I’m not a sports watching person, generally, but from the moment the Jays clawed their way into the playoffs, I was on board. I held off paying for Sportsnet for a few games, following live blogs and reddit and googling the replays. But two games into the series with the Yankees, I was all in. And then every moment of October, I had a constant faint buzz — when was the next game? Yesavage is a ROOKIE? Why is Vladdy so darned likable? Will Bo recover? MAD MAX wtf! Oh Ernie, you are the best.

I like a good bandwagon as much as the next person, but usually, I orbit it on the outside, enjoying the buzz in the air, occasionally high fiving someone as I pass a pub with an open patio and a big screen. But this time, I was out in front, watching every game in tandem and constant text with at least two friends. Within two weeks, I was making pronouncements about every player’s readiness, grace, incredible teamwork in chip chip chipping away at other teams’ surges. I developed rituals, nicknaming opposing players and taking myself out for a nervous walk around the neighbourhood if the Jays were behind at the top of the 7th. I started to love these boys. And to like the person I was as a fan.

Partway through this ride, I realized I understood baseball for the first time in my six decades of life. I had a lightbulb moment when I was following the intricacies of a double play, admiring the arc of a throw and quick reflexes. Six months ago, I started medicating my lifelong, late-diagnosed female-brand ADHD. Thanks to Vyvanse, I could focus long enough to see the ballet of it all, the logic behind each pitch, the mastery of my baseball boyfriend Kirky’s catching. I could keep the players straight in my head, admire the loping golden retriever energy of Barger, the grit of Springer who kept getting back up there after he was pummelled with pitches over and over. Agonize as I watched the muscle in Trey’s jaw work as the 22 year old glistened with sweat but otherwise, showed no sign of the crazy pressure of this moment. And when I didn’t get it, I had google and my friend Alistair, who could explain everything.

It all ended on Saturday night, of course, with an unexpected game 7. I watched game 6 at Susan’s with friends, our Halloween costumes gradually peeling off as the game got more intense. But game 7, I was home alone, with the cats and a couple of group chats for company.

Well, friends, I lost my mind. I had so much nervous energy that at one point, I found myself watching the game, decanting turkey stock, and then having to mop the floor. Naked, for some reason I can’t explain. I guess I was hot. When Bo hit his three run homer, I screamed so loudly the cats didn’t come back for an hour.

I tried hiding under the cushions from the outdoor patio that were drying before I could put them away for the winter, and I tried dancing out my yayas in the between innings. Finally, in the tied up 8th, I took myself outside, to one of the pubs with the big screen and the people on the street. (I put clothes on).

Somehow, among this crowd of hosers, I found myself with a Molson Canadian in one hand and a Player’s Light in the other. I don’t think I’ve drunk a molson since 1985, and I know the last time I had a cigarette was pride in 2006. But there I was, full on fan, agonizing as the game slip slip slipped away.

When the tragedy of errors that was the 9th inning ground to an end, I realized I’d gotten what I needed. I loved the team. I loved everyone I was watching with. I loved the cars honking as they went by. I loved the sense of community and shared hope and fucking Canadianness of it all.

Being a Canadian in the era of Trump has been uneasy at best. Pierre Trudeau once said that to the US that “living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” Never has that beast outright snarled at us as much as it has in 2025.

Elbows up is one thing. But elbows linked, around these Jays? That was everything I needed. Everything we needed to remind ourselves who we are.

After I left the pub, I was scooting home to witness what felt inevitable at that point. The streets of my neighbourhood were dark, and away from the pub, quiet. A streetcar rumbled by. I passed a older guy leaning against a wall who asked me the location. He was very drunk. “Queen and Coady,” I said, briskly, continuing on.

A few seconds later, I paused and went back. “Do you need some help?”

“Please,” he said.

I saw that he was talking to someone on the speaker for his phone. I took it from him and asked the person on the other end what the guy needed. The other person was at a shelter and asked me to get the guy a cab, gave me the address.

A cab? Like phoning a taxi? I was clearly time traveling.

I phoned Beck taxi and navigated the phone tree. I asked the guy if he wanted me to wait while the cab came. He nodded. “I just want to go home. You are an angel.” His name was Ralph.

The cab came, and there was a lot of kerfuffle about if the driver could take someone to a shelter without a guarantee of payment. He told me how to phone Beck and talk to a person and I kept messing it up. I had no cash on me. “Oh!” Ralph said, suddenly. “I have money!” He handed me his wallet. “Can I get in now?” He had $25 in his wallet, in fives. I gave four of them to the driver.

