In a week when the news has been filled with emotionally charged stories, from pipeline protests, to the Covid-19 virus, to the Weinstein trial, it seems the one story everyone can find magic in, is the that of the Zamboni driver turned NHL goalie from last weekend.  Thank heavens for David Ayres.  We needed him this week. In case you missed the story, last weekend, during a hockey game in Toronto between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Carolina Hurricanes, both Hurricane goalies were injured and could not mind the net.  It turns out that each franchise, when hosting a home game, is required to have on standby, a back-up goalie.  This back-up goalie must fill in for either team should their two goalies be unable to play. 

Introducing, David Ayres.

David is no stranger to hockey.  But he had never been a goalie in the NHL.  In his younger years, Ayres now 42, played in the Allan Cup Hockey League as a goalie.  More recently, he served as a backup to both the Toronto Marlies and the Charlotte Checkers in the American Hockey League.  In 2004 David became ill and required a kidney transplant.  His donor was his mom, Mary.

For a number of years, he worked at Ricoh Coliseum, now Coca-Cola Coliseum, home of the Toronto Marlies.  As manager, he was occasionally required to do maintenance and sometimes operated the ice resurfacer, hence the nick name, Zamboni driver.  While working at the Ricoh Coliseum one of the equipment men found out he was a goalie and the head coach of the Marlies started using him as a goaltender at practice when an extra man was needed, as did the Maple Leafs.

These days, he works at Mattamy Athletic Centre, the old Maple Leaf Gardens, as the building’s operations manager.  And he is on call just in case.  Just in case the almost impossible situation arises; both goalies from the one of the teams are injured and he is needed to fill in. On Saturday night, it just happened that the goalies who were injured were both from the opposing team – the Hurricanes.

It shouldn’t have surprised anyone that he arrived on the ice wearing a Marlies helmet and pads, and a Maple Leaf’s t-shirt under his equipment.  And yet the job he was asked to do was to help Carolina win.  To make matters even tougher for him, he knew full well that the odds were stacked against him.  The NHL is a big step up.  Despite having taken his fair share of shots fired from Maple Leaf players in practice, facing them in a game, where they were now the opposition couldn’t have been easy.

His ‘new’ team, the Hurricanes, were up 3-1 when he entered.  I’m thinking the Leafs saw an easy opportunity for them to catch up and take the lead, especially after he allowed two of their early shots to go in, tying the game.

But somewhere between the second and third period, he found his stride.  Players from both teams, recognizing the difficult position he had been placed in, gave him encouragement.  When players from the Hurricanes told him to not worry about it, and that they were going to play hard to help him, he reached deep down and dug out the dream he must have carried for years.  The Carolina Hurricanes managed a 6 – 3 win.  After the first two goals scored on him, Ayres never let another shot hit the back of the net.

So often in life we are told to live in the moment.  To not be looking behind ourselves, longing for the good old days, nor looking too far forward to days that may not come.  And yet, I’m beginning to think we need a blend of at least two of these.  It is of course important that we live in the moment.  But we also need to have a slightly wider-angle lens available.  We need to be able to see where we might like to be heading, who we want to be when we get there, and what we need to do today to help make it happen.  And at the same time, to do what is even more difficult; to live in the moments we are given. 

I think the David Ayres story is a perfect example of this.  While Disney may be able to stretch the Zamboni driving angle to make it seem like David was just contentedly going about his life as an ice resurfacer, and then from nowhere was plunked into goal in an NHL game, the more truthful story is he had been preparing his whole life for this opportunity.  An even more amazing truth is that when his moment presented itself, against all odds, he was able to step right into the middle of it and turn it into exactly what he must have dreamed about.

I love so many things about this story.  I especially love that even though Mr. Ayres had his dream of being an NHL goaltender sidelined for what he must have thought would be forever, and that he faced an enormous health challenge, he tucked his dream in his jacket pocket and still managed to carry it with him, keeping it warm, as he went about more mundane tasks in his life, like volunteering to coach younger players and driving a Zamboni.

All of us have dreams.  Sometimes they become faded, sort of trapped in the surface of the ice as the Zamboni of life applies layer after layer of water on top of them.  Sometimes we stop doing the little things that propel our dream forward, or at least keep it alive.  The story this week of David Ayres, serves as a wonderful reminder to us to scratch back the ice that may have covered our dream, to find a way to give it a bit of nourishment, and above all, to recognize and be brave enough to seize our moment when it happens to come our way.  In the meantime, we’d be well-advised to fully enjoy the experience of driving our Zamboni around our own little ice rink of life.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Where is your Zamboni taking you?’

Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to steer your Zamboni toward your dream.
 
 
 
 

There was a simple, not-really-even-news-worthy, story on the evening news this week.  Later, I saw the same story on social media.  It seems a long-time, superfan of Jann Arden, Rita Gordon, had been wanting to see her in concert.  When Rita heard that Jann Arden was doing a big Canadian tour this year, she hoped to be able to buy a ticket to go see her idol.  When she went on line to purchase the ticket, she realized that the tickets, while available, were still out of her budget.

Feeling disappointed, she tweeted out to the singer, ‘My 1st tweet goes to @jannarden . I am 30, was totally willing to go sit in the back by myself at your concert in Wpg, but when I saw the price of the cheapest tickets.. where can I sell my kidney. Your fan since 1995, Rita Gordon! Xoxo

To clarify, this was Rita’s first ever tweet.  To further clarify, she was not trying to criticize Arden, or the prices of the concert.  She simply wanted her favourite performer to know that she was her fan, and that she was disappointed to not be able to afford a ticket.

Hundreds of thousands of tweets are sent in a day.  Whoops.  I just looked it up.  Five million tweets are sent per day!  Statistically, this one, lonely tweet should have been sent, and then been absorbed into twitterland without another so much as a retweet or comment or cute emoji attached.

It just so happened that when the tweet was sent, it was read by another Jann Arden fan, Pauline Ehle, from Lloydminster, Alberta.  When Pauline saw the tweet, she empathized with Rita.  Pauline knew what it felt like to not have the money to go to see a concert featuring someone she really enjoyed.  She said she had been in the same situation in the 1990’s when she was a new Arden fan.  Pauline said, “At that time, I couldn’t afford to go to one of her concerts, so now I thought, ‘Well, I’m having a good month, why not?”  Pauline bought a fourth row ticket and gave it to Rita!

Why not?

Why not has been in the air this week.  Jim and I went shopping to buy Jim some new dress pants.  He needed to have the pants altered in length before bringing them home.  The salesperson, when ringing us through the cash, asked if Jim wanted to have, for a small cost, a permanent crease put in the front and back of the pant leg.  “Sure”, replied Jim.  “Why not?”

Little Ben has been all over this expression too.  In his case he really doesn’t fully understand it, but he when he has said a firm, ‘No’ to his dad, Matt often asks, ‘Why not?’  So now, if we ask Ben if he wants something and he does not, is answer is a firm, “No!”, followed immediately by a firm, “Why Not!”  Jim and I have taken to using this expression too – NO, Why Not!

I loved the story about the Jann Arden fans.  I loved it even more when I heard that when Jann Arden was made aware of the story, she immediately reached out to Pauline Ehle, and suggested they meet each other at her concert in Saskatoon.  I’m imagining she might have thought, ‘Why not?’

There were so many possible things that Pauline Ehle could have done when she read the tweet by Rita Gordon.  I simply loved that she not only had the idea she could buy and gift a ticket, but that she also thought, ‘Why not?’ and did it.

Clearly there are times in life when we think of a possibility and the answer needs to be no. But, there are so, so many other times in our lives when we have the opportunity to change the course of the ship we, or someone else is on.  At those times, the answer could be, ‘Why not?’ Most times it doesn’t even require us to open our wallets.  Usually, we won’t even have to go very far out of our way.  Most often, we won’t make the news with our ‘why not’.  But almost always, we’ll feel a bit lighter, a bit more like the better part of our self is steering the ship, and like we have some control over a small part of our life.

I’m trying to ‘why not’ this week.  Why not let that signalling car into the lane in front of me?  Why not send a message to a friend who has been on my mind?  Why not risk applying for that position or program? Why not wear that flashy outfit? Why not try five minutes of meditation?  Why not smile at a stranger?  Why not smile at a friend or family member?  Why not look into that adventure that has been calling?  Why not?

Why not gets us out of our routine.  It expands our world.  It opens the door ever so slightly for the chance of something wonderful to happen.  Before Rita Gordon pressed send on her tweet, I’ll bet she went back and forth and then thought, ‘Why not?’  I’ll be Pauline Ehle did the same before she thought ‘Why not?’ and bought the ticket.  I bet Jann Arden, when hearing about it and thinking about what to do, thought, ‘Why not?’ 

