July 31, 2024
It’s my favourite time of the
biennial – time for the Olympic games! I am both delighted, and dismayed that
the Olympics are here, and I am thus in equal measure.
Delighted, of course, because
there are several sports that both David and I like to watch. And in this modern
age of PVR and the twenty-four-hour news cycle, I can tape overnight and then
we can “speed watch”, to a certain extent, the next day. To a certain extent, I
say, because of course, that adapted adage: so many sports, so little time.
My only real dismay comes from
the fact that I have been, for the last month and a half, determined to get to
bed earlier each night than has been my usual and recent habit. My target, Sunday
night through Thursday night, is to be in bed no later than 10:30 pm. Because I
don’t sleep really long stretches at a time—a nine- or ten-hour block of sleep
is simply never going to happen for me—this means that I will awaken and then
arise between six-fifteen and six-forty-five in the morning.
There are advantages to
getting up that early. I get to see my daughter before she heads off to work,
and I get about two hours of relative peace, quiet, and solitude to begin my
day. I need that quiet. I really, really do.
And in order for that whole
new schedule thing to work, I must walk away from my television each evening no
later that eight-thirty. I need nearly 2 hours to wind down my day, to check my
social media, and complete my nightly routine before I hit the hay.
So far, in this Olympic season
and after only what? Four days in? It’s not working out that well. Mind, I am
allowing myself to stay up an extra hour on Friday and Saturday nights, because
I’ve been a night owl now for nearly two decades. I really want those quiet
mornings to get things going right, but I do like to stay up late.
As those of you who read my
weekly essays no doubt know by now, I do not excel at cutting myself some slack—even
though that is one thing I am always urging other people to do. The good news
in all of this is that the Olympic Summer Games will close on August 11. That’s
a short span of time, really, just over two weeks.
Of all the ways I could solve
this momentary scheduling conflict, the easiest is to simply let that earlier
bedtime go for the seventeen-day period. That’s probably what I’ll end up
doing, but the earlier bedtime had already become a habit, and a good one at
that. I hate breaking a good habit.
It’s funny, but between the
summer games and the winter ones, we have more sports we feel we must watch of
the latter than the former. Go figure. Winter is not my favorite time of year,
nor is it David’s. And yet, between the skiing and the skating and the curling,
and all the different variations thereof, we have so much more to watch when
the days are shorter and colder than now, when the summer breezes are
(allegedly) so sweetly blowing.
There has been a great deal of
controversy over the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games, this year in
Paris. Both my daughter and my husband really didn’t care for them—with one notable
exception which, yes, I will get to in just a moment.
Of course, there was a hue and
cry from those of whom it may be said, “the people doth protest too much,
methinks”. Times may change, but some folks never do. Those I’ve just mentioned
are one. The other, of course, are the French. The French people are proud to
go their own way and do their own thing. They never bat an eye as those around
them march to the beats of their own drummers. They are, after all, French. They
have always been French. In a perfect world, one would simply acknowledge that
fact, let them do them, and thus find their own lives less stress filled. I
wish all those nay-sayers making so much racket would just heed my advice.
One more note about those
opening ceremonies. In last week’s essay, I wrote about watching the
documentary, “I am: Celine Dion”. But one theme of the film that I didn’t mention
was Celine’s absolute, titanium-willed determination that she would not
let the neurological condition of Stiff Person Syndrome define her.
With defiance on her face and
conviction in her tone, she declared that she would return to the stage;
she would sing again.
I am not ashamed to tell you
that, while watching those opening ceremonies, right after the “cauldron” was
lit, when I heard that voice, and when the camera then panned to that
magnificent Canadian woman on the balcony of la tour Eiffel, I cried.
I cried to see and to hear the
strength and the beauty of a hard-fought goal realized. And I understood, all
things considered, that the Summer Games in Paris was the only stage worthy of
such a truly Olympic achievement.
Love,
Morgan
https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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