The cab driver took over, handing Ralph a bag in case he needed it. “I kinda think he’s used to being this drunk,” I said. The heroic cab driver nodded. I left.

I checked the score on my phone as I walked the rest of the way, but I didn’t care. Winning didn’t matter. It was the community of it all that mattered. Being honest with myself, if I hadn’t felt so connected to the community around me in that moment, I probably would have keep walking after I’d tossed “Queen and Coady” at Ralph.

The Jays lost. But I didn’t. And I don’t think we lost as a community, or as a country. We found each other.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who keeps remembering the time her dad got fired for one day for skipping out on his teaching job to go to a Detroit Tigers World Series game in 1968.

The recent spectacle in the US of the guy in charge fat-shaming generals and calling for the “the highest male standard” in military fitness made me take a deep breath for about a million reasons — the most significant, of course, being that this is a classic step in solidifying the power of authoritarian regimes by testing military loyalty.

With all the yammer about a supremely outdated notion of “warriors,” I remembered this booklet in my piles of random paper. When my mother died in 2022, I found this little book from 1962, outlining the Royal Canadian Air Force’s fitness plan for girls and women.

My mom played on her university basketball team in the early 60s (despite her 5.2 height), and then taught gym and coached high school girls’ team sports in the first part of her teaching life. She continued to follow women’s basketball until she died, frequently attending University of Windsor “Lancerettes” games. There was one infamous moment where she, two inches shorter from osteoporosis, craned her head to look at two women from the current team, both at least 6 feet, and said, “I used to be you! Take your calcium!”

But I digress.

So after all the fat-shaming and gender-erasure, I dug out this XBX Plan for fitness. It outlines what the Canadian military thought girls and women should be doing for fitness 63 years ago.

And you know, it’s not so terrible.

Well, maybe not so terrible once you get past the Air-Marshal’s initial message.

The whole thing is definitely gendered in a cringey way, and relies pretty heavily on a “calories in, calories out” formula that persists until today. And the “wishing is not good enough” message is pretty shame-y. But overall, the booklet downplays weight and appearance and focuses on what you actually need to do for general health and wellbeing in that transformative 12 minutes a day.

Basically, there are four sets of 10 exercises, and the intention is to start with the less complex set, with fewer reps, and then to work your way up. I wondered — would I meet the target for my age? How would I fare if I were suddenly thrust into some kind of makeshift resistance army?

The charts were incredibly complicated to figure out, but I had to start with the first hard truth: I am too old to even be doing this. Clearly, at nearly 61, I should be putting on my little fur stole and smoking a cigarette and giving unheeded wisdom to the young people.

Fine. I’m too old? It’s 2025. I put my 60 year old blue hair into little space buns and decided my goal was the same as my 21 year old mother’s.

The chart reminded me of every table I’ve ever fudged related to water safety (tide charts, dive tables, etc.). But I stuck my tongue between my teeth and determined that for Level 35, I should start with the exercises on Chart III, with designated reps for each. (The recommended level for people 50-55 to aim for was 12, so I knew I was biting off a lot).

Exercises 1-4, 2 minute sequence: 15 toe touches, 22 knee raises each side, 18 lateral bends each side, and 40 arm circles each side.

These are all movements we still do today. But it’s way too many reps for the time — it takes me more than three minutes, and I kind of collapse on my ankles on the knee raises trying to go too fast. Soundtrack: Cruel Summer.

Exercise 5: 41 sit ups. Weird, curvy sit-ups. The chart gives me 2 minutes.

I do all 41, but it takes me 2.5 minutes. And I feel kind of angry the whole time. Soundtrack: Little Mix’s Power. Who got the power? Not me.

Exercise 6: Chest and Leg Raising. Kind of like a dynamic bow post in yoga. 39 in 1 minute. This should be fun.

Takes me a minute and a half. It actually feels kind of good? Like a back bend? But like my form is a tasteless free-for-all so who knows what I’m dislocating? Soundtrack: MyOhMy, Camila Cabello and DaBaby. Don’t know how this got into my mix but I’ve stopped questioning anything.

Exercise 7: Side Leg Raising, 60 total (30 each side) in one minute. Kind of like a classic Jane Fonda leg lift, judging by the little diagram.

