The Power of Gratitude

Last weekend Matt (my husband) and I did the local 50 mile Test of Endurance mountain bike race. This race is put on by Mike Ripley, a man who seems to be able to successfully pull off six jobs at one time. He is a father of three wonderful girls; husband to a lovely wife; has created Team Dirt, a community based mountain bike race team that includes everyone from beginning mountain bikers to pro racers; he runs mudslinger events, which puts on five awesome mountain bike races every year, and he is a member of the OBRA board, helping to run cycling events and advise on cycling issues all over Oregon and the US. This man is at the very heart of the cycling community in Oregon and his work is nationally renowned.

Before the| race Mike spoke to all the racers giving us the directions we would need to complete the 50 mile race. Then he took a moment to tell us about another racer in our Oregon cycling community. Mat Barton was racing in the Portland short track series when he hit a series of bumps and was thrown from his bike. The crash left him paralyzed from the chest down. A surgery had already been done, but doctors felt the damage would be permanent. Mike went on to tell us that a fund had been set up to help cover Mat's medical costs. In one day the fund had raised $29,000, but the goal was $50,000. Mike had t-shirts for sale and all the proceeds would be going to Mat's medical expenses.

It occurred to me as we all stood there together, that we are more than a group of mountain bikers meeting here today to race one another. We are a group of friends, and training partners. We will all take turns during a race to push each other to race better, faster, ride a better line, try harder and to inspire one another. And when one of us goes down, we gather around that person to fill whatever needs arise.

Mike left us all with this simple message before we rolled out to start the race, "Take care of each other out there." These are probably the words every racer should carry with them on and off the race course. These are the words that make a community.

Throughout my life I have been lucky to live in community after community of people who take care of each other out there. I was born in White Rock, Nova Scotia which is perhaps the dictionary definition of a community. White Rock has approximately 500 residents, each living in their own little home on an acre or more. There is a church, a hall, a general store and a mill (the last two are now sadly closed). But it is the people who still make White Rock a very special place.

I grew up in on a road with three houses, ours was the middle. The doors to all three houses were always open to the neighbours, I don't remember anyone knocking. Often as kids we could choose where to eat supper by who was having what. In this environment I was essentially the youngest sister of seven children, and I had three moms and dads. If my mother was baking and she was short an egg or a cup of milk it was no problem to run next door and get the needed ingredient. When Mom finished baking, she would send me back to the neighbours house with a plate of cookies. This saved us a trip to town, and they got some baked goods. It also made it ok for them to borrow from our family when they needed something. I would argue that it is small gestures like this that lie at the heart of every community. A need arises, help is asked and help is given. From this stems the trust and strength that comes from knowing you are not alone.

When I left White Rock, I moved to Fredericton, NB, where I had to find a new community. As a young adult we get to choose our next community if we move away from home. It took time, but I started to find more and more young people who loved to ride bikes, nature and music. We shared meals together, rode bikes all day and played music at night. With time and support from my new community I began to take cycling more and more seriously. An opportunity eventually arose for me to join a mountain bike race team that would travel around to the US national series. Generously, all of my travel expenses and equipment would be covered. I just needed enough money for food and lodging for the summer.

I had only one small problem, as a student I had no money, in fact I had only accumulated debt since starting university. So now what? I wrestled with the problem but saw no solution. I had a great opportunity but I couldn't take it.

Until my friend Norm Seibrasse just gave me a check for $800. And then my friend Diane LeClerc began the Wolf Foundation and began asking all of her friends, family and even her entire choir if they would help me live my crazy dream to become a mountain bike racer. My brother soon got an email from Diane. He was overseas on his Naval Ship the HMCS Montreal at the time. He soon did a fundraiser for me, shaving his head, and riding a stationary bike for 24 hours. He sent me a check for $1500. My community sent me across Canada and the US to race the Canada Cup and the NORBA series that year. I was not just sponsored by Dried Plums and Harpoon Beer, but the Canadian Navy, the Fredericton Community Choir, Andrew Arsenault's Dental Practice, The Radical Edge, Rhino Bike Works, all my friends and family and all of Diane's friends and family.

