and discolored mole staring back at me in the mirror, where I could have sworn had not existed the day before…it was as if it just appeared overnight….perhaps it did and I hadn’t noticed.  Why hadn’t I noticed it before I thought to myself?   I pressed on it, nope, not painful but with an unusual shape, not exactly what all of my other moles looked like which were mostly round and single colored.

Australian beach culture
TW at the Beer Can Regatta
Darwin, Australia 1987 

I’m also not sure what motivated me, a 20’s something guy to go get it checked out, but non-the-less I made an appointment with my then doctor at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto to have someone take a look at it.   Was it the fact that my mum had a number of skin cancers taken off her face in her later years or perhaps it more out of curiosity than anything else – to be honest I can’t remember the motivation?

As you can imagine growing up in country Australia during the 1960’s and 1970’s the use of sunscreen was non-existent.   Nope, every summer you’d get sunburned each day until you didn’t… (eventually turning brown and tanned with every passing day).  I’ve got to tell you that the first sunburn of the year was always extremely painful, often a combination of sunburn and windburn….can you say lobster colored?   The extreme heat and sensitivity was painful beyond belief.   However the worst of it was the inability sleep – you guessed it we had no air conditioning so it was often hotter in the house during the summer nights than outside.

Dad was fortunate that he had a very high pain threshold, so invariably his first sunburn would be followed that night by a scolding hot shower (he picked this trick up when he was working on the sugar cane farms in North Queensland during the early 1950’s and swore by it – his advice still rings in my ears to this day “you have to equalize the heat to take away the burn”.   In essence treating the burn with another burn to numb the skin….     As kids we religiously followed his advice but with the most painful side affects known to man.

So let’s tally up the situation here – Australian summer sun (often getting into the 40C range), no sunscreen, exposed for up to 6 hours to a combination of hot north wind, clear cloudless sky in full sun…followed at the end of the day by a scolding hot shower and no moisturizer or Aloe to help sooth the deeply burned skin.    This was an annual “right of passage” to enter the summer season.  Prior to working during the summer we’d by in the backyard or at the local pool, but as I got older and began working on the local farms I worked exclusively without a shirt and for those days I was exposed up to 12 hours in the full sun.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that when I went to the doctor and showed him the mole he was a little worried with its shape, size and general demeanor.   He asked if he could take a biopsy, not that I knew what that meant until he gouged out a deep chunk of mole and placed it in a test tube and sent it off to the lab for analysis.

Dysplastic Nevi - unevenly shaped,
often discolored or multi-colored

Now in those days I lived about 20 minutes away from the hospital, so be generous and say that it took me 40 minutes to get home that day.  From the moment I stepped in the door of my apartment the phone was ringing.   I ignored it and assumed it would go to my new fangled voice mailbox (come on it was the 80’s after all :-), but less than a minute later it rang again, thinking it was coincidence I again ignored it, but with the third time in five minutes I decided I’d better answer it.

It was the doctor’s office calling – we need you in here tomorrow morning at 8:00 am, did you not get the five messages we’ve left for you?   My response was obviously, ah, no I hadn’t but what’s going on – why do I need to be there so early?   “Oh no need to worry, but please be here first thing…”, but it was clear there was an urgency to the nurse’s request.    An uneasy feeling began to settle over, followed by a rather restless nights sleep, or should I say non-sleep.

An evasive answer to a direct question was unsettling unto itself, particularly given the afternoon biopsy and doctors initial concerns, but the worst of it was all the possibilities as to why it was so important to be there first thing.  Why the urgency I wondered?

I arrived at the doctor’s office at 8:00 am sharp, and was immediately ushered into the doctor’s office.  Nothing is more worrying that the doctor saying “not there’s really nothing to worry about, but….”.    It was the “but” that I wasn’t so keen on!   

