Category: Thoughts

The Hill

The Hill itself

In my mind it looms large. In reality it’s little more than a path leading out of a Toronto park, a former quarry. Generations scooped out shale and clay for the bricks that built old town Toronto. After that ran out, the local conservation authority bought the land and turned it into a park. Now tourists, wedding parties and cyclists saunter leisurely through the landscaped pit, admiring the ponds where steam shovels formerly ripped the earth

I don’t saunter. I pit myself against “The Hill” as I call the path. It’s my own Tour de France mountain stage, a personal biking challenge, even though it’s only about 80 feet high.

If no one’s lollygagging at the base, I can gather speed and let momentum carry me partway up. That never lasts long before I need to start pumping the pedals. It wouldn’t be difficult if it didn’t snake up and around on its way to the top. It’s those damn turns that make it challenging.

A hot day makes it even tougher, as my lungs labour to compress the sticky soup Toronto calls summer air. Even without the added difficulty, there’s a point where doubt starts creeping in: am I going to make it?

That sounds terribly dramatic but is entirely self-inflicted. Not making it means walking the rest of the way, not falling to my doom. There are no medals for reaching the top, except the one in my mind that says “Not today, Hill. I win.”

But a few years ago, the realization hit me: one day The Hill is going to win, finally and forever. Over the last few years, I’ve had to admit defeat and perform my self-inflicted walk of shame more often than I care to admit. Those times seem to be coming more frequently, even though I’m still in my early 50s. At moments like those I think about my dad.

He passed away last summer, but in his final years he was able to do fewer and fewer things that were dear to him. First he had to give up his house and move to a seniors facility. Then he had to stop driving. Then the long walks stopped, and eventually walking anywhere aside from the dining hall ceased. But the loss I remember most is fishing. For years, I tried to go fishing with him one last time, like we did when I was a little boy. I could see the day coming when we wouldn’t be able to do so ever again. I tried convincing him again and again to let me drive him down to St. Margaret’s Bay outside Halifax, where we used to cast for mackerel.

But there always seemed to be a reason not to go until one day age won, and I realized we were never going to go fishing together again. I think about that whenever I catch myself crafting an excuse not to do something I enjoy, or when I feel like giving up before the finish. The little victories I earn atop The Hill makes me feel alive in some small way, and I try to remind myself that one day the choice to try again won’t be there.

That’s what I tell myself whenever I’m feeling the burn going up The Hill. Near the top there’s sometimes a panic moment when I start to wonder, breath labouring, “What happens if I pass out? Has anyone had a coronary trying to summit this thing?” It’s pretty silly, and is more about anxiety than imminent system collapse. I realize it’s not the Pyrenees and I’m not in the Tour de France. But when I’m pedalling like crazy and starting to doubt myself, my mind can spiral away in strange directions.

The reward is a view of the Don Valley, a lush canopy struggling to eclipse the taller and taller towers Toronto is continually pushing up downtown.

One day will be the last victory. I won’t know which one it is. It’ll just be a good day before a not-so-good day. But then the next day will be another not-so-good day, and another, until I finally realize The Hill has won.

This is the way of all flesh: the things that were easy a few years, a few decades ago, one day seem hard.

Age is a process, not an event. It’s a companion you develop a closer relationship with the longer you last, a kind of friend you grow closer to. Age gradually takes things away, some good and some bad. It takes away selfishness, immaturity and impulsiveness. It also takes away strength and reflexes. I didn’t say it was always a kind friend, but it’s the only lifelong friend you’ll ever have.

Maybe I’ll get a better bike, a real racer, that will buy a few more years of victories and delay the inevitable. That day will come, but not quite yet. For now, in man vs. Hill, I’m still coming out on top more often than not.

Tags Brickworks, Hill, toronto

Life Thoughts

Learning to Buy

Money changes everything

A scarcity mindset is hard to shake. It scratches a groove into your psyche that’s hard to haul yourself out of, and it’s never accidental. Mine began as the child of parents who grew up in the shadow of WW II. My sisters and I still remember tales of ration coupons and making do with less — my favourite example was war cake, a miraculous confection somehow made without eggs, milk or butter.

Poverty was never far from my parents upbringing in mid-century industrial Cape Breton. Mom recalled that in 1940s Sydney you knew which families didn’t have much money, because when their kids bent over, “you could see Robin Hood.” That meant their mothers had sewn clothes out of flour sacks, exposing the logo when they leaned over. Or so she claimed.

Thanks to hard work and education, my folks gave our family a solidly middle-class lifestyle, but a scarcity mindset was a constant background. Nothing was willingly thrown out, whether it was old containers, clothes, power cords — you might be able to use them later, and God forbid you’d buy something twice in a lifetime.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

When we wanted a table for the backyard, a giant cast-off cable spool from a construction site magically appeared. Dad was always there to hammer the lesson home, asking where I was going to find the money to get the things I wanted. How was I going to make ends meet on my own? What was I going to do if such-and-such happened? There might have been genuine concern underneath the questions, but instead of preparing me for life, they instilled a fear that it would chew me up and spit me out. When I went out into the world, the mindset tagged along.

