CERULEAN SKY

Part 1

 

I will never feel more powerful in my life than the way I felt as a boy in Sweden during the summer. The days were so long that I never saw the sun come up or go down, and it made my life a world of endless opportunities. No beginning and no end, just an eternity of Vikings and barbarians, gnomes and trolls, cops and robbers, and friends who would live and fight and play together forever.

But sometimes forever lasts just a little too long.

I only started liking hockey, well, liking hockey more than soccer, when I was ten. But I stayed best friends with Gunnar, a boy I'd been playing soccer with since I was six. Anytime we could be together, we were. And in the summer, that meant we were by each other's side almost all the time.

But not all the time.

One day, when I was seven, Gunnar fell sick and I went out into the land of eternal summer alone, and bored myself in all of two minutes. So I went exploring. I became a nomad, wandering the world, climbing mountains and fording rivers, soaring after birds as they circled on thermals, and scampering after rabbits, watching as they disappeared into the bushes, never to be seen again.

I might have made it a half mile away from home.

I was a child. I possessed that special power that children have to make the world as big as they believe it to be. In my mind I had crossed continents and braved arid deserts and sultry jungles. And I had found the secret entrance to an ancient Mayan pyramid, whose dark depths were filled with treasure beyond measure.

Well, possibly not, but I did stumble upon a little path nestled between some bushes that led to one of heaven's outposts on earth.

Or at least that's how I remember it. Tall grass waving in the wind, surrounded by guardian trees that kept everything that was bad and hurtful away. Quiet, except for the rustling of the grass and the leaves on the trees. No birds, no rabbits or other small animals in sight. None were admitted. A little oasis that was all mine, completely under my control, unlike the realities and complexities of the world that lurked outside, trying to claw their way in.

It was the most magical, powerful, inspiring and invigorating place under the vast cerulean sky. And it still is.

I stayed there as late as I could. I was so tempted to just stay there forever. I was sure that the sun would never set there, that I would never hunger, never thirst, never yearn for anything ever again.

And that's why I left. As long as I made my way home before sunset, my heaven on earth was preserved. Forever.

Gunnar got well the next day and we went outside to play soccer with some other kids. I didn't tell him where I'd gone the day before. He was my best friend but somehow it didn't seem like he would belong there, like the trees would turn him away before he could make it inside.

The eternal summer paused for a while so Gunnar and I could go back to school, to play soccer, to learn, to grow, to laugh, to cry, to fight, to play and to live. Then it started again, and the previous year didn't matter anymore because Gunnar and I were all-powerful again.

Correction, Gunnar and I and Erik.

Erik was Gunnar's younger brother who had just turned five that year. I had never known of him before that. It was like he'd suddenly popped into existence to become an energetic parasite that Gunnar's parents promptly attached to us. It tried its best to sap all the fun out of anything Gunnar and I did that summer.

But no earthly force can overcome a child during the summer in Sweden, and we figured out how to turn our curse into a blessing. Before when we'd played as mighty warriors locked in battle, longsword biting into the mace that was bludgeoning bones, we'd understood that something of great importance was at stake. Something world-shattering. Now we had the perfect representation of it, in the form of a whiny little blonde and blue-eyed boy, pouting as he sat cross-legged on the ground, waiting for a champion to emerge and win his favour.

There was now a prize for the victor of the games that Gunnar and I had played every summer. And although he complained bitterly and demanded to play, to compete with us, I think he secretly enjoyed the power that comes from being desired.

The next year, we fell back into the summer and picked up right where we'd left off. Erik was now openly giddy with his ability to hold us in his thrall as we competed for him. And I started to win almost every competition I had with Gunnar. I didn't really know why. Maybe I was trying harder. Maybe it was because I really wanted those sparkling blue eyes to bless me with their approval when I emerged victorious.

Another year passed. Gunnar and I were now ten, and Erik was seven, and we were still being nurtured by the endless Swedish summer, when something happened to shake my sense of immortality. Our competition that year was to have Erik swim out from the beach, stopping as far out as he wanted, then Gunnar and I would race to swim out to him, then back again.

