We Start to Collaborate

India, me and Tamara

Karen:
     Tamara and I discussed how we could use India's knack for writing rhyming stories, and that was when the idea of the annual Christmas card came about.  Since 2000, we have included a poem (by India) in each of our Christmas cards. First I asked India to do a poem about the younger boys’ hockey exploits, since at that time in our lives we were living and breathing hockey. India and I started to learn to work together. I tell her a story and she asks for more details and I try to remember everything I can, and out comes a poem about it. It is always such a delight to receive the poem that I know she had been working on!

India: 
     If only I had known what Karen and Tamara were plotting!

The boys are at the end of a hockey game

Holiday Heart

What with Gretsky and Orr and Hull

hockey has never been dull

But true fans would also be wise

to note players of much smaller size,

who, less versed in hockey’s rough art,

play instead with abundance of heart.

Michael Mariscal played for the green

last season – his big brother’s team,

but while Ricky had most of the skill, 

younger Michael yet played with a will.

To each game he came with a smile

untroubled by technique, or style,

eager, but equally content,

to be placed on the line or the bench.

All season, with admirable pluck

in pursuit of the elusive puck,

his stick work considerably choppy,

his ankles endearingly floppy,

he muddled his way through each game, 

but the outcome was always the same.

If he shot for the goal, he missed,

nor did he make an assist.

But one game, towards the end of that season,

came a play that provides this poem’s reason.

Picture now, in the stands, Mom and Dad,

(exhausted, holding one extra pad,

left over after Michael and Ricky

each seemed to be padded quite thickly),

by their side was Billy, quite content,

to sit still until his popcorn was spent.

And little did any of them think

that this time at the ice hockey rink

would break the familiar cycle

for one little player named Michael.

Directing your attention floorward,

on the ice was Michael, playing forward;

so far in the game, he’d done naught,

and I’m sure that he never thought,

as he fondly watched Ricky move, 

That his own luck was set to improve.

Now the puck came to Michael’s stick

and he made a decision quick-

so it seemed – that without even blinking

before he had much time for thinking,

he shot, through an unguarded hole

and scored (oh my lord) his first goal!!

Billy’s popcorn flew up in the air

Michael’s goal touched everyone there,

You heard war whoops and whistles and cheers

as if there’d been no goal of years,

as if, out there on the ice

some ‘miracle of rare device’

had transpired, with Michael its cause,

the focus of all the applause,

and Michael knew then hockey’s glory

but that’s not the end of our story.

One day, some months after that goal,

a (small) secret taking its toll,

Michael felt the need to confess

and his secret was – can you guess?

As he told it to Mom on that day,

he felt funny taking credit for that play:

His goal had been by mistake,

it was not one he’d meant to make.

He’d been trying to pass the puck

to Ricky, and simply by luck,

the puck his intentions ignored,

and, somehow or other, he’d scored!

Now that is the end of this tale, 

That came in your holiday mail,

But remember that the only true art

Is to play with an abundance of heart.