Sometimes, the hockey rink is like a time machine

So one thing that’s interesting about spending all this time around hockey rinks is that in the coming and going with Small Boy and Boychen we cross paths with most of the other age groups. SB plays Bambini hockey – officially Bambinis have 2004 and 2003 birth dates though SB is one of seven kids one his team who are younger than that. After this season, he can legally play another two seasons of Bambini hockey before he ages into the next group, the Piccolos. Then he’ll get two seasons in that age group before he ages up to the Moskitos. The “Mosi’s” practice right after SB on Tuesdays and Thursdays and we see them running drills as we’re leaving. It’s hard to believe they’re twelve and thirteen; a handful of them are just one helping of steak and potatoes away from being as tall as their coach. I suppose right about twelve and thirteen is when the testosterone starts kicking in and they start shooting up and filling out, getting real muscles and broad shoulders; but before practice I can see  them screwing around, throwing snowballs at each other and stealing each other’s hats and they’re still very much boys. Just bigger.

Thursday nights the hockey school practices in the arena where the pro team plays, and hockey school overlaps with practice for the Junior Elites – the last step before a kid tries to make it in professional hockey. They’re 17, 18, 19 year old boys – men – and while I’m on the ice with the little kids the Elites are running their warm ups in the stadium. They run the stairs, playing a game of follow the leader where the first boy in line sets the drill: sometimes they run up as fast as they can touching every step with the balls of their feet, sometimes they jump up two steps then back down one then up two again, sometimes they run up on every other stair, sometimes they hop up on one leg. However they do it, it’s full gas to the top, then they jog over to the next aisle and down to get back in line to run the stairs again. These boys aren’t kids anymore, even if they are seventeen – if a kid is still in the SCB program by the time he ages into the Junior Elite level, he’s hands-down one of the best youth hockey players in the country. Those boys aren’t kidding around anymore, they’re looking to play professional hockey. Period.

I see these guys around the rinks, various versions of the future Small Boy – SB at twelve, SB at fifteen, SB at eighteen – and it’s disconcerting and exciting and mildly terrifying to imagine SB morphing into a big boy and then a man. It’s not the hockey I’m talking about here, I’m not imagining SB playing Junior Elite hockey, it’s just the vision of him tall and broad and muscular that’s hard to reconcile with my long stretched out boy of tendon and bone and high child’s voice. Somehow seeing these hockey players on a regular basis, and seeing them in their stair-step age groups, makes them more real to me than the fifth graders I see around town or the teenagers who take the train to school and work in the city. I know exactly how old those hockey boys are – the kids who take the ice Tuesday after SB have 1999 – 2002 birth dates – and I know exactly how far away SB is from looking like those boys. If I squint my eyes and tilt my head when the Mosis drill, it’s like seeing a vision of the future.

It’s like this, the now and the then in the same frame, and the staircase between them suddenly so unbearably short:

Wordless Wednesday: Wha? Huh? Crocuses? edition

Why I write

I drove to a friend’s house last week and there is a point in the drive where I crest a wooded hill and at the top clear the woods and make a slight turn and BAM all across the horizon snow-covered peaks. In the foreground there are fields, and a few traditional Swiss farmhouses, and below the village. It was a pretty day when I drove, in the mid-afternoon, and I topped the hill and the Alps bore down on me and I actually said “Wow” out loud. More than once. It can still do that, after ten years, that sudden panorama. It can still nearly stop my heart.

What would happen if I opened my heart to every pink-blue sunrise, every red-streaked sunset, every first crocus of spring? Would it burn up from the rapture of it all? Explode? Get stronger? Sometimes I look up at the Eiger and wonder how we even manage to move through the day at all rather than stand rooted to the spot – any spot, the Alps or the sunrise or the blossoming plum tree – saying wow wow wow over and over. If we opened the valve, really opened the valve, we’d be ripped from shore and carried downstream by the sheer fact of the world. How to open the valve just enough to be alive and not so much we’re uprooted? Or is that the living, the moment of feeling your roots ripped from the soil of the ordinary?

