Ever since I’ve known him, my husband has loved everything Italian: pasta, Italian movies, That’s Amore, Italian art, design, the passionate expressive nature of the Italians, Italy, cappuccinos. (He also loves playing sports. He loves solving things, he loves art. He loves me, he loves his family. And one more thing, Chai Tea.)
So now we find ourselves going to Italy, his favorite place in the world! Because of an invitation he received from the Turin Olympic Committee to, gasp, represent Canada, at the Cultural Olympiad with an art form he invented. And although I’ve been with him every step of the way, now that we’re ready to pack our suitcases, I’m wondering: how does someone DO that? Put all those things that you love together, fulfill a dream like that?
Okay, maybe he never said “It’s my dream to go to the Cultural Olympiad of the 2006 Olympic Winter Games” in Italy. But now that we’re almost out the door, I realize it is his dream. He dreamed it up, and through the force of his wanting and imagining, and his personal magnetism and like-able ness, he has brought me and everyone else in his radius, along with his dream. (I had no small part in it, I want you to know, it was me and Anna Banana who wrote up the budget and applications to attract the cultural sponsor funding which came through in the end. It was me who said, “I think we should concentrate on this opportunity” three or four years ago, when we’d run completely out of money and had to reinvent ourselves with some new project. It was me who wrote the press releases, typed up the proposals, made the presentations, spent hours poring over just the right word in the sentence. Me who picked up the phone and made the cold calls.).
Fine, that’s enough. I can’t take all the credit. Whatever. He did the graphics, he edited the promotional videos, that had to be part of it. I’ll admit it. He was a force in his own success. And oh, by the way, the underlying thing which he worked out from crazy idea to fruition -- his paintings -- they’re stunning. They’re unusual. You have to acknowledge their quality and their sweeping inspiration, you can’t get better than the Canadian winter landscape for raw provocation. But still. How exactly did it all come together, now that it’s here? We went from: “He does what?” to “I just saw your picture there with Avril Lavigne in Maclean’s Magazine.”
I remember Sam, (a hockey buddy on Gord’s Rusty Crank team) just laughing at me. I was telling him about The Ice Painting Challenge. It was the early days of hoping he’d get the invitation. The people we were waiting to hear from in Italy were in jail, we had some waiting to do while the government changed and everyone had their holiday. We had to dream up stuff to keep us in the game, and The Ice Painting Challenge was the first thing we landed on, a community enhancer, mixing art and sport. It was just the beginning. I had gone to Sam for help, for moral support, we needed a team to sign up, to make an ice painting. And Sam laughed. He didn’t stop, his eyes wrinkled up mischievously and he looked at me through his robust laughter and said “Tell me, just how are we going to explain this to the guys?” As if I had any idea. And you know what? Today Gord played hockey with them, his last game before Italy, and he came home with a fat envelope which they’d pressed into his hands in the locker room. At the doorway to our mortgaged and paid down and re-mortgaged home, he opened it: a card from The Cranks with $200 in it! For Gordie, their teammate. Probably Johnnie was behind that, Big John and Franca, his Italian wife, who has been helping me translate from Italian, so she’s seen some of the intrigues and complications first hand. All the weird things that have happened with this project, which rock you off your belief in the goodness of human beings, were all wiped away with that one gesture. I just broke down right there in the doorway and hugged him.
People can be really great, really generous and open hearted. Sometimes I think we’re all just looking for that chance to connect with the best in ourselves. Wow.
So now we find ourselves going to Italy, his favorite place in the world! Because of an invitation he received from the Turin Olympic Committee to, gasp, represent Canada, at the Cultural Olympiad with an art form he invented. And although I’ve been with him every step of the way, now that we’re ready to pack our suitcases, I’m wondering: how does someone DO that? Put all those things that you love together, fulfill a dream like that?
Okay, maybe he never said “It’s my dream to go to the Cultural Olympiad of the 2006 Olympic Winter Games” in Italy. But now that we’re almost out the door, I realize it is his dream. He dreamed it up, and through the force of his wanting and imagining, and his personal magnetism and like-able ness, he has brought me and everyone else in his radius, along with his dream. (I had no small part in it, I want you to know, it was me and Anna Banana who wrote up the budget and applications to attract the cultural sponsor funding which came through in the end. It was me who said, “I think we should concentrate on this opportunity” three or four years ago, when we’d run completely out of money and had to reinvent ourselves with some new project. It was me who wrote the press releases, typed up the proposals, made the presentations, spent hours poring over just the right word in the sentence. Me who picked up the phone and made the cold calls.).
Fine, that’s enough. I can’t take all the credit. Whatever. He did the graphics, he edited the promotional videos, that had to be part of it. I’ll admit it. He was a force in his own success. And oh, by the way, the underlying thing which he worked out from crazy idea to fruition -- his paintings -- they’re stunning. They’re unusual. You have to acknowledge their quality and their sweeping inspiration, you can’t get better than the Canadian winter landscape for raw provocation. But still. How exactly did it all come together, now that it’s here? We went from: “He does what?” to “I just saw your picture there with Avril Lavigne in Maclean’s Magazine.”
I remember Sam, (a hockey buddy on Gord’s Rusty Crank team) just laughing at me. I was telling him about The Ice Painting Challenge. It was the early days of hoping he’d get the invitation. The people we were waiting to hear from in Italy were in jail, we had some waiting to do while the government changed and everyone had their holiday. We had to dream up stuff to keep us in the game, and The Ice Painting Challenge was the first thing we landed on, a community enhancer, mixing art and sport. It was just the beginning. I had gone to Sam for help, for moral support, we needed a team to sign up, to make an ice painting. And Sam laughed. He didn’t stop, his eyes wrinkled up mischievously and he looked at me through his robust laughter and said “Tell me, just how are we going to explain this to the guys?” As if I had any idea. And you know what? Today Gord played hockey with them, his last game before Italy, and he came home with a fat envelope which they’d pressed into his hands in the locker room. At the doorway to our mortgaged and paid down and re-mortgaged home, he opened it: a card from The Cranks with $200 in it! For Gordie, their teammate. Probably Johnnie was behind that, Big John and Franca, his Italian wife, who has been helping me translate from Italian, so she’s seen some of the intrigues and complications first hand. All the weird things that have happened with this project, which rock you off your belief in the goodness of human beings, were all wiped away with that one gesture. I just broke down right there in the doorway and hugged him.
People can be really great, really generous and open hearted. Sometimes I think we’re all just looking for that chance to connect with the best in ourselves. Wow.
posted by Caitlin at
5:51 PM
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