I was more than halfway back to the beach before I heard Erik's screams. And Gunnar wasn't breathing by the time the two of us towed him back.

Gunnar never breathed again.

The strangest thing is that I wasn't sad at all. Ever. It upset me for a while, to see all the fuss, all the crying, the wailing, the torment of his parents. I almost thought that he was actually dead. But he wasn't, not really. He just got stuck in a moment in time in the summer, and everyone else went ahead without him.

Erik didn't understand this, though. He cried even more than his parents did. After the funeral, I pulled him away, brought him over the mountains and across the rivers, waded through the desert and trudged into the jungle. I brought him to my place, where the trees parted to let him in.

He stopped crying and started smiling as I explained to him that Gunnar wasn't gone, he was just resting a little further back in the summer, trying to catch his breath. Then I told him that he was in a special place, that this was where Gunnar could reach us, but just the two of us. He closed his eyes, like I told him to, and he smiled as Gunnar started speaking to him, using my voice. They talked for a while, then it was time to go back.

We played together for the rest of the summer, Erik and I. He took on Gunnar's role, and even though I won almost all of our competitions because I was older and bigger than him, neither of us really cared.

I stopped playing soccer. I think my father was disappointed, but he never said anything to me about it. It just wasn't fair to Gunnar. I would have been getting so much more practice than him. I played hockey a lot more, and I grew to love it more than I had ever loved soccer.

Erik was never really that interested in sports. Over the summers, we played together less and less as I spent more of my time playing hockey. We always made it a point, though, to go to our special place on Gunnar's day so that we could both talk to him, and tell him how we were doing. Erik's parents were having problems. It was like a tomb in his house, completely silent. None of them really talked to each other, just went on with the routine of everyday life. His parents were so wrapped up in the loss of their son, that they forgot all about the one that they still had.

When I was sixteen and Erik was thirteen, we stopped talking to Gunnar. We still went to our place together, though, and lay on our backs, gazing into the deep blue sky, thinking about Gunnar, about what it had been like when it was the three of us together - Gunnar and I wrestling for control of the object of desire.

Speaking of desire ...

I stopped thinking about Gunnar. The grass was waving only slightly in the dying wind. Everything in our place, the trees, the grass, and maybe even the sky itself was waiting for something to happen. I didn't disappoint. I leaned over and kissed Erik on his lips.

<Why did you do that?> He asked, after kissing me back.

I didn't answer. Just lay back and stared at the sky again. Maybe the answer was up there, written in cerulean blue.

<Boys don't kiss boys.> He went on, quietly.

<Maybe here they do.> I answered. We didn't talk anymore that day. I started thinking about playing in the NHL one day, and promised myself, in that sacred place, that one day I would do it.

That was the year I started playing in Swedish division one. I didn't get much ice time, because I was a rookie, but I scored six goals and had three assists in twelve games. The next year I got more ice time. I scored fifteen goals and nineteen assists in twenty-nine games.

On Gunnar's day, Erik kissed me as we lay in the waving grass again, tangled in the undying summer. I wanted to do more but he stopped me. He told me had a girlfriend. We lay there quietly until an hour before sunset, then we walked back together in silence.

A lot happened to me the year after that. I was drafted by the Flyers in the second round. Lulea of the Elite League purchased my contract. I met Stina and started dating her.

She was an angel wrapped in a delicate mortal shell. She loved me. We could go everywhere together, and we could kiss, and we could do even more when we were alone. She wanted to do more with me.

On Gunnar's day, I started telling Erik about Stina. He shut me up by kissing me. We spent the rest of our time there in silence again.

They put me on the fourth line in Lulea. I still managed to get eleven goals and six assists in twenty-nine games that year with them. I didn't see Erik the whole year - any spare time I had in Pitea I spent with Stina. I loved the angel in her. I loved it in spite of the shell it was in.

The summer had started to become stifling by the time Erik and I made our way to our special place for Gunnar's day. The trees looked like they were starting to grow weary of their vigilance. The grass was withered and dry. Then Erik told me he had broken up with his girlfriend the month before, and we kissed, longer and harder than we ever had before, and my world was suddenly coloured in blissful cerulean blue.