I won a Canada Cup that year and I realized during the race that it was no longer just my win. On the hills I could feel my community pushing me up the hills, believing more than I did that I could go fast enough. It took all of my friends building crazy trails for me to ride, teaching me how to ride the crazy trails. It took Ben Moody and Rhino Bike Works fixing my bike race after race so it could work like new again. In that race I felt immense gratitude to many people, and I believe it is the strength of that gratitude that won the race that day. The race was not won by me but rather my whole community.

Susan Fenzl is a member of this community. Susan was my doctor in Fredericton, NB, seeing me through my first pregnancy with Ava. She is the mother of two beautiful children and an amazing cyclist. When Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer she was on her bike almost every day, despite her chemo treatments. She beat breast cancer and kept on riding her bike. When Susan was diagnosed with liver cancer four years ago it sent shock and saddness through our community. But Susan is not only calm and kind, she is tough, strong and determined.

It did not take long for word to spread to Catharine Pendrel, who at that time was winning world cups in cross country mountain biking. Catharine grew up just outside of Fredericton in Harvey, another wonderful Maritime rural community. Born to two loving and supportive parents (Johanna Bertin and Bruce Pendrel) and brother Geoff, a member of the Canadian National Downhill Mountain Bike Team, Catharine quickly rose up through the ranks of the mountain bike world. She is now an inspiration for many people, but Susan always held Catharine and the rest of the Luna Chixs Mountain Bike Race Team in high regard. Luna Chix have been raising money for breast cancer for years and this, along with the fact that Catharine was a member of our community obviously made the Luna Chix a special team in particular for Susan.

Soon a package arrived in the mail for Susan from Catharine containing an entire Luna Chix Team cycling clothing kit, and photos signed by all of the team members. Included was an invitation to meet the team at the Mt. St. Anne World Championships, just seven hours away from Fredericton.

In the months that followed Susan underwent many surgeries. The cancer had spread throughout her body. Our friends who were doctors helped us understand how serious Susans cancer was. It was unclear how long Susan had to live. But when World Championships arrived about 6 months later, Susan was there to meet Team Luna and Catharine Pendrel.

Last year Catharine became World Champion. This year she will be compete for the gold medal at the Olympics. Susan will be watching her compete from her home in Fredericton, still strong and beautiful and cycling. Catharine will be riding with much more than her own strength, but with the strength of her entire community behind her - and trust me, it is a huge community that has a lot of gratitude for not just an amazing athlete, but a really amazing person.

Communities give us strength and I think I may be getting close to understanding how it works, so let me tell you my theory so far:

You often need help in this life just to get by, to be happy, to chase your goals. When you need help you can ask for help. Your community will help you. This will fill you up inside and give you the strength you need to do whatever it is you need to do. When you do it, you will realize you did not do it alone. Your community was with you the whole time. This will make you feel so grateful you won't know what to do with yourself. So when someone asks you for help, you are going to want like nothing else to help them - and right there is the power of gratitude - it just keeps on growing.

So in the words of Mike Ripley, "Take care of eachother out there". Because you just don't know how far that can take you.

Donations to Mat Barton:

www.bartonpdx.com/updates-progress/

 
                              

***** A Note to those who may still be reading****

 

I wrote the first draft of this in my car after racing Picketts Charge in Bend. Anna was sleeping in the car and I was writing this in my journal and listening to the car radio. Matt took the two older kids to pizza further towards town. I was to go pick them up when Anna awoke. After finishing my entry I tried to turn the car on only to discover the battery had died. I tried calling CAA on Matt's new cell phone but Matt had the CAA card so they informed me I was out of luck. I went into the coffee shop to ask for help. No one working there had jumper cables, but I noticed a man wearing a Bend Fire and Rescue uniform. So I asked him if he could help jump my car. He brought over his fancy truck and got my car going in no time. Dave Howe reminded me that our community is not limited to who we know. It extends to anyone we meet who may be able to help us or us them. Dave told me the story behind Pickett’s Charge, named after a man who was one of the key members of the cycling community. He organized a criterium around a subdivision he designed and built. Sadly, he died of cancer some years ago.  They organized Pickett’s Charge soon after he died in his honour, and I am sure his spirit lives on as all of us racers fly around that race course having the time of our lives. Thanks Dave for entering my community, because of you I was able to quickly find Matt and the kids downtown Bend and get to the Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers concert with plenty of time. I believe this is a good way to end this blog.

www.nickibluhm.com

Thanks for reading!