Takes a full two minutes, and I literally stagger to my feet at the end. I should probably engage those hips more. Soundtrack: WAP. Um. Air Vice-Marshall Orr is going to rise from his grave just to shake his finger at me.

This is actually kind of a lot. I push the thought away.

Exercise 8: Elbow Push Ups. 39 in 2 minutes.

Okay, I can hold a plank for 2 minutes, surely this is fine? Hahahaha, no.

This is the first set I finish within the time frame, but I have to use the extra time for a restorative child’s pose. The cats come in demanding dinner and getting in my way. Justifiable break. Soundtrack: Espresso. Whatever.

Exercise 9: Leg-overs, Tuck. The lower level version of this one is just kind of a yoga twist with a straight leg; this one involves a tuck and… something. Twisting with legs tucked together and then straightening in the centre? 20 in one minute, and I THINK that’s 10 each side. All righty.

I lose track of the counts, but I think I’m doing it right? And like the bow things, this is something I should do more often. Also I really need to vacuum the cat litter off the floor of my office. Soundtrack: Not your Barbie Girl, Ava Max. Where did this playlist even come from? The AI-generated music over this low-tech notebook full of my 20 year old mother’s handwriting is causing some serious temporal dislocation.

Exercise 10: Run and Half Knee Bends. 230 in 3 minutes.

It takes me a full minute to even begin to decipher this one. Run in place, and after every 50 steps do 10 half knee bends (squats, I guess, but the lady is kind of on her toes in her little ballet slippers? Maybe she has Barbie feet?). How does this add up to 230?

This one feels very HIIT, though it’s totally impossible to keep track of reps. And how does this combo add up to 230? I don’t hate it, but the tarsal tunnel nerve issues in my right heel are pretty peeved at me. I should have put shoes on. Soundtrack: I like it, Cardi B, Bad Bunny and J Balvin. Seems about right for my obdurate wokeness.

So in the end? Trying to keep up with the reps made me lose the form and breathing that’s been drilled into me over my own fitness history. But the actual movements aren’t terrible.

The final instruction in the book is very uplifting. To lead a balanced life of ironing and tennis, you need to lift those legs. “Wishing is not good enough,” the Air Marshal guy reminds us again, as his final advice.

He’s not wrong. Sigh. So many things we can’t just wish into being, right now. But we CAN perfect the run-in-place-squat combo. Just to, you know, be ready. For whatever.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who looks very different at 61 than her great-aunts did in the late 50s.

It’s the annual vacances scolaires, which means that everyone in France started the summer holiday pretty much the same day I started a week long solo bike trip from Nantes to La Rochelle.

On the plus side: it’s sunny and everyone is happy and there’s ice cream around every corner. On the less joyful side, a lot of shops and restaurants are closed (they’re on holiday!), it can be hard to find a place to have dinner, and there are people wandering in front of your bike constantly. Often in speedos.

This all started when I was in Lithuania last summer, picking up a bike to ride from Warsaw to Gdansk (why could I not hire a bike in Poland, you ask? Excellent question). My hotel happened to have a channel that was showing the Olympics opening ceremonies in English, and I was totally entranced by the freewheeling insanity of it all (drag queens! a menage a trois! the louvre! a masked mystery man doing parkour on the rooftops! boats! Celine Dion at the top of the Eiffel Tower!) . I texted Susan “We have to go to Paris at xmas!”

I’ve had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with France most of my adult life. It’s the root of most of my genetics, and the older women here all look like they could be my great-aunts — but I was always a little pissed off that the King traded Canada for sugar plantations in the Caribbean in the Treaty of Paris. (Or as comedian Derek Seguin puts it, « when the French left us here to rot»).

My first attempts to make friends with Paris didn’t go well. I came to Paris spontaneously at New Years in 2013, after a spectacular breakup with someone on dive trip in the Philippines when I needed to fill three days before going home. The first morning, I infamously passed out in the Louvre because I had dengue fever. After making my way back to my hotel in a cab whose driver insisted on taking me through the Diana death tunnel and doing a re-enactment for me, I spent the next two days marvelling at my crazy rash and watching Call the Midwife in a fever dream before crawling onto a plane to home (and a diagnosis).

A few years later, I took my niece to Paris, also on a whim, after watching the film Eighth Grade and feeling the pain of being 14. It was a heat wave and our romantic garret of an air bnb had no AC, and we just kind of limply wafted around the city. We ended up booking an overpriced hotel with a room with AC and no windows and both slept for 16 hours straight.

