doctor says hockey is damaging his spine
What do you do when something you love is causing you harm? How do you give it up?
I’m a bit of an aberration: I only started playing hockey at the age of twenty-nine. I had always wanted to play, but it’s expensive, and my mom was a single parent who worked long hours and couldn’t give me rides everywhere, and I hated bumming rides. And I suppose that was enough of a reason for me, then.
But I hit twenty-nine, and thirty is only twelve months away, and, well, why not? I talked to my wife, Sarah, about it, of course. If you’ve been married, you know, presenting something as a fait accompli never really goes over well, no matter how silly and inconsequential it may seem at the time. She gave her blessing, of course.
We were having good times back then. It seems like in a marriage, some times are good, some times are bad, and all you can do during the bad times is wait them out and they will get good again. We were trying for our first child, and, well, I quite enjoyed that, as you can imagine.
Sarah started seeing the benefits of having me out of the house for practice once a week. She could get some cleaning done without me underfoot, or sit and watch some nonsense on TV without my judgment. And she appreciated how the vigorous exercise was ridding me of the small spare tire I had somehow developed since we had gotten married two years earlier.
Unfortunately, a few months later, I took a nasty spill on the ice and knocked myself out during a game. She was there, cheering me on, cheeks rosy under her pompomed hat, belly starting to get noticeably rounder with our child, five months along. I was fine, of course, I shook it off and got back up. You really have to, you know. But, she didn’t. It scared her. That was the last of my games she attended. Just too violent for her, she said.
And now, here I am, three years later. My daughter Emily was born, followed two years later by my son Ryan. The doctor says maybe I should take some time off, concentrate on my family. She says that I’m not young anymore, at thirty-three. That may be.
I need to find a gentler sport.
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