Just saw the Springsteen movie, Deliver Me From Nowhere. Two thumbs up. Don’t go in to see whether Jeremy Allen White looks or sounds like Springsteen, and don’t expect to see a lot of (or any) concert footage. Don’t even expect deep insights into the making of Nebraska.
But do see it.
Greetings from Helsinki. I’m here, officially for some interviews for a book project, but since Daughter now lives here, I’m just as much here to see her.
We just took a bus from her apartment to the hockey rink, and walking through the small forest to get there was almost like walking through the wardrobe and into Narnia, or – I know you expect me to say this – accelerate a flux capacitor powered DeLorean to 88 mph.
In short: what a trip.
See, my first sensory hockey memory is from here, from this rink, from a time when it was still an outdoor rink. I remember walking with Dad through some snow – for what seemed like a long, long time – and then being allowed into the dressing room.
I’ll never forget that smell.
For years, I’ve told people I’m not a club person. I don’t mean a nightclub—though I’m not really a nightclub person either—but exclusive clubs people join. I like to have fun and socialize as much as the next person, provided the next person is sitting at least one table over.
I also like to fly under the radar and mind my own business. I don’t need others to know what I’m up to, where I’m going, or who I’m with. I’ll tell you in my own time, if I feel like it.
That’s probably why I’ve never been a regular anywhere.
In fact, the idea of going to a bar where everyone knows my name is a nightmare. To be fair, the Cheers theme says, “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.”
Sometimes.
Well, I have been a regular at two places. For about a decade, Son, Daughter, and I went to the same gelateria for an after-school Friday ice cream. I suppose that made us regulars. But they never knew our names, let alone our favourite flavours, and that was fine with me.
The other place was a soup shop around the corner from the gelateria. Many a Friday, I’d drive to town early to avoid the afternoon highway traffic, park near the school, buy a magazine at the newsstand, and walk up the hill to that little soup-and-sandwich place.
And they had the best soups: Mexican corn soup, chili, something else and something elses. You can guess—I always had the Mexican corn soup. I’d sit outside, work for an hour or two, pick up the kids, get ice cream, and start the weekend.
When Daughter left for high school, our gelato trips ended, and with them, my Mexican corn soup afternoons.
Until today.
I hadn’t planned on soup. I was in town to meet a friend for coffee two blocks from the school where our daughters were once classmates. Afterwards, I started toward the subway, but passing the newsstand, I stopped to see if they’d got any new magazines since my last visit. And indeed, they did !I stuffed them in my bag, took one determined step toward the station, when a voice in my head whispered,
Sooooooup.
“Pardon me?” I said.
Soup, señor?
I turned and walked up the hill, simply curious to see if the soup place was still there. It was. I went in—not hungry, just wanting to see if they still made soup, or whether it had become yet another coffeeshop with baristas and cappuccinos and overpriced, oversized cinnamon buns.
The moment I saw the soup menu, a singsong voice called from behind the counter.
“How are you? So nice to see you!” said the lady whose name I don’t know. She doesn’t know mine either.
I told her it had been three years since my last visit because my daughter no longer went to school nearby. She smiled and said she understood.
“What would you like?” she asked.
“Mexican corn soup, please,” I said without glancing at the menu, and reached for the soup cup.
She beamed at me, genuinely happy to see me.
“Anything else?”
“No, no, that’s fine.” I paid, reached down to open a drawer for a spoon, but it wouldn’t open. She leaned over the counter and pointed at the drawer next to it.
“Ha ha, it’s been too long,” I said. “I forgot where the spoons were.”
Although I’m pretty sure they moved them.
We laughed, and it was nice. It was the exact right amount of familiarity. Warm, but not intrusive.
Maybe I’m getting soft. Maybe it’s the warm weather.
The soup was excellent.