He quickly explained that he thought I had a mole that he didn’t like the look of and that the results were inconclusive from the biopsy.  We need get that taken off immediately and sent for more pathology tests.    He further explained that if I had a family history of Dysplastic Nevi (which my mum had) or other forms of skin cancer that I had an increased risk of contracting a Melanoma, in fact 12 times the risk!   I found out after the fact that it’s very difficult to tell the difference between a Melanoma and Dysplastic Nevi without these further tests, hence his concern and immediacy of the consultation.  

Clearly it had to be removed pronto!   So after poking me with six or seven needles to make the area completely numb, he set about taking off the offending mole.   Not just taking it off, but to be fair “gouging” a chunk of skin and tissue out the size a 1 – 2 cm cube.   I guess its best to safe rather than sorry so he cut to the depth of my muscle, cartilage and collarbone.   Surprisingly it didn’t bleed too much as he sowed my up with about a dozen stitches.

I could check off most of these with my first
Dysplastic Nevi - scary as hell!

It hurt like hell after the anesthetic wore off, but not so bad considering the alternatives.  I went back to see him in the days following to check on the healing process and to get the results from the pathology test.   As you can imagine those few days were harrowing as I fretted over the possibilities…

“This one was all clear, it was a Dysplastic Nevi but I need to see you in three months to review your other moles.   Over the ensuing visits he measured each of the moles he thought to be a little unusual to make sure that they weren’t growing.  

It took two additional tries to get the entire mole out as it started to come back around the edges of the original scar in about the second month post op.   With each successive operation they took even larger chunks of skin, over a larger area.  He finally was able to stem the tide with the third time being lucky - no further growth or discoloration coming back.    OMG – finally!

Since then, although my original doctor has long since retired I’ve had a further eight moles removed by the other family doctors I’ve had over the ensuring years.   Fortunately for me each one of them has been of the Dysplastic Nevi variety, but again noticing my scar this past week has served a stark reminder of for my annual check up – yes, you guess my first question will be “Can you check my moles?”

Epilogue: 

Here are some scary facts:

In Australia, particularly with my age group (mid 40’s – mid 50’s):

·      Skin cancers account for around 80% of all newly diagnosed cancers

·      Between 95 and 99% of skin cancers are caused by exposure to the sun

·      The incidence of skin cancer is one of the highest in the world, two to three times the rates in Canada, the US and the UK.  

Ski bums and geeks...

Our weekends during the winter are mostly spent at a ski village and resort about two and three quarter hours south, just across the border in Western New York (USA) at a little Norman Rockwell-esq type town called Ellicottville. 

Ellicottville at its finest in the winter - a small,
intimate and family oriented ski resort located just 2:45
from Toronto

For the past three winters we rented a condo in Ellicottville so the kids could participate in the Screaming Eagles ski program.  Each year their confidence and speed surpassed their prior year accomplishments, in fact last year Zach was much faster on ski’s that either me or my ex.    We’d all start at the top and he’d basically barrel down the mountain without turning and be standing waiting for us after each run…   I know he was proud of his new found speed and confidence on ski’s and secretly so was I.

As I write this week’s blog I’m sitting in the Starbucks in my old neighborhood waiting for Zach to come home from school so I can drop by and pick him up for our weekly winter pilgrimage down to Ellicottville.   Normally Sami would be accompanying us and it would be the “three amigo’s” heading south, but that changed earlier this week when she called me after school.

I could sense that she was a little upset and apprehensive about something just by the tone in her voice (yeah, parents can pick up the vibe with our kids), so I asked her what was bothering her and she was very anxious (probably because she had to tell me) and apologetic because she just learned that the Provincial Robotics competition had been slated for this coming weekend and hence she couldn't come to Ellicottville with us…

This years new Rossignol skis

Last November Sami represented her school at the Toronto Private Schools Robotics competition; in fact she was the leader for her team and was on point to drive their teams robot through its various activities and gates.  The event was held at her school with 14 other private schools attending from all over the Greater Toronto Area.  I had expected it to be a low-key affair with lots of serious “geeky” types huddled around their robots tweaking and tuning in prep for the competition, which would then be conducted in front of a hushed audience.  Strangely it was far from the quiet affair that I had expected and an absolute hoot!