I played thirty-eight games and got twenty-three points that season, which was fairly good for Elitserien, considering it was my second year. But the highlight of the year was playing in the World Junior Championships and helping to win the silver medal for Sweden.

That was the year I was offered a contract with the Flyers. I was offered the chance to fulfill my desire to play in the NHL. It would also be the last year I'd be able to spend Gunnar's day with Erik in our oasis if I accepted the contract.

I turned down the offer. I wasn't ready. I wasn't in the right condition to play in the NHL. I needed more experience. I needed to bulk up. I needed one more year. Russ Farwell accepted and respected my decision.

The relationship between Erik's parents had finally crumbled into nothingness, slowly worn down by neglect, anger, grief and resentment. He was moving to Stockholm with his mother. He didn't have much of a choice in the matter. On Gunnar's day that year, he didn't push me away when I wanted to do more than kiss him and we gave ourselves to each other.

The next year I signed a three year deal with the Flyers. I was ready to leave. Erik was already gone. I went to our place by myself, and everything was as beautiful as it was the first day I found it. And that's the way I've remembered it, ever since.

My little oasis, my piece of heaven, tall swaying grass, ever-vigilant trees, and my Erik.

All under a brilliant cerulean sky.

CERULEAN SKY

Part 2

 

When I saw Philadelphia by daylight the morning after I arrived, the first thought that occurred to me was that the sky was different.

It seemed smaller, dirtier, less blue somehow. But it didn't really matter what the sky was like because I was there for only one reason and that was to play hockey. I just tried not to notice it anymore. I don't think anything will ever compare to the sky I remember from my childhood, especially not the sky that wrapped our secret place with the essence of summer.

I stayed with Pelle Eklund when I first got there. He really welcomed me and helped me adjust to living in Philly. He also knew where to find Swedish food in the city. I was surprised that I could get fairly decent dumplings, and lots of berries - lingonberries, cloudberries and even akerbar.

I'd never realized it until I came to America, but food - its taste and smell - can really bring back memories. If I closed my eyes and popped a cloudberry into my mouth, letting the juice coat my tongue, sometimes I could see myself back at home, having dinner with my family. Jessica would be talking about her latest soccer game, I would be trying to drown her out with tales of my latest hockey game and Ingela would keep quiet and make use of the distraction to get the last of the cloudberries.

Sometimes, when I could taste the summer in the cloudberries, I could see Gunnar, Erik and I playing together, laughing and screaming, wrestling and tumbling. And on the rare occasions that those summer cloudberries were both bitter and sweet, I could see Erik and myself lying in the grass, kissing under the witness of the sheltering trees and the unending sky.

I lived with Pelle and his family until I found my own apartment. It was great living with them. Their house was a bit like a portal to Sweden, so it was as if I had a month to make the adjustment to living in America, instead of a fourteen hour flight. I suppose I didn't really have the time or energy to feel homesick anyway. I threw everything I had into playing hockey at training camp.

I felt very welcome, both on the ice and in the locker room. Even on the first day, there was an almost tangible sense of belonging, of being part of a unit.

And there was Tommy.

My heart almost stopped the first time I met him. He looked so much like Erik. Then he introduced himself and it was as if he removed a mask. His temperament, his mannerisms and his voice were nothing like Erik's. I stopped holding my breath and introduced myself as well, and from then on, as long as he kept moving or talking everything was all right.

It was only when he was quiet and still that the mask went back on, the mask that turned him into Erik. I had to control myself from walking over to him and kissing him. Or maybe hitting him for leaving me. And then I would get angry at myself. Erik shouldn't have been on my mind anymore. I should have been thinking about Stina. Stina, who loved me, and was waiting for me back in Pitea. Stina, who I loved in return.

