Rowing

 

Rowing

What are we really, a sum total of our memories, or our things.  Are we mind or are we matter and material possessions.  What defines us, or maybe a little of both, a lot of one some of the other? Just trying to figure it out as I sit on my rowing machine, in my garage, looking at some of my stuff which also brings back a whole bunch of memories.

I see a pile of squash racquets, a wonderful sport I played with passion, reaching heights of mediocrity in my play, and one now I can no longer play because my heart and body no longer co-operate with my will. 

I look at most sports equipment in that same sad and longing way, the skiis standing in the corner of the garage with the rusted edges.  I put them on last a year ago in Banff as my skills and my knee betrayed me and I realized that was my last day.  

My snorkling equipment from days living in the Bahamas still stored in a bag, I am reluctant to get rid of because I have the lingering vague hope of using them in some far off post pandemic tropical vacation. 

I gaze too at my golf clubs and think of my arthritic wrist, but still hold out hope that playing this game, however poorly, will be my last connection to athletics of any kind other than walking and this rowing machine I now find myself on.

What am I these things or these memories?  

The shelves are packed with our camping gear, equipment we did not use this year, but we did last summer and perhaps again in the future.  Many memories there, of both making and breaking camp, camp fires and forest and beach walks.  

On another shelf a tape recorder/radio I used to record messages to my daughter when she was a child and we lived thousands of miles apart. 

The tools and garden equipment remind me of a host of projects that I joked kept me out of trouble and out of the gangs.

 

I row on surrounded by my stuff and my memories.