But from Vilnius? Paris enchanted me.

So Susan and I came to Paris last Christmas, and that time was the charm. And it unlocked a wormhole of ancestral memories, and I spent a few winter days deep in a genealogical cave, and discovered an ancestor who spoke directly to me, and since then I’ve been working feverishly (in the good way) on a novel about this ancestor and a contemporary counterpart. I went back to France in February, and then I did an intensive novel writing program in the spring. I was here again (with Susan) in late June. I’m entering the novel revision course in September .

That’s a lot that unfolded just because my Lithuanian hotel happened to have good cable. And because I’m old enough to really appreciate Celine Dion.

So this bike trip is actually my fourth trip to France in 8 months. And the most physical. I booked this self-guided trip back in March, as a kind of physical pilgrimage — and then promptly focused entirely on my book. Meaning: almost no training.

It’s a pretty moderate ride as far as these things go – six days of riding, hotels, they carry my bags for me. Along the Velodysée, and very well designed to keep you out of traffic. Mostly bike lanes, reasonably flat. Longest day about 75 km. Alighting in beautiful little seaside towns with white painted cottages with blue doors and a general air of ease. I’ve been lucky with the weather — in the mid 20s, sunny. Beaches everywhere to hurl myself into after a ride (and one day, mid-ride). And I’m prowling the very marshes (les marais) that my mother’s family name comes from.

And yet. Riding hours every day for six days? When you have let your gym and riding habits drift gently away? When it’s very windy (those marais are VERY open!), a lot of the trail is soft and sandy, and the parts of the trail in seaside towns require negotiating families on bikes with all their camping gear, families on their way to the beach with boogie boards and sunbrellas blocking the path, old men in caps who need to raise their seats bringing their baguettes home. Beautiful, amazing, lovely — but actually riding it, with the body I have right now? Not a picque-nique, mes amis.

Im 60 now. A lot of riding this ride fell more into the trudgery category of “really happy to have done it” rather than the feeling of wellbeing and joy I have when I’m on my bike and actually fit. I woke up every morning tired (and seaside towns usually bring loud drunks at 3 am), and a little anxious about the distance. And I had a horrible cat care crisis on day 2 that meant I almost had to fly home immediately. (Shout out to friends Alex and Marianne who stepped in miraculously. The cat is okay).

But! I made myself be grateful for being able to ride — for my functioning body and soul, for being able to jump into the ocean at the end of a ride, for the privilege of being in this sun-kissed, cheese-replete, friendly place where people are relaxed and very tolerant of my terrible french, for having the money and space to indulge my epigenetic imaginings.

I have to go home early because of the cat issue (cat sitter actually LOST THE CAT OUTSIDE for two days and didn’t know how she got out). But my body feels well worked, and I feel accomplished. And I’m eager to get back to my book and my imaginary people.

How is your summer going?

Cate Creede-Desmarais is grateful to be in La Rochelle, the port where most French Canadians’ ancestors departed in the 17th and early 18th century. This place features in the still-in-progress novel.

My right foot is, to put it politely, effed.

I’m struggling right now with a persistent bout of plantar fasciitis (which my physio says is now thought of not as an “itis” — inflammation — but a pathology — i.e., deterioration), compounded by a thing I’ve never even heard of before, called heel fat pad syndrome.

In other words, my feet are effed. I have significant pain anytime I put weight on my right foot — which tends to interfere with all of the things that keep me sane, like walking-hiking-yoga-weight-training-cycling — i.e., living like an active being.

My brain keeps making up little puns about “de agony of de feet.” Anyone who grew up in North America during the 1970s will remember this Wide World of Sports intro about The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat, where skier Vinko Bogataj crashes off course and somersaults into the crowd.

(This little segment immediately brings back images of eating spaghetti in front of the TV, our meals balanced on those flimsy little TV tables. Does anyone have those anymore?)

Puns aside, I think I keep harkening back to 50 years ago because I can’t avoid the fact that this round of foot pain is age related. Words like “deterioration” never feel great, and after I ordered some devices designed to help recovery, I got a notice in my email of a webinar about the relationship between menopause and foot issues, including plantar fasciitis and heel fat pad syndrome.

Insert “mind blown” emoji here — has anyone ever mentioned menopause and foot issues to you?

It all makes sense — less estrogen means less elasticity and collagen, which means more fragile fascia and thinning of the fat pads in the feet. BUT I DON’T LIKE IT.