After my first week in Philly, I started to feel a little off-balance. It wasn't just tiredness, it was like I was missing something from my life. That was when I had the dream for the first time. The first thing I would see was the blue. Cerulean blue that stretched as far as I could see and sense. Then I would see the trees, tall and stately, protecting me. Protecting us. I would feel Erik by my side before I saw him, and when I did, he would press his lips to mine slowly and searingly, rejuvenating me. I woke up and I had regained my balance.

I played well throughout the rest of the pre-season, but started slowly during the regular season. I was losing my balance again. Then the night before we played the Jets, I had the dream about our place. I scored two goals and had an assist the next day. We lost 9-6 but I was starting to think that the dream was the key to staying at the peak of my game.

By the time I started playing on the same line as Eric Lindros and Mark Recchi, I knew it was the key. We won eleven of our first fourteen games and morale was high. Everyone on the team couldn't be any happier with everyone else.

I started watching Tommy when he wasn't looking, and somebody else started watching me.

I'm not sure why I did it. I talked to Stina on the phone every two or three days. I shouldn't have been looking at anyone else. I suppose the dreams were partly to blame. Even though I hadn't seen Erik very often back home, he had always been there. I could have seen him anytime I wanted. And now that we were thousands of miles apart, he had taken over my dreams, and he had started to take over my waking world too.

I sought Erik in Tommy even though I tried my best not to. I would have just avoided him, but he kept asking me to go to bars and clubs with him. His girlfriend was back in Sweden too, and he liked going out with me because he wouldn't have to worry about me hooking up with somebody else and abandoning him. I don't think he knew that girls were the last thing I thought about when I was with him. I was constantly on edge, waiting for glimpses of Erik to appear.

One night I had a little too much to drink, and I saw more than a glimpse. I looked at Tommy and saw Erik for a few precious moments and I spilled my heart out to him.

<Erik, I am so sorry. All that time, I never admitted it to you and I never admitted it to myself. We could have had a chance if I hadn't been scared. Will you give me another chance now?> A sliver of honesty.

Then he started talking to me and just like that, it was gone. I realized who I was really with, and I tried to cover up and apologize but Tommy didn't really seem to mind. He just put it down to drunken babbling and helped me out of the bar. It was never really the same between us after that night, though. We still went out together, and we were still friends, but he stopped confiding in me and he would give me a look whenever he saw me on the phone with Stina. That look was like a blade of ice directed at me.

I stopped watching Tommy, but I was still being watched. Someone's eyes were on me, both on the ice and off, and I didn't know who it was for a long time. I wasn't interested in finding out. Things were already hard enough for me - I missed Stina and I missed Erik. If it weren't for my dreams I don't think I could have played as well as I did.

Eric Lindros hurt his knee in November and after that I wasn't watched anymore. I wasn't too surprised to find out that it was him. He'd always seemed incomplete to me, maybe that's why he was looking. It wasn't that he was desperate and needy. I just got the impression that he could be so much more if he found the right person.

Sometimes I think of people as flames. Some of them glow softly, muted by fear. Some of them burn so bright that they end up blinding themselves. Some of them haven't ignited yet because they need a spark. I wondered just how bright Eric would burn if he found his spark.

I knew I wasn't it. I knew because he wasn't mine. When he came back after he recovered from his knee injury I talked to him about it. I think the reason he had only watched from afar and hadn't done anything was that he knew about Stina. He did a horribly bad job of denying that he had been watching me. He was like a little child with frosting smeared around his lips insisting that he hadn't had any cake. Then when he realized that I didn't believe him, he became angry and defensive. I calmed him down and explained to him that I wasn't going to do anything to hurt him.

Finally, Eric just sat there and stared at me. I think he was expecting either acceptance or rejection. I gave him neither. Instead, I let him in. We walked around the city that night, the buildings and their past inhabitants whispering history in my ears, assuring me that the situation we were in had been experienced by countless others who had walked those streets in the past.

At the end of the night, Eric had seen more of me and I had seen more of him, and as the months passed, while the bonds that held the team together loosened and frayed, the bond between us grew stronger.

Strong enough for him to know that I wasn't his spark.