The Miracle of Generations

Matt and I got ready for a race this weekend, Return of the Jedi in the Siskiyou Mountains in Southern Oregon.  We needed camping gear, race gear and food for two days for us and the three kids.  No problem.  But it was, and then we had to put the bikes on.  We were a little tired from staying up on Friday night and indulging in a Sherlock Holmes Episode.  It took a half an hour and perhaps a few of my tears to get all four bikes on the back of the car, and I was not the one loading them.  We did make it into the car, all packed up missing only a few essentials and had an amazing weekend.  But boy the loading of the car, cleaning the house, rounding up the three kids did feel...hard.

But lets talk about hard.  When I am whining like my children about loading up our car and doing a super fun race with my awesome husband, sweet kids and good friends, it serves me well to take a minute and reflect on my grandmother.  Elsie Kinsmen just turned 93 last week.  My mom told me many stories about my grandmother as I was growing up, and I can honestly say that even as a child, I recognized the goodness of my life relative to the harshness of my grandmothers.

Elsie was born on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, outside of the small town of Chester.  Nova Scotia's south shore is both beautiful and harsh. It is the first part of mainland Canada that the Atlantic Ocean meets after leaving England.  The summers are pleasant enough, not too hot or too cold.  But the late fall, winter and early spring can be quite horrid.  The Atlantic ocean is so large that it can hold onto the summers heat and release it slowly over the winter months. Therefore instead of the rain mercifully turning into snow, it often warms up just enough to come down as a slush like substance only slightly warmer than freezing.  It can creep through your skin and sneak into your bones making you a kind of cold that is hard to shake.  It is like winter and spring are locked in a continual battle, a seasonal war zone that doesn't end for months at a time.  It is in this environment Elsie spent her childhood.

Elsie was one of six children that my great grandmother and great grandfather were raising on a farm. The farm house was heated by a wood stove and all the wood needed to be cut, dried, loaded onto a cart and drawn by horse to the house.  This was usually done in the winter in Nova Scotia since there was less farm work at this time of year and it gave the wood almost a year to dry.  My grandfather was pulling a load of wood back to the house over the ice when a horse went through.  Horses were very valuable - they were the cars and the major worker on the farm. He had no choice but to get that horse out of the freezing water even if it meant him getting into it.  He was able to free the horse and get back to the farm house, but his health began declining from that day on.  Pneumonia eventually set in.  This simple accident ended up costing him his life.

Now that left my Great Grandmother with six children to provide for through the winter. It was not long before she got very sick as well and all but the oldest of her children were sent to live with different families in Chester. My Grandmother was sent to live with a very nice and well to do family in town.  She was quite happy. They wanted her to be a teacher or a nurse.  She was given beautiful clothes and a warm jacket.  She lived happily with these people for many months and loved them, and they loved her.  My great grandmother regained her health though and Elsie was sent back to the farm to help with the many jobs that needed doing.  My great grandmother did end up remarrying and having three more children, a total of nine. 

When my grandmother was fourteen she started working in the lobster cannery every summer.  When she was sixteen she left home and moved to the Annapolis Valley.  The Annapolis Valley is protected from the Bay of Fundy by the North Mountain and from the rest of Nova Scotia by the South Mountain.  Its summers are warm and pleasant, the farm land is excellent.  Elsie worked as a house keeper on various farms. She met my grandfather while working at a farm close to where he grew up. They soon had one, then two more babies and then my grandfather joined the Canadian Army and was shipped overseas to fight World War II for three years. This left my grandmother with three young babies to raise on her own in a house with a wood stove and no running water.  The water had to be lugged from a pump across a large field.  The diapers had to be washed by hand.  The winters in the valley were snowier and colder than in Chester.  The spring and summer was filled with mosquitoes, black flies and no see ems.