I’ll wait for the webinar to tell me what additional strategies I might try, but I will note that this round of pain is the most resistant to treatment I’ve had. I’ve had plantar fasciitis before, but it was quickly resolved with some stretching, ice, and good running shoes. I also developed a painful morton’s neuroma in my other foot during the covid lockdown (too much time barefoot), but it healed relatively quickly.

This time, all the physio has for me is taping and “cushioned but structured shoes, all the time.” Canadians do NOT wear shoes in the house — so finding Structured House Shoes is a swerve for me. I hate wearing shoes.

I am trying not to be completely freaked out by this — I’m resting, doing yoga, doing my physio exercises, doing osteo for the rest of my alignment, riding my spin bike. WEARING SHOES IN THE HOUSE. Trying to be sanguine about the fact that my mobility is limited just at the time when I’m trying to write a book, so maybe the universe is telling me to sit down and write. But. Being immobile is a challenge for my very being — especially as the weather is alluring and beckoning me to frolic.

I’m trying to embrace my reality and find adaptable ways for self-care — interspersing stretching throughout my day, eating thoughtfully so I don’t end up feeling sluggish, being religious about using my spin bike (time to level up in zwift again), doing more upper body workouts. Yet another Unexpected Aging Body Need, like my eyebrows falling out. But I am not amused by the irony of this continual need to find ever more emotional elasticity just as my physical elasticity disappears.

What about you? How are YOUR feet? Any menopausal changes? How are you coping?

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who is currently grounded in Toronto, thinking longingly of the many places in the world they’ve trod. Here is Cate’s foot climbing the side of a temple in the fields of Bagan in Myanmar in 2013. Note the bandaids. Poor well-used feet.

“What do you think about this whole trans people in sports thing?,” a friend asked me the other day. I could see she was ready for a good-natured “debate.”

The question didn’t surprise me. I’ve been drawn into this discussion countless times over the past year, from people whose politics and perspectives on the world are otherwise aligned with mine. This divergence is a big clue that the heated furore about trans people in sports isn’t really about fairness in athletic competition. It’s a wedge issue — an issue that is designed to be divisive and distracting.

In the past few weeks, it’s become increasingly clear that as feminists/ progressives/ leftists/ liberals, woke snowflakes — whatever you want to call us — we really need to deeply examine the harm caused created by letting inclusivity for trans people become a matter of “debate.”

• One of the first executive orders from the oligarchs now in power in the US declared trans people pretty much non-existent, and last week’s SOTU was littered with transphobic rhetoric
• Republicans introduced a bill to ban all trans folks from participating in sports; it was blocked by democrats, but many high profile democrats, like Gavin Newsome, are still lamenting the “deep unfairness” of trans people competing.
• Some sports orgs are doing “anticipatory compliance” with these bans, like CrossFit (which Alexis Shotwell wrote about for the blog) and the NCAA
• The webpage for the Stonewall memorial in the US national parks service was edited to remove all references to trans people, including erasing the “T” from LGBTQ, — also erasing the fact that transwomen were the first to fight back at Stonewall
• Trump announced the decision to ban trans folks in sports on National Girls and Women in Sports Day

The cruelty, as one fellow blogger put it, is the point.

All of the overheated “debate” (don’t get me started on “both-sidesing” human rights) about chromosomes and genitals and hormones over the past several years — including bots spewing anti-trans hatred showing up in media comments on any vaguely related story — have done their work. People who would typically be inclined to argue against any kind of discrimination have learned to make an exception on the topic of trans people. See: wedge issue.

Sowing this kind of division is deliberate. If people who would otherwise agree are distracted by arguing among themselves, they are not going to ask the questions like who does this policy serve? It certainly doesn’t serve women in sports — putting all of your energy into arguing about maybe 10 women among tens of thousands is an easy way to avoid dealing with abuses of power, equitable access to resources and equitable pay.

But this is problematic on so many levels beyond sport.

Any time we politicize a category of body, we begin the process of “othering”: using differences to create the belief that a group is less than, or inferior. Over time, we stop seeing the people in that group as breathing, feeling human beings with unique features, hopes and possibilities, and, historically, begin to see them as sub-human.

This is happening, right amid us, right, now.

When you engage in “debate” about chromosomes or gender markers in sports, you are also engaging in creating the space to destroy the human rights of trans, intersex and other gender non-conforming people. And this includes me, many of the people I love, and many of the readers and writers of this blog.