It was a cross between a rock concert, which included loud and pulsing music (yes, even Armin Van Buren would be proud), cheer squads for a number of the schools and the general air of a large house party!   Wow, I remember thinking these robotic geeks really know how to have fun.  

Fortunately she led her school to a third place, with the top three schools going to the Provincial Robotics championship which were now scheduled for this coming weekend…   She was not happy because she wouldn’t be able to come with us and ski for the first time this season.  

As I left Sami tonight she was musing that if they won the Provincials they would be going to the North American tournament, then from there it would be then just one step away from the Global tournament and a trip overseas...her eyes were wide and bright as she thought about the possibilities.   My parting words to her were to have fun and dream big!   Who knows what could happen but that if she won and went to the next stage I would be there in person – front and center!  

Burton snowboard web based selector

She smiled her beaming beautiful smile and I could tell she was dreaming of going all the way to the global tournament…that’s my girl – always dreaming big!

Zach and I hit the road around 4:45 pm and arrived into Ellicottville around 7:15pm and that includes the border crossing – we each have a NEXUS pass which makes it very easy to scoot through the border (generally no more than 2 minutes).   

He and I have already planned our breakfast tomorrow morning at a little greasy spoon in town at 7:00 am so we can take our time and get ready for our couple of days of skiing.   The Screaming Eagles program starts at 9:00 am so our plan is to have a lazy breakfast then head back over the Holiday Valley (ski resort) – a good five minutes from town.

The kicker tomorrow is that for some reason its supposed to be unseasonably warm – they’re calling for 14C when usually its -5C and fridged….so slushy spring skiing, don’t you hate global warming!    

The toughest decision I have to make on weekends like this is “do I ski or snowboard?”   Yeah, I realize that if that’s the hardest decision I have this weekend I’m exceptionally lucky!   I decided to learn to snowboard about three years ago when Sami was nine (cos her friends were learning), so we had lessons together, but after a few weeks she decided that although it looked cool it was just plain hard to do so she went back to skiing.

I stuck to it cos I was fortunate enough to get the hang of it pretty quickly, but irrespective of my abilities to snowboard I’ve taken a lot (sorry did I say lot?) of major spills.  In fact last year I swear I had a bruise that covered all of my right buttock plus most of my lower back – can you say the size of Texas???   Fortunately I’ve always worn a helmet and its well marked with all my falls over recent years, I can’t imagine not wearing one and really just asking for trouble ;-P   

Okay so in my younger years perhaps….

I’m getting psyched up for the first run of the year; its so much fun to be skiing with Zach, but thinking about Sami and wishing she was here with us - next time for sure!

Tumultuous

Prologue:
Who would have thought that a year on and I’d still be writing my weekly blog?   Clearly not me, to be honest I thought that I would have run out of stories by about last April yet here I am still writing merrily away….clearly no accounting for my readers tastes ☺

Indelible Adventures blog statistics....who knew that a year
on it would have been so well subscribed??

Seriously though my weekly writing has definitely helped me think about life a little more deeply and encouraged me to be more observant in my day-to-day interactions with Zach and Sami not to mention the broader world around me.  It’s also helped me connect more with my past – stories from my mum and dad including the related stories passed down about my grandfather were particularly well read and commented on.  
  
Just the fact that so many of you are still interested in reading my blog every week is really encouraging.  The other thing that blows me away is the breadth of countries where people regularly read my blog, and although I don’t actually know anyone directly in Argentina, Latvia or Japan I appreciate your loyal following!   My readership is truly global now with readers from all corners of the world including two large and rather active groups in Germany and Russia – who knew?.  Thank you one and all!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, did I tell you I signed the papers on my new house?   Okay this is huge news for me and will be my first house that I’ve owned by myself.  It’s a completely renovated four bedroom with new hardwood floors, windows etc and although an older place has great “bones” if you know what I mean.  The best part other than living on the Danforth (Greek-town in Toronto) is that the subway station is six houses from my front door and now Zach will be able to catch the subway to school across town without having to change trains (his school is at Bathurst).