And it is that, that BAM that ripping that rapture that is the first time every single time that I’m reaching for every time I pick up a pen. I want to crest the hill, to clear the woods, to be brought face to face with the extraordinary and to realize, finally, that it is extraordinary and I want to take you with me.

Leaving my desk

I came across a comment on Twitter that I’m never going to find again and thus will never be able to quote accurately or properly attribute, but basically it said: The poetry world would be a lot more pleasant if all poets took up a non-poetry related hobby. (If any of you recognize that tweet, please by all means let me know the source in the comments.)

This is my dilemma again and again about how to use my limited child-free time. There are other things I should be doing (maybe actually moving my body sometimes) and want to be doing (more with the garden, photography, getting back on the bike, learning to knit), but every hour I spend doing something that’s not writing is one less hour I have for writing. And yet I know that I’m happier, more interesting, and a better writer when I actually do more than write.

The hockey school turned out to be a great decision and it’s hard to believe now that I had stomachache-inducing angst about it. I have, for the first time since I quit teaching before I even got pregnant with Small Boy, work friends. Sometimes, after the Thursday night training, we go upstairs to the stadium restaurant and have a drink. Parents recognize me and the kids, even the ones who I’ve never worked with because they already knew how to skate, say hi; this afternoon at Small Boy’s Bambini training The World’s Cutest Hockey Player sought me out three times to say hello (her older brother is on SB’s team). (And I’m not joking, this girl is THE WORLD’S CUTEST HOCKEY PLAYER EVER!) All the other trainers, and the vast majority of the parents, are Swiss and it feels like I have a Swiss life for the first time. It only took me ten years. And because it’s my job – seriously, they even put money in my bank account – I have to do it and I have to be there and it forces me to do something other than hole up and write.

Holing up and writing is great, and I excel at the holing up aspect of it, but when you sit in the same place all the time you always have the same view; I mean that literally and metaphorically. I think most writers can relate to the feeling that there is not enough time in the day – and there is never enough time in the day – and the temptation to chain ourselves to our desks is powerful. Certainly if there is a deadline looming we have to chain ourselves to our desks, especially if there is a paycheck involved, but most days I think I would be better off if I did the counter-intuitive and left my desk behind for a bit. Most days I don’t do that; I think “I should go for a walk” but never get up or I think “I should try to meet up with a friend one Monday” and then never schedule it. This is why the hockey school has been so good. Twice a week I go do something radically different, mildly physical (it’s not so strenuous down at my end of the rink), highly social, and all mine. And non-poetry related.

And that last aspect of it is turning out to be the most interesting of all. Hockey school ends the last day of February (the unpredictable playoff schedule of our professional team makes scheduling practices in the Arena nearly impossible, and the outdoor rink closes mid-March, so we use March 1 as an easy end date) and I’m going to need to find something else to do. Something physical and preferably outdoors. Writers, what are your non-writing passions? How important are your non-work related hobbies to you?

Wordless Wednesday: Bambini Edition

Writing goals: 2011 wrap-up and 2012 goals

I took a look back at my writing goals for 2011 and I see that I didn’t accomplish a single one of them. I started the year intending to:

• Write 52 new poems. How did I do? It’s possible, if I count all the jottings and rushed drafts that are clearly going nowhere, that I wrote 52 drafts in 2011, but I think the real count, still a bit generous, falls at 42.
• Submit to 20 journals. How did I do? I sent out fifteen packages last year.
• Attend a juried workshop. I didn’t attend a live workshop last year, but I workshopped twice on-line with Kim Addonizio and both workshops were amazing, challenging, and extraordinary helpful. I’m starting another eight week session with her on the ninth, and for anybody out there looking for an on-line poetry workshop that’s really going to kick your butt and be worth the money, Kim’s is it.
• I wanted a contest ready chapbook by September, and here I fell furthest from the goal. Not even close. In fact, now I have two half-way chapbooks instead of one finished one because half-way through the year I started writing a series of poems on a theme.
• Two blog posts a week. Also, no. I had 77 posts in 2011; twice a week would have been 104.
• Read 52 poetry collections. I read 32 books for the first time and re-read some old favorites.