I was scanning the comments on one of the stories about the proposed ban on trans people in sports last week, and one commenter made the point about how few transpeople there really are in sports. Another commenter immediately wrote “one is too many.”

As a Canadian, this sent chills. “None is too many” was famously the phrase used to justify anti-semitic policy that blocked European Jews in Nazi Germany from taking refuge in Canada. It doesn’t take a phd in communication theory to draw a line between that experience and the sinister rhetoric we’re seeing today.

Trans people are already experiencing profound harms. In the US, trans women are being illegally transferred to men’s prisons, despite court rulings against Trump’s order. Trans health has been defunded, and even in Canada, where these orders don’t apply, trans health organizations are closing down and physicians are refusing hormonal care for adolescents who are already on puberty blockers.

All of this has empowered people to be open with incredibly hateful language — check out the comments on the Yoga with Adriene IG after she wrote about trans inclusivity in her weekly newsletter last week — and to be openly aggressive in the face of trans folks. A friend of mine called their IT help desk in their workplace last week and the IT guy demanded to know whether they were male or female because “I can’t tell from your name or your voice.” When my friend — just looking for computer help to do their job! in a social service agency! — said “my pronouns are they/them,” the IT guy said scornfully “oh, one of those “neutral” people,” and proceeded to lecture them on chromosomes. In Toronto. At work.

This empowerment of bigotry is insidious — and most importantly, does not stop with trans folks. Pride Toronto announced this week that three major funders have pulled support. Decades’ worth of work to move toward equity for all marginalized groups is being destroyed in mere weeks. “Trans people in sports” was the weaselly way in to plant doubt about what it means to value difference, to respect difference, and to act to build an accepting world for people who aren’t you.

So back to my question about “who does this policy serve?” The wedge issue of trans people in sports doesn’t serve anyone looking for fairness in sport — and doesn’t serve anyone with any kind of progressive values. It serves to distract and divide us, so that we can’t band together to fight the incredible onslaught of destructive actions coming at us faster than we can respond.

Having your body politicized is a profoundly disorienting and disempowering experience. And “they” — the oligarchs set on creating a world order based on might and winner takes all — are relying on this.

It’s not about fair competition in sports. Just like Trump’s moves to eliminate Canadian sovereignty aren’t about fentanyl. It’s about power, and divisiveness. What our world will look like in the future. And what it means to be human.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who lives in Toronto. They turned 60 last month and seem to be moving into their “mouthy crone” phase of life.

Well it sure feels like it’s been a windy week on the whole compassion/ progression/ human rights front, eh?

Along with everyone in my world, I’ve had to do a lot of deep breathing and regrounding this week. And I was reminded of a post I wrote in 2020, when the lockdowns had worn on for a little bit. When you can’t figure out how to balance in the big old windy world, maybe just practice standing still and focusing on one point on your floor. Find your drishti — balancing point — and then you can find more equilibrium and ease to navigate everything else that’s coming at you. There’s always another page to turn.

Have a read through my older post, and enjoy the feline photobomb at the end.

What’s your drishti right now?

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who is remembering to breathe and stretch in a windy icy city.

A few months ago, a Stanford study came out that said humans experience two big “bursts” of aging: 44 and 60. Like everyone on the cusp of 60, it set off an internal sputter for me — what can I do that I’m not already doing? I’m already pretty active and fit? What the hell is a “burst” of aging?

I’m not gonna lie, as the kids say — that study was probably one of the things that impelled me to join a bourgeois (mostly white, very middle class, mostly older lady) tennis club as my next gym, mostly because it’s close by, not bro-y, clean, not loud and — did I mention — close by, with free parking? It’s definitely a different vibe for me — any gym that teaches both mahjong and line dancing sure seems like a gateway to a retirement community, doesn’t it?

Anyway, antics with the Magic Age and Fitness Measuring machine in my initial fitness assessment aside (more about that later, no doubt), the gym is serving its purpose. I go with some regularity, lift things, stretch. Go to yoga, went to a line dance class (more about the Canadian Stomp also later). Allowed myself to be talked into a few sessions with a personal trainer, who made me feel good by telling me I control my breathing better than any of his other clients. (My sister finds this hilarious — “was ‘you know how to breathe‘ the only nice thing he could say?”).

