Natasha Zarin

At Bear Creek Park, in spring, fresh cut grass mixes with the warm rubber of the track, and when the wind kicks up, it carries the thick powdery scent of the concession’s nacho cheese all the way into the parking lot.      

My dad figures if we’re going to be at the track all day waiting on the sprint heats, I might as well sign up for more events. The 200 metre will help your 100, he tells me. The 400 will help your 800. The 1500 will help your 800 even more, and the long jump, why not? Surprisingly, this almost always works out. Only on one occasion after running a 1500 metre race do I have to sprint across the wet field to make the 200 metre start.

My father’s race strategy is simple: Don’t save anything for the end. Let the crowd carry you down the last stretch of track. And they do. Again and again, whether it’s a tight race, a bad race, or even a fall. The crowd loves nothing more than to offer a standing ovation to the kid who plants face first right before the finish, and gets up to cross the line.

On my way to the start of a race, I walk past some of the older kids I train with, see them sitting in pairs and groups of three eating hotdogs in the stands with a tray of nachos coated in slick yellow slime. It doesn’t even look good to me, but it seems a very teenager thing to do, to eat those fake cheesy kinds of foods and just sit in the sun with your Asics sneakers resting on the bleachers. No care in the world, no more races to run.

I love running of course. There is nothing else that makes me feel freer than propelling my body forward, chasing after something. The final turn, when my heart pumps outside of my t-shirt, and the last 10 metres where everything is decided, there is nothing quite like it. Winning is great, too. But almost winning is sometimes better—daydreaming about what I would do differently next time, and creating foolproof plans in my mind to ensure glorious victories against my opponents for the next weekend. I love it, even though it all feels like work to me: aiming for first place at the finish line, keeping up with training. But for my father, playing sports was fun.

My dad had worked from as early as he could remember in his father’s woodworking shop after school and on weekends. Playing sports was a kind of break for him, something to do in his free time. But like most things, he took “fun” seriously: “If you’re going to do it, then do it.” “ Go extra hard on the easy parts,”  he’d say, gaining momentum on the small hills when he still ran trails with me.

In his younger years he played soccer, baseball, basketball, football, ran track and cross country and was captain of his high school rugby team at Burnaby South, the first to tour and play in Australia and New Zealand. The colourful stories from that international tournament were well-known in our house. The homestay families my father stayed with were hospitable and warm-hearted. He especially liked to tell the story of the breakfast one family had prepared: an enormous platter with steak and lamb, sausages and trout steaks, everything stacked up high, and the shock he felt when he learned the entire feast was meant just for him.

The track meet runs until the sun flashes one last time from behind the redwoods at the edge of the park, and dad, helping with the finish line timing, or hurdles setup, or dragging in the high-jump mats, has not had a thing to eat all day. Still he would rather eat a handful of the fire-ants scurrying along the cracked pavement outside the concession than consider anything of the neon yellow, phony cheese variety. I want nothing more than to go home and eat something quick, have a shower, talk with my friends on the phone. But I can tell by the slight bounce in his New Balance sneakers as we head to the truck that we were on our way to buy crab.

At Seven Sea’s market, I shuffle my squeaky sneakered feet as my father meanders the aisles of fish with their glistening eyes staring out from mountains of shaved ice and large, bubbling tanks of crab and lobster. He picks out a few crabs, a bag full of shrimp and two paper bags of ingredients I’ve never seen before. “Oh…you bought crab…” My mom had probably already made dinner, but my father is in his element now, filling the biggest pot with water, pouring some wine into a glass. He lifts the crabs wrapped in newspaper onto the kitchen table and takes the blue rubber bands off of their claws. I can’t help but feel bad for what is about to happen, as they’re dropped into scalding water, make little hissing sounds, and are lifted back out bright red and set on a plate beside thick wedges of lemon.

My dad must be starving by now, but he takes his time melting the butter, smashing the garlic underneath the butcher’s knife, and finely cutting leeks and shallots, before he adds parsley from the garden. He tosses some white wine into the pan and turns up the flame, throwing in the shrimp, flipping them up in the air. My mom is in the back of the kitchen somewhere rolling her eyes and sighing at the sink that was empty but is now filled with dishes once again.

Tiki torches flicker in the backyard, and my mom, younger sister, brother and I sit at the outside table. Dad walks out from the kitchen of our house, from the home he built with his father over the winter and spring of 1990, and sets down the platter of shrimp and boiled crab. That night, my parents share funny stories as we dip crab legs and shrimp into melted butter. Stars break out in the sky. The aroma of fresh cooked seafood and wine sauce wafts miles above, miles away from the stadium bleachers, nacho chips and fake cheese.