And yet I feel like it was, on balance, a good year. I got a lot done, even if I didn’t reach my target numbers on, well, anything. I learned a lot, had some mild successes, and got better at what I do. It feels like a win.

Not having a chapbook together is starting to sting; it seems like that’s something I should have put together by now. Maybe the problem lies in not knowing how to put a collection together; perhaps I’m trying too hard to have everything relate to a theme; perhaps I’m simply not ready to be thinking about collections yet. I don’t know. The chapbook goal, that’s the wild card every year.

My goals for 2012 are essentially the same:

• Produce 52 decent drafts
• Continue to strive for a daily writing practice
• Post to my blog twice a week
• Enter poems in one contest
• Send out 20 packages
• Participate in two writing workshops, either live or on-line
• Finish the in progress chapbook (if only in terms of sheer number of poems). I’ll eliminate the requirement that it be “contest ready” but dang it, I want to finish this project at this point if only for the sake of finishing the project.
• Build relationships with other writers

Watching the Small Boy at hockey practice is one of my greater joys; I love to watch him give his honest best, to work so hard. I tell him, honestly, to just keep doing what he’s doing. If he continues to work as hard as he does now, improvement will come and he’ll be fine. He’ll surely be ready for the next age group up when he ages out of Bambinis if he keeps doing what he’s doing. He’s vastly better than he was in September, and he was making really rapid progress until he was side-lined by his concussion. Just keep doing what you’re doing, I tell him, and you’ll be fine. That’s the ultimate goal, to be as clear-eyed about my own progress as I can be about his, as I’m trying to teach him to be about his own self.

Whenever Small Boy has to play a team he’s lost to before, I tell him: “That game is over. Today is today. You play today’s game.” I think that’s going to be my motto for the year.

Writers on writing

“Reality – if we use that word to indicate real life, and the way things really are – should always be viewed as a sheet of ice beneath which we, the writers (with our readers in tow) are swimming, trying constantly to punch through, so that we can breathe. With every sentence we write, we must be poised and alert to punch through and make the story better.” – Rick Bass

The end of Konkordanz? What happened in Swiss politics this week…

On Wednesday the Swiss Parliament held elections for the Bundesrat – the Executive Council, I guess, for lack of a more precise translation. The Parliament is directly elected by the people, but the Executive Council is not: it is elected by the members of the Parliament. It’s shown live on Swiss TV and it’s possibly even more boring than watching C-Span because you don’t see any actual voting. For each of the seven seats, ballot papers are distributed; members mark their ballots in private; the ballots are collected and counted out of sight; and then the results are announced by the head of the Parliament. So really on TV all you see is a bunch of people milling about and you hear the murmurings of three different languages and the TV commentators try to fill the time between results. Each of the seven seats is voted on individually and to win the seat a candidate must achieve an absolute majority of the votes cast; in the absence of an absolute majority, a second round of balloting is held, then a third, and so on until a candidate gains a majority. Yesterday only one of the seven votes went to a second ballot – the seventh seat, which incidentally was the only seat that had been vacated through retirement. The other six members of the Executive Council were all incumbents (bisherige) and they were all reelected with a single round ballot of balloting.

There’s a lot of party jockeying and coordination in the weeks leading up to the Bundesratwahlen - party leaders need to corral the troops, to make sure for example all the FDP members are going to vote for the FDP candidate but they also make alliances with one another – if the SP members all stick with the BDP candidate, the BDP will in turn deliver votes for the SP. The actual voting for the council members should be orderly and largely unsurprising, as everything has been worked out in advance and because there is an unwritten rule about which parties should end up with seats in the Executive Council.