None of them could possibly have known that responding to this niggling little question, ‘Why not?’ would impact so many people. 

And yet, ‘Why not?

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Why not?’

Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   Elizabeth works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. If you are thinking of contacting Elizabeth, why not?
 

I had a Benjamin day on Monday.  My usual day is Friday, but his caregiver, Kayley, and I switched for this week.  Over the weekend I was thinking about what we might do together.  Usually we have an early morning at his house and then once the sun is up and shining, we’ll head off to do a hike in the park, feed the birds or do some other exploring.  Because Ben is so enamoured with cars and trucks and things that go, I wondered if he might like a ride on our C-train. 

The C-train is the light rail transit system that transports thousands of commuters around Calgary.  Ben and I had noticed one while we were out last week.  He was fairly impressed with the ‘city train’.  So, on Monday morning, we got ourselves ready, stopped by our house to pick up Jim, and headed to the station.  Ben was wide-eyed and interested.

My loose plan was to see how long he would be willing to sit still on the train, and then take it from there. I assumed we might go a few stops, get off, and ride the train back.  It turns out that Benjamin might have a bit of my maternal grandfather’s blood in him.  Grampy worked for the railroad when I was a young girl.  I’m sure if Ben thought he could be hired, he’d be down at the station putting in his application!

As the train headed out, Ben was thrilled to see us passing another train.  The ride only got better and better as we noticed all the city traffic out the window.  A banner day it was, as we saw garbage trucks, fire engines, big white trucks and all sorts of other gems.  Pulling into each station, the train would start to slow.  Worried the trip might be finished, as Ben felt the train slowing to a stop he would sharply say, “Go!”.  I explained to him that we needed to let the people off, then let the people on, and then we could go.  He began to understand the rhythm of the trip.  Go, stop, people off, people on, go.

Little Ben never made any motion to try to get up off his seat, nor did he ever seem disinterested with his wonderful adventure.  As I sat beside him, I found myself completely engrossed in the ride.  My mind was fully in the moment.  Go, stop, people off, people on, go.

We rode all the way to the city centre, got off, walked about a block to City Hall, all the while taking in the wonderful array of passing vehicles.  Then we turned around, headed back to the station, hopped back on the train and made the return trip.  Go, stop, people off, people on, go.

I’ve had a few days to think about our little adventure on the train.  I was surprised at how much I liked the rhythm of the ride.  Normally, when I am on the train, my mind is filled with what I am headed to, how I might navigate the next part of the journey, what I left undone at home, what is waiting for me on my desk at home and so forth.  But on this trip, I very contentedly relaxed into what felt almost like a meditation. Go, stop, people off, people on, go.

Each of us gets our ticket to ride when we are born.  The trip ends with our death.  In the middle of it all, it really comes down to go, stop, people off, people on, go.  My little ride with Ben has caused me to think about my own train trip.  A couple of things are standing out for me.

I sometimes get so busy, all I think about is “Go!”.  I pretend that life will slow down once I finish this next project, once I accomplish a goal, or once some milestone has been reached.  But the truth is, every time my train has hinted at slowing down, just as Ben did, I call out, “Go!”   I know I have sometimes forgotten to find the enjoyment of the stopping at each station, at the close of each event.   I’ve forgotten to take that moment to breath in and out, to think about where I have come from, and what I have accomplished or experienced.  I’ve forgotten to take time to consider what could have made my little trip better.  And to appreciate how good it was.

The other stand out thing for me was the movement of people on and off the train.  This too, seemed to resonate with my life.  In each little segment of my life there are different people.  Some people stay on the train with me for several stops.   Some for just a short distance.  Some are on for a while, then get off, then back on for some more travelling together.  Sometimes there is plenty of room on the train for all of us.  Other times we have to move over, to make room for others to sit down.   On the trip with Ben, the train came to a complete stop at each station, giving people time to safely board and get off.  I have a feeling that my train has not always come to a full stop.  Sometimes I’m so busy trying to get to the next station, I forget to fully thank people who have journeyed with me; to acknowledge their contribution to my life. 

A couple of days after my trip on the train, I met my friend Rhonda for a coffee and a visit.  She and I were each hurrying to arrive at our agreed upon meeting place.  We had a wonderful visit, catching up on the past couple of weeks, and planning our next cycling adventure together.  Suddenly we looked at the time, quickly hugged goodbye and were off to the next stop in our day.  As I drove home my phone chimed with an incoming text.  When I got home, I saw that Rhonda had texted to say thank you for the visit, and that she was looking so forward to our upcoming adventure.

