Sorrow and joy with the dragons

My last weekend reminded me of an important lesson, which is that the trick isn’t to avoid tears, it’s to keep smiling anyway.

It was another dragon weekend. Fortunately, the dragons in question didn’t burn me to a frazzle with their fiery breath, or trample me underfoot with their viciously-clawed paws. On the contrary, these dragons were boats, and crewed by some of the warmest, kindest and most uplifting women it has been my pleasure to be around.

A dragon awaits its prey

What, you may in fact be wondering, was I doing hanging around them, if they were all women?

Well, as I explained once before when talking about dragon-boating, an aspect of this curious sport, an import from China and right up there with hot and sour soup or fireworks, is that its action, using paddles, is immensely therapeutic for Breast Cancer Survivors. That’s BCS in the parlance, by the way, and that abbreviation is heavily used in the sport. Now there are male BCS as well (men get breast cancer too), but inevitably most are women and so are many of the friends and supporters who enjoy the sport with them.

That’s certainly the case with the Valencia club to which my wife Danielle belongs and which allows me to tag along occasionally.

Initially, I wasn’t going to be the only man there for the weekend. In passing, let me say that ‘there’ was the Olympic canoe and kayak lake from the 1992 Olympics, which is a little way south of Barcelona, site of most of the events. About three hours’ drive from Valencia.

The other man due to attend, like me the husband of a paddler, as I believe they’re known, is a keen photographer. As I understand it, he was bringing at least three camera bodies, five lenses and a video recorder, ready to provide a top-notch service documenting the weekend. It was while he and his wife were on their way that they received a call to say that people they’d spent time with a few days earlier, had come down with Covid.

Now, everyone knew, including them, that they were most unlikely to be infectious. Especially as they’re fully vaccinated. But, as highly responsible people, they showed up, only to explain to us that they couldn’t stay, and then turned around to drive the three hours back.

It was an extraordinarily selfless gesture. And when they discovered, once the incubation period was passed and they could run a test, that they were both negative for Covid, it only underlined the scale of their sacrifice.

Their absence didn’t only mean that I was the only man there. It also changed my role, or so I thought. I’d believed that I’d just be a ‘zero-to-the-left’ to translate the excellent metaphor used by Spanish speakers for people whose usefulness to any undertaking is nil. But now, suddenly, I had a role. I’d be taking photographs. Without five lenses or a video camera, and only on a phone. But still, it was for me to do my best, and I felt the stress.

In reality, of course, lots of other people had phones, so there was no real pressure on me, but I couldn’t help feeling both the privilege and the strain of responsibility.

It was gratifying to see how well maintained the venue was, and how heavily used. When we turned up at 9:00 on Saturday (9:00 am? On a Saturday? Sport is a cruel activity) the place was alive with rowers (who’d obviously been there a while already, demonstrating that rowing’s even less civilised than dragon-boating). Single sculls, coxless pairs, coxless fours, even an eight. And they weren’t happy to leave the water, let me tell you, to make way for the dragon boaters.

Our Valencia club has a good mix of BCS and other paddlers, like Danielle herself. So, the club took part in a range of events, BCS and non-BCS.

A Valencia boat sets out

Well, our club didn’t take a lot of medals, but it confirmed the fine old Olympic philosophy that it isn’t the winning or losing that matters, but the taking part. Like me with my phone, they gave of their best, at the price of a lot more effort than I ever made, and were breathtaking in their commitment to the sport. I was, as always, impressed.

Besides, there was one heart-stopping moment, and I was delighted to be there to record it, when the club’s BCS women snatched victory in the heat that qualified them for the finals of the competition. And by ‘snatched’ I really mean ‘snatched’: they took it at the line.

Victory snatched on the line

They may not have done quite so well in the final itself but, hey, getting that far was triumph enough. 

It wasn’t just on the water that the club’s women were outstanding. It was a joy to spend the evenings with them, walking around an attractive area of Southern Catalonia, and enjoying not just the meals but the time spent chatting at the tables in the various restaurants we visited. The Spanish have a lovely word for that: ‘sobremesa’, ‘over-table’, for the chat around a dinner table, whether with food or just with a few glasses of wine afterwards. 

What’s more, even during the days, while not paddling, it took little – a bar or two of music, say – to get people with a disposition that sunny singing and dancing. And above all smiling.

Dragon dancing

The thing about breast cancer is that not everyone survives and becomes a BCS. And, sadly, many BCS don’t stay that way forever. Even within the club, we’ve had people who seemed to be surviving and doing well, only to relapse later. It’s an undertone of sadness for a sport undertaken for fun.

The festival marked that side of the sport too. A simple ceremony had BCS competitors, in their boats, remembering those who are paddling no more. They scattered pink carnations on the water as a tribute.

For those who didn’t make it

There were tears. There was grieving. But there were smiles too and joy as well as sorrow in their memories.

In memory of absent friends

So it was a weekend of fun, but not of fun alone. When cancer’s present at the feast, there’s grief in the air. But that needn’t stop the feasting.