I tried to play my best for the rest of the regular season but ultimately it meant nothing. It wasn't the same team that had started the year in high spirits, believing we could take on the world. I got the impression that most of the guys had given up. We didn't make the playoffs. I'm not bitter and I'm not blaming them. I was part of the team and if they gave up, that was as much my fault as theirs.

I went back to Pitea for the summer. The sky wasn't how I remembered it. It wasn't as blue and it wasn't as alive. For the first time since Gunnar died, I didn't go to my place on Gunnar's day. If the sky wasn't the same then my place wouldn't be the same either. I couldn't stand to see that. I needed my place to still be there, even if it was only in my dreams.

I spent the day with Stina on my boat instead. We lay there quietly, holding each other and I drifted off to sleep. In the moment before I slipped into oblivion, I remember feeling Erik in my arms, instead of Stina, and I knew, rather than saw, that the sky had finally returned to its endless cerulean blue.

CERULEAN SKY

Part 3

 

Everything changed.

Pelle Eklund was gone. Terry Simpson was gone. Russ Farwell was gone.

Tommy Soderstrom was gone, and Erik was gone with him.

It doesn't make sense, but that was the change that made everything different for me. When Tommy was traded, I lost my last physical connection to Erik. And soon after that, I lost my dreams. I don't mean that I stopped dreaming completely - I just stopped dreaming about my secret place. There was no way for me to get back there anymore, no way for me to immerse myself in that cerulean blue.

Those were strange days. I walked the streets of Philadelphia, sometimes by myself, sometimes with Eric, but always feeling hollow. It was as if I had lost a part of me, but that couldn't have been it. After all, I hadn't really lost anything. Nothing that was real.

I couldn't wait for the season to start. I wanted to lose myself in hockey, because that was the only place I could try to steady myself. That was real. Of course, I didn't get the chance to at first because of the lockout.

I went to all of the player-only practices, hoping that it would be good enough, but it wasn't. Nothing was at stake. Real games grip me, hold me and take everything I have to give. The world shrinks to a chamber of glass and ice and noise and the only colours that exist are winning and losing.

I got more and more frustrated as the lockout dragged on. Now that I think back on those times, I realize that losing those dreams hurt me a lot more than I thought at the time. More than I wanted to believe. The only thing that helped was talking to Stina on the phone. She was the only one who knew how to calm me and make me feel better. I fell more and more in love with her as those difficult weeks stretched on.

Finally, I returned to Sweden to play for Lulea. Even though Stina had been helping, I was becoming numb in Philadelphia. Without hockey, there was no reason for me to be there. At least at home I had games and I had Stina.

I remember the day I found out that the lockout ended. That night I held Stina in my arms as we drifted off to sleep and she whispered to me, <I love you.>

I didn't say anything in response but I held her tighter and kissed her soft, sweet hair. She smiled her little angelic smile and I felt satisfied with what I had.

I returned to Philadelphia feeling much better than the way I did before I left. I was excited to be playing for the Flyers again. I wanted to be lost in that roaring world of triumph and defeat, to find a way to belong and be surrounded by something infinitely larger than myself. Because the eternal summer with its cerulean blue sky seemed further away than it had ever been before.

Unfortunately our season didn't start well. We started 2-5-1 and the regular season was only 48 games long. We desperately needed a jolt.

Mark Recchi was traded to the Canadiens for Eric Desjardins, John LeClair and Gilbert Dionne and everything changed again.

John and I got along right away. He didn't talk as much as Eric Lindros did and I think that's what made it easier for me to get to know him. He had a dignity and grace about him that I respected. We started spending a lot of time together, and that's when Eric started behaving oddly. He was acting like he did the year before, when he had been watching me.

I was confused by the sudden change. We had become good friends and I thought he had figured out that I wasn't the person he wanted me to be. He had mistaken me for one of his kind. Somebody whose world was black and white and began and ended with family and comfort and a warm home. A world that didn't shelter a quiet, sacred clearing of emerald green grass or harbour an infinite summer.

Soon after, John seemed to catch whatever disease Eric had and he wanted to spend even more time with me. They also started to bristle whenever they were in each other's presence. I tried to smooth things out between them as subtly as I could, but it didn't seem to work.