Go, stop, people off, people on, go.  Rhonda made a little revision and got it right.  She made room between the go and the stop, between the people off, people on, to take a moment to acknowledge how precious our small encounters are, how lucky we are to have people to travel with, and how special each little train trip can be.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Go, stop, people off, people on… what part of my journey needs my attention?’

Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn when to ‘Go, stop, people off, people on, go’.
 

What a week.  I knew it was going to be a busy one and I should have been watching for a curve ball but…. 
I’d been creating a workshop for Anova, an organization in London, ON, providing safe places, shelter, support, counselling and resources for abused women, their children, and all oppressed individuals, to find a new start.  Knowing this organization has gone through significant change in the past few years as they merged the Women’s Shelter and the Sexual Assault Centre to create Anova, and that those who work and volunteer here live right at the edge of emotional exhaustion, I was keenly aware of the task laid out before me.  I wanted to lead them through a process to not only develop their Strategic Plan, but to help unify the team, and give them a renewed energy and enthusiasm with which to return to work.

As I was leaving the house, heading to the airport for my flight and feeling comfortable with the work I’d prepared, I received a text from my sister, Margaret, who had received a text from our sister Shelley, telling her that Mom had fallen, broken her hip and was awaiting surgery.

To say I was stunned would be an understatement.  Yes, my stepmother is 87 years old.  Yes, broken hips are common in seniors.  But Mom is in great health, walks regularly, lives independently and for the most part takes very good care of herself.  So even though the statistics should have warned me, the reality was tough to absorb.

Mom’s fall was bad.  To put it in perspective, the average surgical time to repair a broken hip is between 1 ½ - 2 hours.  Mom’s surgery, which took place about thirty-six hours after her fall, took five hours.  Her hip had multiple fractures and was badly splintered. 

As I walked through the airport toward the departure gate, thinking about Mom, I heard someone behind me, clearly in distress, yelling out, ‘Oh, oh, oh….!!!’  I turned just in time to see a man, roughly my age, hit the floor.  The crutches that were meant to take pressure off his injured leg (my best diagnosis based on his hip-to-ankle brace was that he had injured his knee), had slipped on the floor and he had lost his balance.  What I had heard was his failed attempt to regain his balance as he found himself falling.

As I turned back toward him, I quickly saw my help wasn’t needed.  He was immediately surrounded by a group of men who had been walking behind him.  About ten minutes later, I noticed two of the young men gently accompany him to our boarding area, reassuring him and helping him get settled.

Whoa!  Two falls in such a short time?  I assumed there was some learning here for me.

As I flew, caught my second flight, arrived, got settled and began my work with Anova, the notion of falling was rattling around in my head.  With Valentine’s Day around the corner, and advertising for it in every shop, the expression, ‘Falling in Love’ kept niggling at me.

Each of us falls.  In a lifetime, most of us will have too many falls to keep track of.  Hopefully, only a very few will be the literal kind, the kind like Mom’s and like ‘Airport Man’s’.  Most will be the other kind; the kind where we make a mistake, where we trip up on our planning, where we disappoint ourselves or others, where we fall from grace or where we fall apart.  There is no path through this world without falls.

The luckiest among us will fall in love.  Not in the romantic sense.  Rather in the way I observed falling this week. 

Mom fell in love.  She has a family who surrounded her and who will help her navigate her new way forward.  The floor where she landed was not soft.  But the landing was softened because of the container of love that caught her.

‘Airport Man’ hit a very hard surface.  But he was lucky enough to have been ‘caught’ by young men who understand the value of showing kindness, concern, help and yes, even love.  I noticed them again as we landed in Toronto, making sure he was safely delivered to who I assume was his wife.  Airport Man too, fell in love.

The women served by Anova have also experienced falls.  Some of these are falls of the kind I cannot even imagine.  When they step through the door of this organization, they too fall in love.  At first, they fall into the love of complete strangers.  Later it becomes the love of trusted allies and friends.

When Jim and I met, we fell in love.  I thought I understood it then.  It was magical and had that sense of perfect bliss.  Now, decades later, we have over and over and over again, each fallen in love.  While I never imagined it could feel better than the original love, I was wrong.

To understand that I can mis-step, feel insecure, make mistakes, chase dreams, have my body fail me; that I am safe to fall, knowing that I am falling in love, gives me the chance to grow, experiment, take risks, widen my circle, and to fully become myself.