So with the trainer, I’ve started lifting heavy things again. Before Covid, I lifted heavy things — two weeks before the first lockdown, on my 55th birthday, I deadlifted 200lbs, I frequently brag! — but I got out of the habit. And yes, I accept that for healthy aging, I need to start lifting heavy things again. So I push the sled, playing Chappell Roan in my earbuds, momentarily deluding myself I’m still part of queer pop culture.

So yes, there are some aging type things we can push against. Literally in the case of that damned sled, which is my nemesis. But some things just … happen to us.

About a year ago, I lay down to do some infernal figure fours after a sweaty session on my spin bike. For some nebulous reason to do with the kind of world we live in now, I took a selfie and sent it to someone. Then I looked more closely. My face looked weird. What was wrong? Then it dawned. Where the fuck were my eyebrows?

Gradually, mysteriously, my eyebrows had just … fled. Menopause? Post-covid alopecia? Just Plain Age? Who knows. No one had warned me.

And I looked again. What the hell was happening to my eyeLIDS? Both my mother and my grandfather had to get surgery for ptosis when they were in their 70s — but my eyelids are already drooping. Like, sometimes I have to manually adjust them because the folds get stuck.

Well, I hied myself off to an eyebrow maker post-haste and paid her an unfathomable amount of money to tattoo me up some fake brows. And I consulted a plastic surgeon about what I assumed was ptosis.

“Hm,” he said, his fancy, privately funded office shiny around me, before and after boob jobs flashing onto the tv behind him. “This isn’t classic ptosis. This is just age. And it’s not really your eyelids — your eyes are drooping because your forehead is drooping. I would actually recommend a forehead tuck — this is what you actually want.” He pulled back the skin on my temples showing me that indeed, it’s my whole face that is drooping.

I thanked him and the nice receptionist who gave me the list of fees (both cheaper and more expensive than you think), warning me that the prices would only be valid for three months.

I am pretty sure I am not the kind of person who gets a facelift. But I also assumed I’d have my eyebrows forever. Who can tell what I might do in the future?

So that was my face. Then, for my 59th birthday, I did a trek in Patagonia I’d been longing to do forever — the four day W trek. I carried my own pack over incredible terrain, about 29 km a day, most of it up and down — but stayed in huts where they also fed us. It was incredibly hard and amazing and once in a lifetime — and, at the end of the third day, where my feet were screaming in pain because of an endless rocky downhill, I realized that my big toenails were loose. Like baby teeth.

I ended up bagging the final part of my Patagonia trip, spending a day in a hotel in Santiago trying to soak my feet in the bathroom sink without bashing my head open.

When I got home, I had to get my big toenails surgically removed. They have grown back (remarkably!) But my feet are… bigger. My well worn in blundstones don’t fit. I need all new winter shoes. Did anyone mention that with aging, your toenails might grow back, but your feet will stay…expanded? And then last week, after three days on my feet facilitating a group in a comfortable pair of fluevog boots, I suddenly developed, for the first time in my life, plantar fasciitis. And I’m hobbling around. Sigh.

The notion of “aging in a burst” sounds like it’s the time when you suddenly might experience a massive heart attack, early onset dementia, the need for a hip replacement. But I’m finding it’s a steady drip. Small indignities that form a pattern. On one side of the coin, I’m this hale and hearty person climbing Patagonian mountains, riding my bike across Poland by myself, pushing a heavy sled in the gym. And on the other side of the coin, I’m a saggy-faced, metabolically challenged, no-eyebrows, splaying-feet person with chronic insomnia and a prescription for HRT I guard with my hot-flashing life.

Bodies are gonna body. Aging is gonna happen. I am still going to have adventures, build my strength and stamina and flexibility and try to ease my sleep and fascia. But what new, unforeseen indignity will show up next? I’m betting it has something to do with hemmorhoids.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who is planning to be in a nunnery in Bhutan on their 60th birthday.

“All you have to do is crawl. And you’ll make it to the top.”

That’s the main message I took from a documentary short called Almost Over the Hill that came across my feed the other day. My friend Julia Creet — who has blogged about riding solo in Cape Breton here and here — recently created a short film exploring what it takes to ride a bike up a hill.

The film features four cyclists sharing their stories of the strenuous climbs they’ve learned to make friends with, including a 200 km MTB trail, an 11 km high altitude climb, a short but steady hill in an urban neighbourhood, and Julia’s solo adventure on the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton.

Julia told me that what she likes most about the film is “the encouragement it provides to older athletes. We may have to adjust how we ride, but we can keep riding much longer than we might think. And, making it was so much fun. I love my little cycling group and the support we offer each other. Building community through sports is as important as the joy we get from the sport itself.”