For years in my teens, I had a 1982 hockey World Championship poster on my wall. In the image, Snoopy is playing hockey with Woodstock, under the most common cheers for each of the eight teams in the tournament. There was “Go Canada, go!” ,”Heja Sverige” for Sweden, “USA, hey, hey, hey!” … and “Do toho!” for Czechoslovakia
That was new.
Since then, I do tohoed the Czechoslovak players until I went to the World Championships in Ostrava in 2004, and realized that the loudest hockey crowd I have ever heard was chanting something completely different, and nothing like do toho. I asked around, and was told they were saying what sounded like escheyeden to me, and means, “One more [goal]!”
I can see magic in your eyes
I hear the magic in your sighs
Just when I think I’m gonna get away
I hear those words that you always say
– Steve Miller Band, “Abracadabra”
The first time I walked into the rink, it didn’t even have all the walls in place. The town had been waiting for the indoor rink for fifteen years, ever since Finland had got their first one in 1965, and a friend of mine was so excited about the rink finally being built that he wandered around the construction site to monito its progress. And one time, he and his father took me and my Dad with them.
“That’s where the rink will be,” he told me. “That’s where the dressing room will be. That’s where the cafeteria will be. This will be the sauna.”
He was right, even though, forty years later, I’ve never been back to the sauna.
The rink, including the cafeteria, was like a clubhouse to me in my teenage years. Outside school and my room (with my tapes and ZX Spectrum), that’s where I spent most of my time.
I knew every inch of the arena. And by every inch, I mean every inch. (Well, except for the sauna, of course).
“In case you’ll be back for New Year’s, you’re more than welcome to come to the party,” she said as before she gave me a hug..
“Sure. Merry Christmas!” I said.
She walked me to the door, the way she always did and does: her head held high, and her gorgeous hair bopping with every step.
I walked to my car and switched the CD in the trunk of my BMW to Manic Street Preachers and turned up the volume of my car stereo. Then I drove toward the ferry terminal, and headed over to Finland.
I wasn’t surprised when Alpo Suhonen called me one fall morning two years ago, He often called me to talk about his new ideas – and there were a lot of them.
I was stunned, though, when he asked me if I’d be interested in writing his biography. After all, I had been the one who’d been urging him to write one for years, ever since I first heard his fantastic, and fantastical, stories while working on another book with him almost ten years ago. We were supposed to be working on his philosophy of coaching, but more than once or twice, I realized I was listening to Alpo tell me about his adventures, the places he’d been to, and the people he’d met. (The list is long and you’d know all the names, but let me just say “David Bowie”).
In grade school, the last lesson of every Friday was reserved for organized goofing around. In other words, on Fridays, we had an hour to showcase our creativity, and most of the times, a few kids would tell jokes or maybe perform a sketch or two. Sometimes I was one of those kids with a short play or a sketch of my own.
It was important for me to be funny so whatever we put on, was always a comedy. Not that we always succeeded. Comedy’s hard, a lot of hit and miss.
Last weekend I chatted with an American gentleman I knew as Coach since he used to be my brother-in-law’s tennis coach.
We sat in the warm August night talking about sports – because he was Coach and I was a Sports Writer – but as the night grew darker I realized he wasn’t just a tennis coach.
I like rules. I’ve always liked to know that there are rules and I expect everybody – I’m looking at you pushing a shopping cart on the streets – to follow them, even the unwritten ones. (Really, dude, it’s not your cart).
I like rules so much that I make up new rules for myself. These are rules that may have been inspired by other people, but they only apply to me.
Two of these rules have to do with how I speak of Son and Daughter – and no, there’s no rational reason behind them. One, I never call refer to them as “children”, “kids,” or even just “son” and “daughter”, except here on the old blog. The rule is to always include their name in the conversation.
I think it has to do with my being an only child. I never wanted to be just a kid. I always wanted to be Risto.
Funnily enough, the second rule has to do with the end of childhood. And the rule is never to call someone “an adult” or “a grownup” when they turn eighteen.
Never.