Our new house - 323 Strathmore Boulevard 

We all really liked the vibe from the house from the moment we walked in, and most of all I’m thrilled that the kids are both very excited about helping me decorate and make it ours.   I take possession at the end of February but won’t move in until April when my current lease runs out, this will give us  time to paint and do some basic stuff.

As many of you know my marriage ended after almost 14 years early last year so it’s been quite the year of adjustment really.   But we’re not done just yet….now just to make it interesting lets layer on a change of job in the August/September timeframe.  Okay, so I can’t complain too much as I then spent three weeks traveling in Italy (see my blogs from the summertime) when the kids were away at Camp Arowhon in Algonquin National Park with their friends.  Clearly we’re talking monumental changes to my life and indeed all three of our lives. 

Fortunately Zach and Sami have adjusted extremely well to the changes, particularly to spending time at both places and I definitely think we’ve made the best of it.   In fact the kids and I have traveled quite extensively this past year, surprisingly quite a bit more than in our past life.   As you might have already guessed as part of the “new” normal I've already booked us for Hawaii at March Break (okay Maui to be exact), then an individual long weekend with each of them somewhere in the North America (city of their choice) at a time of their choosing, plus another weekend or two with the three of us exploring.   Hey you have to use these air miles somehow right! ☺   Personally I’m thinking New Orleans, Seattle and possibly San Diego are all on the dance card so far for 2013…

TW's first passport....so young!

Lets take a look at my family history of separation and divorce – there’d be no surprise that we’ve had a number of other separations and divorces over the years within the family.   That includes my mum who was married before she met my dad plus two of my brothers, and a couple of nephews (no, not naming names :-).   Sounds like a normal family to me, but it does seem that as a family we’re comfortable with the whole thing – not that it’s a good thing necessarily, but a facet of life that the family has come to accept and support.

One story I have that relates is when I went to get my first passport I had to apply for my parent’s birth certificates and marriage certificate to submit as part of the standard process.  I was 25 at the time, so no kid by any stretch of the imagination.  

When I received the marriage certificate I thought that they had made a mistake with the dates because I would have been nine years old when mum and dad had gotten married according to the certificate….how was that possible I thought?    So I went to my sister Glenda and explained that the Births, Deaths & Marriages office had clearly made a mistake on the date, but while I was blathering on about the certificate I noticed that she wasn’t making eye contact and was trying to downplay the whole thing and basically change the subject as fast as possible without making it too obvious.

Hhhmmm, something isn’t quite right I remember thinking to myself.  Next came the moment of silence then the admission that indeed the marriage certificate was accurate and that mum and dad actually hadn’t been married until I was nine years old.     

Wow!   So what do you do with that information….especially since mum was recovering from her stroke and had been generally unwell for a number of years, and dad was just trying to keep it together for her and nurse her back to health, so to now dredge up this tidbit of history probably wasn’t in anyone’s best interests so I let it go.   

It was a different era where kids were “seen and not heard”, so this type of thing was of no real consequence to us and therefore never spoken of.  The reality was that it was completely swept under the rug and often denied rather than have an open conversation about.   You’d think, as we got a little older that this would be a topic for discussion, but not so much!  

Zach & Sami - my pride and joy!

Now that I’m a parent I realize how difficult it can be to sometimes bring up history to your kids to ensure they have the “full” story, both Zach and Sami mostly know the good, bad and ugly but there will be things that won’t quite make it to primetime that are important to tell them.  This blog has helped enormously, but not all of the stories have been shared just yet.  

However, more importantly its about signalling to them that's its okay to talk about any topic and that there are no conversations that we shouldn't be courageous enough to have between the three of us.   
I know this is going to get interesting.....that's all I'm saying!