the write stuff

Oct 9

There was a girl

THERE WAS a girl. Twenty-four years old. By all accounts, a luminous human being from the very beginning – the sort of girl whose sparks of brilliance and warmth of personality ignited everyone she met.

Jun 17

4 Comments

The magic of the mile

LATE ON A FRIDAY EVENING: the mid-June sun is lingering, a soft breeze blows, and I’m standing on a red clay track behind a line of white chalk along with eight other middle-aged guys. We’re all outfitted in similar singlets, shorts and racing spikes. I’m uncharacteristically nervous before a race.

Apr 12

The beauty of the Boston marathon

I’M SOMEWHERE IN the middle of a pack of more than 15,000 runners, thumping down the narrow road out of Hopkinton, Massachusetts, headed east for downtown Boston. The course is thick with spectators. They offer slices of orange. They yell and clap. Kids raise their hands for high-fives. “Go Canada!” they encourage me (I’ve got a small flag pinned to my shirt). Cool – it’s the Boston marathon, or Mecca for long distance runners like me. Read more

Mar 21

2 Comments

When fathers come out of the closet

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER recently won an Oscar for his nuanced portrayal of Hal, an elderly gay father, in the movie Beginners. Hal’s son Oliver spends most of the film coming to grips with his dad’s late-age emergence from the closet after his mother’s death, including its reverberations on his own romantic life.

Feb 15

1 Comment

How I learned to love the Volvo (and my Dad)

I CHANCED UPON an amusing story online this week, about a Swiss guy who installed a wood stove in his Volvo, to counteract Europe’s recent freezing temperatures. It brought back a flood of memories about growing up with Volvo wagons.

May 19

Over hill, over dale, over park, over pale

IT ONLY TAKES a mere three months for spring to arrive in Ontario, so here we are at 6 pm on the first warm Thursday of the year, early May, eight runners standing on a grassy secluded hill about to start our weekly tempo workout together. It’s a first for 2011 – everyone’s in T-shirts! The sun warms our skin as a cool breeze rustles our hair. We fidget and stretch, shaking off a day of inactivity, readying our bodies and minds for the coming exertion.