Everything is supposed to be run according to two principles: the “magic formula” and Konkordanz. The “magic formula” decrees that each of the four leading parties in Switzerland (Switzerland has a multiparty system and representatives of no fewer than ten parties sit in the Parliament) holds at least one seat in the seven member Executive Council; typically, the three largest parties hold two seats and the fourth party, one. Konkordanz – agreement, collegiality, accordance – is the linch pin of Swiss politics. Everybody agrees, gets along, sticks to their word, works together, achieves compromise. There is nothing more Swiss than a good compromise and there is nothing Swiss politicians like to speak of more than Konkordanz. And there is nothing lower than violating the spirit of Konkordanz. If you want to blast your opponents in Swiss politics, say they violated Konkordanz.

The Swiss People’s Party – the SVP – is the largest party in Switzerland (you can peek at the most recent election results here) but they currently hold only one seat in the Executive Council as a result of an internal party split that saw Bundesratin Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf split from the SVP and help form the BDP. It’s a bit inside baseball, but basically the SVP is becoming increasingly rightist, nationalist, and strident; what used to be a solid conservative party has become increasingly extreme to the point where many of its own members were no longer comfortable with the party’s positions and its Zurich-based leadership. Think Tea Party v. normal conservative Republican. So in 2008 some members split and formed the BDP and one of these members was Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, and when she left the SVP she took her Executive Council seat with her.* It was quite the earthquake in Swiss politics, and the SVP has been under-represented in the Executive Council ever since.

Yesterday, Widmer-Schlumpf was up for reelection to the Executive Council; her candidacy was the second to be voted on and she was reelected with a single round of balloting. The SVP then announced that they would fight vigorously for every remaining seat (even the FDP seat, and the FDP might be the only semi-ally the SVP had left at then point) and oh boy did all heck quietly move about after that. (Hell does not break loose in Swiss politics, by US standards, but by Swiss standards yesterday was quite the political show-down.) At the end of the day the SVP still only had one seat in the Executive Council, they had turned on any potential ally they might have had, their leadership was shown to be ineffective, and this morning most political commentators agree that they were the big losers of the day yesterday.

Them, and Konkordanz. Say what you will about the conservative, nationalistic politics of the SVP, they’ve held the most seats in the Swiss Parliament since 1999 and in the last two elections for the Executive Council they’ve ended up with one seat, the same number as the BDP with only 5% of the vote nationwide. It’s a situation that can’t hold. I’m no fan of the Swiss People’s Party, but if Switzerland is going to have its “magic formula” and its Konkordanz, then the Parliament is going to have to hold its nose and find an SVP member they can vote for. (Admittedly the party leadership does not make this easy – they demanded a second seat in the council while removing possibly the most likable candidate from consideration). And if not, if members of the Parliament can no longer be corralled and parties can no longer come to agreements that will hold – well, maybe it’s time to stop talking about Konkordanz as a guiding principle of Swiss politics.

To add to the bitter blow for the SVP, the Executive Council then elected Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf President. The Swiss presidency is largely ceremonial – because it’s awkward for a visiting head of state to be greeted by a body of seven, you know? – and the president holds no more sway in the Executive Council than the next member of the Council, her vote is not weighted, she holds no special powers. The title is ceremonial and rotates steadily among the members of the Executive Council but nonetheless: a woman representing a party that gained about 5% of the vote nation-wide holds the presidency. The SVP must be loving that.

What does the SVP do now? Go into opposition? Revamp their national leadership? Can they hold on to their voters? How many of the rank and file members of the Parliament, tired of the shenanigans, will jump ship to the BDP? Swiss politics – which basically prides itself on being staid, orderly, and predictable – is getting more interesting all the time.

* I’m shortening the story here: Widmer-Schlumpf, then with the SVP, was elected by the members of the Parliament against the will of the SVP. They had put up as their candidate Christoph Blocher, who in 2008 was unacceptable to many members of the Parliament. In keeping with the magic formula the parliament did go ahead and elect an SVP member to the cabinet, just not the one the SVP leadership wanted. Political infighting, bickering and party-splitting ensued; Widmer-Schlumpf was essentially forced out of the SVP; the BDP was founded; and Swiss politics has been a bit more interesting ever since.