I don’t blame mom and dad for how I think — they were wonderful parents, but growing up with those messages had an effect.

The thought of getting new clothes instead of repairing the current ones never occurred to me. Looking back, I wonder how many people actually darned socks in the 21st century instead of simply buying new ones. On trips I stayed in hostels unless it was on the company dime, because why pay for a hotel room when you can get a bed and toilet privileges for a fraction of the price? Why buy lunch or coffee at work when you can bring them from home and save money? Why take an Uber or the subway when you can walk and save a few bucks? Who cares if it’s pouring rain?

Destitute and on the Street

Underneath all that penny-pinching was the irrational belief that if I didn’t scrimp and save, I was going to end up penniless and destitute in my old age. It didn’t matter who pointed out how tremendously unlikely that scenario was, because the worry was too deeply ingrained. It would have been like telling an arachnophobe that tarantulas are actually soft and harmless: the truth is irrelevant when illogical beliefs are running the show.

So I earned and scrimped and saved, investing as much as possible, knowing that each paycheque meant just a little more cushioning between me and my self-inflicted spectre of poverty.

But one day, something changed. It snuck up on me: I realized I was actually likely to retire in the foreseeable future. That was no longer some far-flung horizon: it was years — not decades — away. I looked at my bank account and wondered, “How am I going to spend this money?” That wouldn’t be a challenge for most people: I’m not talking about millions of dollars. But for someone who treated money like a scarce resource to be conserved at all costs, it’s harder than you think.

Embracing your Inner Spend

I decided I needed to be ok with the idea of spending, even if I couldn’t fully embrace it. I feel a little guilty saying that, because we live in a world where the evils of conspicuous consumption and consumer culture are so thoroughly condemned. But I don’t have kids, so unless I want to leave it all to charity, I feel I should learn to enjoy the fruits of my labour while I can. I earned them, after all.

But that might be the hardest part: telling myself I’m worth spending money on, after so many years of denial.

I’m starting small. Once a week it’s now ok to buy lunch, and not pack the 3,000th salad of my career. Buying a latte now and then isn’t going to break the bank. Spending $30 on a tin of luxury tea would have seemed like an irrational indulgence a year ago. Now it feels like a challenge: can I treat myself? Can I actually enjoy spending money on me?

In Search of the Big Ticket

There are bigger-ticket items I’d like: my bike is 25 years old and held together with hockey tape and hope. I’ve kept it going for a quarter century, but its best days are behind it, and I’d like a ride from the current millennium.

So in March I’ll make the rounds of bike shops to see if I can embrace my hard-earned cash as something to be enjoyed, not accumulated for its own sake. After that, who knows? A new laptop? A trip? We’ll see.

I’m trying to accept the idea that I have enough, and I can’t take it with me, so I had better start enjoying it. That means learning to buy.

Tags Money, Retirement, Spending

Life Thoughts

A Piece of Cake

Illustration By Alex Deadman-Wylie for the Globe and Mail

View this post at the Globe and Mail.
Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie.

He said it as if he were a little boy, not an 86-year-old man.

“Are we having chocolate cake?”

My first instinct was to blurt out, “I bought you lunch, set it out nicely, and that’s not enough?!”

I bit my tongue. I’m young enough to lose my cool but old enough to know better. It was the kind of question a little boy or an old man like my father might ask if they don’t understand the subtleties of a situation. The little boy will learn, but the old man has forgotten. The world is opening up for one of them, and they’re picking up on things like social niceties and expressing gratitude. The world is becoming smaller for the other as it coalesces around them, and they’re less able to think and see beyond their immediate circumstances.

I was angry, and it showed, but it had nothing to do with Dad. I had just received a text from my wife about an unexpected $6,000 tax bill. I was frantically trying to think of what had gone wrong, how I managed to miss it, and how I was going to explain all that to my wife. It pushed every other thought out of my head as I walked to pick up lunch. The last thing on my mind was dessert.

Getting takeout was one of the few things I could do for him since I lived so far away. One of my sisters who still lives in town was our family’s boots on the ground, shouldering the weekly slog of dad’s doctor appointments, medical consultations, finances and other responsibilities. Picking up chicken and chips a few times was the least I could do when I was around.

Visits often centred on me fixing his computer problems until dementia stole his ability to operate one. Then our time together focused on watching Blue Jays reruns, until he lost the ability to operate a remote control. At that point, he would get hopelessly mired in on-screen menus until he started falling asleep and I would steal the remote before it slipped to the floor.

In May I got “the call,” the one everyone dreads but can’t avoid. The first call was that he had fallen, broken his hip and was in hospital. The second was about a cancer that had been detected, and that he was considered too frail for surgery. I flew to Halifax two days later.

Funny things go through your head when loved ones are dying. There’s regret, anger, bargaining and all kinds of crazy emotions.