To be honest, I sometimes feel like three kids is a lot of work.  I have to change diapers, do their laundry, take them to their schools, wake up early with them.  Matt works a lot, earns a good wage I can stay at home with the kids and we live well.  But sometimes I feel I could use a break.  Then I think about my grandmother, washing diapers by hand, with water she had to carry back to the house, heat up the water on a wood stove to boil the diapers.  This is before we even talk about food, growing it, canning it, preserving it, baking from scratch.  I think of little things like - what did she do with the kids when she had to carry the water?  It would be agonizing to carry a bucket of heavy water walking at a toddlers pace and carrying a baby.  And this is not a weekend of camping, this is three years with no husband, with a very real possibility he would not be coming home at all.

He did come home though.  He was shot in the arm and spent the rest of the war working in a greenhouse.  I honestly think I would take the gunshot.

My mother was the next baby born and then there was Uncle John a number of years later.  There was also the baby that didn't live.  My grandmother told me about this last summer.  Her mother in law was the midwife in the community.  She took the baby and buried him in the backyard.  That was what was done.  No more and no less. 

Miles did not come into this world easily.  Anyone who was watched him on a bike knows he is a crasher.  He learns, as I learn, by crashing first and doing it right the next time round.  His birth was no different.  His arm got stuck behind his back and though his got his head out, his shoulders were still trapped inside. I knew something was not right for hours as I would have happily left my body at any point during the six hours between midnight and 6 in the morning even if it meant dying.  It took my midwife 3 minutes to figure out how to get him out, knowing full well he could not breath the whole time.  Miles did not breath on his own for 5 minutes after we got him out and his arm was badly broken.  He was completely blue and lifeless and when I held him I knew my life was going to be over if this did not change.  My heart was breaking, and I needed this boy to be ok, if I was to be ok.  He had a name already, I had know him for 9 months already, he had a life already as my son, Matt's son, Ava's little brother, Mom and Dad's first and only grandson. He was to born on the same day as Matt's father. Nothing was going to be alright if he did not make it.

Now I know my grandmother felt the same way after carrying her own baby for nine months and labouring for hours and loosing her baby. Her life was not the same after that. But it was not the same after loosing her father, or after loosing her nice family that would have given her a life very different from the one she was living. Yet she survived, and she kept going.  She survived this harsh, harsh life to have my mother, and my mother had me, and I survived to have Miles.  And every other person in my line survived to have every other person in my line.  And this I realized two months after having Miles, is the miracle of generations.  We have all survived.  If you are reading this, you to are a member of this crazy line of survivors.  Women and men so tough that they would pull a horse out of freezing water to bring you back firewood to keep you warm.  So tough that they would carry water for years on end to cook your food and clean your clothes.

My grandmother went on to work 6 days a week in the Graves Pickle Plant while raising her five children.  My grandfather also worked six days a week.  By all accounts sometimes they would yell at the children for lack of manners, misbehavior or missing chores.  They were perhaps not always the kindest parents one could imagine.  But they loved their children enough to work themselves to levels of fatigue I can only imagine to keep their children alive and healthy.  On Sundays they would even enjoy a Sunday drive to local swimming spots, the ocean, friends houses. 

My grandmother was cared for in her home by all of her children until she was 91.  My grandmother was still gardening, playing cards with her friends and cleaning her outside windows.  She also is known to have killed the odd rabbit with a rock if it was eating her plants.  Elsie is still surrounded by all her children in the nursing home.  They take turns visiting her daily and though they feel terrible they could not keep her in her home, they are doing everything they can to keep her safe and as happy as possible.  This is the sign of a deeply loved mother.  

Last night I was tired.  I tried to go on the local group road ride but when the pace picked up I had to drop off the back and knew I didn't have it in me to keep up.  Not even close.  Perhaps I don't have the stuff my grandmother was made out of, my easy life can still wear me out.  But after the group disappeared over the horizon I began to enjoy the ease of my peddle strokes, the quiet of the outdoors, it was blissful.  It is an ease my grandmother perhaps hardly ever enjoyed until after her children were fully grown.  This is how I know her, a beautiful, thin older woman who lived quietly in a nice clean modern house that was built after the old house burnt down.  She could sip her tea in piece, eat food that came both from her garden and from the grocery store as she pleased.  She could simply flick a switch and a light and heat would come on.  You got the feeling when you were around my grandmother there is nothing more she could ask for in the whole world.  Once a week she would even go out with the family and have a meal out in the local tavern.  I am sure it all felt a little like a miracle, the ease of modern life.  But I see a miracle every time I see my grandmother.