My wish for you this Valentine’s Day is not that you fall.  But that if you happen to slip or fall in your actions, words or deeds, that there is a soft place to land; that you fall in love.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘Who needs to fall in my love?’
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Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to create spaces where it is safe to fall.
 
 

A few months before Christmas, my friend, Coralie, told me about a young father, Joel, who died after a brief visit from Cancer.  This man’s wife is the best friend of Coralie’s friend and neighbour.  He left behind two children; a little boy, eight, and a five-year-old daughter.  Although I did not know this family, it felt like a heartbreaking loss. 

About a month after the funeral, Coralie told me she had talked to Joel’s wife, and had offered to take Joel’s t-shirts and make two quilts out of them, one for each of the children.  Joel’s wife was so touched by the offer and she readily accepted.  She gathered up bags full of the children’s dad’s t-shirts and gave them to Coralie.  When Coralie told me about her project, I was trying to imagine how she would do it.  I had never done this kind of quilt.  I couldn’t picture how the t-shirts would be cut, how they could be assembled and how much work it would be.

Not many days later, I met with my own little group of quilting friends; we are four in number.  I mentioned Coralie’s quilting project to them, and wondered aloud if we thought we might like to, and might be able to help Coralie.  Everyone hopped on board very quickly!  We love chances to quilt together; this project felt like it would be a great one to help with.  So I asked Coralie if she would like some help and she was most grateful.

And so, it came to pass that this past Tuesday, we found ourselves gathered around my kitchen table sorting a young father’s t-shirts into two piles. One for his little girl’s quilt, and one for the quilt for his son.  At first, the piles seemed overwhelming.  But bit by bit, we figured out what the general design could be, what materials we needed to run out and get, and how to get organized.

By noon, we were well on our way, and at 4:49, Brenda called out, ‘Only one more seam to go!’  It was an amazing day. 
I know the children will love their quilts.  I imagine they will appreciate them more and more as they get older.  It is so special that Coralie realized that they need a physical reminder of their Dad, and that she figured out how to create one. 

I learned a couple of lessons on Tuesday.  One was an old lesson; more a reminder to me.  When someone is grieving, they often do not know exactly what it is they need.  One thing we can do, is to offer to do something very specific.  They can then choose to accept or not. This is what Coralie did.  Joel’s grieving wife may never have thought of the idea of a quilt.  But she most certainly would have had to deal with her husband’s clothing at some point.  And she absolutely loved the idea when she heard it.

The second thing I learned is a bit less easy to state succinctly.  I’ll give it a shot.  Because I did not know Joel at all, as we sorted through the t-shirts, I was trying to get an image of him as a person, as a father, as a husband, as a fellow traveller.  The only clues I had were literally the messages I could read on the t-shirts I had in front of me.  I’m not convinced I had the whole story about Joel.  I began to think about the things I lay in front of other people, about myself, that they will use to form ideas, stories really, about who I am.  And I’m not convinced that they will know my whole story either.

With my slightly off-beat sense of humour, I could picture people sorting through my clothes, one black shirt at a time, and coming to the conclusion that I am extremely conservative, boring, clearly lacking creativity, and also, perhaps a bit depressed! Yikes!

The reality is, people can only know about us, what we show them.  I know people can see the clothing I wear.  And perhaps my clothing will never perfectly reflect myself, although I think I am improving in this area.   But what I really hope is that people can see the other things I am wearing.  Things that are so much more important to me than my clothing.   I hope they can see me proudly wearing my love of family.  I hope they see my passion for music, for song and dance – although I suspect many may not. I hope what I wear reflects the calm I feel when I am in nature, when I have an open sky above me. 

I hope they notice me wearing my adventuresome side.  And the side of me that might downplay things; things that are in fact close to my heart.  I hope some of my clothes reflect my bravery, loyalty and acceptance. I hope I wear the ability to see several sides of an issue.  I hope I wear some kind of safety clothing – not the kind that protects me, rather the kind that lets others know they are safe with me.  I hope people see my silly wardrobe too. 

I need to remind myself, that having all of these clothes hanging in my dark closet will do me no good.  If I want to be known for these qualities, I need to not only have them in my closet, but I need to wear them regularly. 

Each of us is creating the bits and pieces for our own quilt.  No one piece of it will completely define us, but together it will tell our story.  I’m going to start choosing my clothing carefully.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How will this look on my quilt?’
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Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to design your life quilt.