When Quitting Is Not An Option. Arvid Loewen

underneath itself and came out some 350 feet of distance travelled from the beginning—right at the foot of the ramp to carry the toboggans back up. It was 1992, the year of the Winter Olympics in France, and we set up two Canadian flags at the start and end of our luge. We’d race down the track, its not-quite-Olympic-smooth surface jarring our bones as we forced ourselves into an aerodynamic position. Our top recorded speed was 27 miles per hour. Not bad for a backyard slide!

      The toboggan slide was so popular that one evening we heard the sounds of our plastic toboggans careening down in the dark. Going outside to check who might be using the slide (our kids were all inside), I saw a young girl and her even younger brother.

      “Hi,” I said to them. “Are you using the slide?”

      “Yes!” they responded.

      “You know, this is actually my backyard.”

      “Our mom said it was a park.”

      “It’s not. And it’s also dark outside. You guys should probably go.”

      They were pretty young, but I had to admire their persistence in going down the toboggan slide. First they’d had to climb over our fence, then try to convince me that somehow their mom had gotten our yard confused for a park—and let them come in the dark of the evening. But off they went.

      In the middle of the toboggan slide was another hockey rink, and the kids quickly showed how much better at skating they were than I was. Though I did enjoy skating and picked it up relatively quickly, kids learn much faster. It wasn’t long before they were passing and shooting better than I could—though I showed them how much tougher I was than them by skating in December in shorts. Although I’d been born in a country known for its heat, I must have had some Canadian blood in me before even coming here. Either that or that run in the snow in my bare feet had been enough of an initiation to make me a warm-blooded Canadian.

      When the snow and ice had all melted, the grass underneath was a sickly yellow—after all, our motto had always been that we were raising kids, not grass. And so instead of nursing that open space back to a green haven, I turned it into a soccer field, perfect for 3-on-3 with adults or more with kids. While I was still able to keep the ball out of the net when Paul and his friends would play (though he probably claims otherwise), I noticed that I was beginning to live a rather docile life. We would go biking with the kids in a four-seat trailer I built, but the speed and competitiveness I had been used to had disappeared from my life.

      I had entered into the years that my son Paul now (lovingly) calls “the fat years.” The years where I did little and noticed myself gradually slipping in my ability to stay ahead of my kids. There comes a time in every dad’s life when he gets passed or beaten by his kids, but I wasn’t prepared for that time, and I was convinced it wasn’t going to happen yet—as long as I could do something to prevent it, that is.