Concussed

So, here’s an SMS you never want to get from your husband who you know has taken your son to the ER after a really hard (illegal, unnecessary, infuriating) hit in a hockey game: “SB’s pupils are normally the same size aren’t they?”

“As far as I know. Never noticed otherwise.” you message back. “Why? Are they not the same size now????”

“Nope.” comes the reply “one is larger – the left one – but could just be the light.”

At which point the only thing you can manage to type back is “What the FUCK?”

* * *

One of the small blessings of living right next door to R’s parents is that when this series of messages flew two weekends ago, my mother-in-law was able to walk across the driveway to take over putting The Boychen to bed and I packed a bag with some stuff for R and some stuff for SB – who was clearly going to be held overnight for observation – and drove to the hospital.

* * *

I’ll cut to the chase and say now that SB is okay. It was “just” a concussion; in spite of the most thorough opthalmological exam I’ve ever witnessed and a head MRI, no reason was ever found for SB’s unequal pupils. Here’s another thing you don’t really want, by the way: to watch over the technician’s shoulders as picture after picture of your son’s brain comes up on the screen. Pictures that you can’t read, and so you watch the tech’s body language instead, waiting for the widened eye, the sudden tilt of the head. It doesn’t come, but that doesn’t really make you feel any better until your kid is pulled out of the machine.

* * *

I’ve tried to write this a few times, it’s always a mess, brief paragraphs are the best I can do. Not even seven, a concussion, and though I know hockey players who have played for years and never gotten concussions, I find myself thinking “his first concussion” as if I expect more.

* * *

These recent articles in The New York Times about Derek Boogaard have not made me feel any better.

* * *

Trying to enforce a Sport-Verbot on a nearly seven year old physical boy used to playing hockey three times a week is not easy my friends. Not easy at all. SB has hated missing practice, hated being kept out of gym class at school, hates that I won’t let him play hockey in the driveway. The idea of being calm, and quiet and restful – it sort of makes him break out in hives I think and as a result his behavior at home has been … challenging.

This past Sunday was the Christmas party for SB’s team: a kids v. parents hockey tournament and then an early dinner. It was two weeks after the concussion, the earliest the doctors said he could start back with sports, and we thought it would be a good time to see how he feels – the tournament would be friendly and I would be right there on the ice to keep an eye on him. He played all three games and said he felt okay, but at bedtime he had a headache. He’s back on Injured Reserve and skipping training this week.

I played on the moms’ team and had the best time. I’ve been skating these past couple of years, but not playing hockey and this was hockey, with the full equipment, and even though it was a friendly match against the kids don’t be fooled: seven and eight year old boys play for keeps. They ran us hard. I still skate well, and I’ve got some game sense, but no puck handling skills at all; but I had so much fun that if I could somehow manufacture an additional twelve hours a week (stop laughing) I would run right out and join an adults’ recreational league because I had that much fun.

* * *

This is my new favoritest picture ever of me and the Small Boy. Look at that smile, do you think he was happy to be on the ice again? For all that hockey is a hard, physical, capricious and sometimes violent sport, anything that makes my boy smile like that has a place in this family. At least for now.

Wow. And happy. And wow.

So one day, you feel like giving up. You wonder why the hell you keep writing. Then you read something like this, and you feel a little better, and you remember to be kind to yourself and to just keep going. You start to have days when you think something is going right, you’re not sure what but the words are …better, somehow. You think, yes. Yes, I think I can do this. I need time, and teachers, but I can do this.

Then you open your email and discover you’ve been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

And you know you still have a long way to go, you still need time, you still need teachers, you’re quite sure you’re not going to make the final cut and actually get a Pushcart Prize, but it’s a thing you’ve needed, another push along the road, something to take out of your pocket and look at when the rejection letters get you down.

You think, yes. Yes, I think I can do this.