I got the uneasy feeling that I was suddenly in the same sort of position Erik had been when Gunnar and I had been competing for him.

I still don't understand exactly how it happened, but the tension and awkwardness off the ice eventually translated into incredible chemistry on the ice. Instead of trying to spite each other, they worked together - we all did - because we all knew that none of us would be satisfied unless we had given everything we had to give.

It was unearthly playing with them. It felt like we were unstoppable as long as we were together. We fed on each other and fueled each other. It was a sort of mystical resonance that was also a complete mystery to me, at least until the media described us as being "on fire". That's when the true reason for our success revealed itself to me.

Eric had found his spark and so had John.

Only I don't think that they realized it.

I wanted to just pull them together and make them face each other and not have to do anything else because that's all it would take for them to really see each other. But I don't think that would have worked. The fog that clouded their minds and misdirected them couldn't be dispersed so easily. Eric and John were both stubborn people, or perhaps I should say resolute in John's case.

I would have to think of another way.

I remember lying in bed one night thinking about the two of them. I thought about how the three of us had something special together, something that had only revealed itself on the ice, in the game. And that's when it occurred to me. Memories of laughter and summer drifted into my mind, carrying Gunnar and Erik with them, and every one of those memories was of the games that we invented to savour the endless days. That was what brought us together, me and Erik. It was the games.

Games it would be, then.

I asked John and Eric to play paintball with me. I'm not sure why I picked that in particular, maybe I thought it was appropriate that hunting of some sort would be involved. We actually did surprisingly well, considering it was our first time playing. It must have helped that we were used to keeping track of each other's positions.

I don't think either Eric or John liked the fact that all three of us went together. They preferred that there be just two of us, not three. Eventually that's what happened, because I'd come up with a poor excuse at the last minute for not going, knowing that they'd both already be on the way there and wouldn't turn back.

After a while, I just stopped going altogether. And by that time, they didn't care.

It was a treat to watch them in the beginning. They were great to watch later on, but when they were still in the process of learning and hedging and sparring, you could almost see this aura start to appear around them. I don't think everybody could see it. Actually, most people didn't. But it brought a little smile to the face of the people who did.

I was wrapped up in the excitement of the season and John and Eric's exhilaration, but I had yet another reason to be happy - Stina was coming to live with me. She would move as soon as she graduated from university. I couldn't wait. They were giddy times and I wanted to share them with her.

That was an amazing time in my life. We were playing so well and I thought we had a chance to win the Cup. I was close to winning something real for the first time in my life. Something that couldn't be taken away from me.

When Stina came over things were perfect. We loved each other just like John and Eric loved each other. There were no more dreams and images and memories to tell me any different. Life was a whirlwind and it scattered all of those things far away.

And then we lost the Conference Finals and it all came to a sudden, numbing stop.

That night I dreamt in the colour of loss. Slowly, achingly, the colours shimmered and settled around me into the cerulean blue I hadn't seen in so many months. It was as pure and invigorating as ever. My secret place melted into my dream and it carried Erik with it.

For the first time ever, he spoke in my dreams. He pouted slightly and asked, <Why did you forget about me?>

Everything fell quiet, waiting for my answer. <I didn't want to. I'm sorry.>

Erik walked over and kissed me lightly, then whispered in my ear. <But you did.>

Then I woke up, and I had to roll over and kiss Stina in her sleep to wash away the lingering feel of his lips on mine.

In the days that followed, Eric and John comforted each other, and Stina comforted me. She was so warm and tender that I knew we were right together. She had left her home to be with me. She was the most important person in the world to me, and I would have given my life for her.

She was an angel, but at the same time she belonged in this world. She loved me and her love wasn't transient. It didn't exist just at one time or in one place. I asked her to marry me.

We set a wedding date for summer the next year, and went back to Pitea for the rest of that summer. It was very peaceful, unlike the heady rush of the season, and I appreciated it. My dreams were still and tranquil as well. Before I returned to America, Stina broke the news to me.

My angel had a little angel growing inside of her.