She added, “Some things take a long time to accomplish. Climbing a hill is like many other hard things in life; you just have to put one foot in front of the other and trust that you will finish the task. Cycling, in all its aspects, demands that we stay in the present for every pedal stroke. That alone is a lesson for life.”

It was the “lesson for life” aspect of the film that really stuck with me. I happened to luck into it the day after the US election, and three messages have been going through my head since:

• Age and experience help us learn to do hard things
• Take every hill at the easiest possible pace so you don’t blow yourself out
• If you roll into a hill thinking it’s going to be the most terrible thing ever, you’ve already defeated yourself

I’ve had a lot of conversations over the past week that circle around the question “where do we find resilience?” I think this film points us once again to the wisdom we carry when we guide our bodies do hard things. Go slowly. Trust your experience and knowledge. Embrace the truth of the hard, knowing that you can do it.

Catherine, one of the cyclists in the film, says “zone 2 climbing flattens out the terrain.” I have been holding that close. As a queer, female bodied person with almost six decades of life behind me, I’ve been in the place many times before of having my needs and rights shunted aside, of having people I work with every day tell me to my face that they don’t think I deserve basic human rights, of having people literally tell me — misreading my reality significantly — that “homosexuals do not deserve to live.” When I was younger, I tackled these forces with zone 4 or 5 energy — throwing my whole self into protest, activism, fury, into the shared affirmation of outraged communities. Lots of shouting and marching, one memorable moment in 1994, encircling the Ontario legislature building with a giant pink ribbon.

Now, I’m a little more wary of outraged communities, no matter how creative or how much I agree with the values at the core. I see the impact of polarization, the futility of trying to shout each other into submission. One side wins and pins down the other, the weight ratio shifts, the wrestling continues. Burning each other out.

Hills are always going to be part of our terrain. Rolling hills I’m on for the long haul, not one long push to a top followed by a glorious descent. I reorient myself toward that slow crawl: teaching human-centred leadership, teaching dialogic practices, creating group processes where people can learn to hear each other, coaching people on finding their full, thoughtful voices. Appreciating music and art. Loving my people. I write emails when I think it might help, donate money. Lean into practices that might bridge some of that anger. Zone 2. Steady.

Julia’s film is making the festival rounds and isn’t available for public viewing yet. But I’m very grateful it came my way on a week when I really needed it. I’ll keep the blog community posted on when you can all view it.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who lives in Tkaranto and is happy to talk to anyone about dialogic practices.

Julia Creet is an aging jock who still likes to play hard as much as possible. She is also an English Prof. at York University. “Almost Over the Hill” is her third documentary. juliacreet.com

As regular readers know, it’s been a veritable “turning 60 fest” around here recently. I think mine is the next turning, heading at me in early February.

I’m in a big reflective space about how I want to engage with the next decade in body and spirit, and I thought I should take a look at the second post I wrote for this blog, shortly after I turned 50.

The Lithe Old Lady Inside Me (Guest Post)

As I reread it, I was pleased at how well my sense of what I wanted has stayed true. A lot has happened in the past nine years — covid, menopause, <all that, waving vaguely at The World.>. Deaths. Work that matters deeply. Love in so many permutations. I’ve covered thousands of kilometres on my bike in many countries and in the virtual world of Zwift, done hundreds of sun salutations, deadlifted 200 lbs in one glorious moment. I’m still running when I feel like it, slower than I ever thought would be “okay.” Walking. Breathing.

I am still living in that gentle tension between knowing and accepting that I am going to just keep slowing down, losing random things like my eyebrows (wtf?), watching my forehead and eyelids droop, battling with hormones, feeling my energy shift in endless ways — and knowing that I can always keep building strength and agility, move my body through space in ways that give me all the good hormones and trust in everything that is still here.

When you are riding on a set course in Zwift, you get a little ghost avatar in front or behind you to show you what pace you were at the last time you rode this course. When I reread the post I wrote in 2015, I pictured that lithe little old lady like that ghost avatar. She’s getting closer to being completely superimposed over me. And I still hold her with care. My body, my routines? They’re imperfect. But they are always about honouring who I am today — and how I want to be as I age.

I think I can safely say I no longer have the pituitary gland of a 25 year old. But that’s okay. So far, I feel like I’m giving that ghost future self the care she needs.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who lives in the part of the world currently called Toronto.