Notes From Childhood

I was an every day skater by 7 years old.
It started as many extreme life changes, with little knowledge of what we were getting into. I was 5. A neighbor gave me her daughters old ice skates. I was smaller than all other 5 year olds so blessed with a closet full of hand-me-downs and now this pair of wonderfulness I carried right home. Once in the door, likely in the third word, I asked to go skating. A phone call informed us we could go the following day. Unfortunately for my parents I was not a mild child, accepting things as they are. This has served me and others well over the years but that day it was screams, tears and useless pleading as if by sheer will I could get my parents to make the rink redo their schedule for me. Life goes on and even whiny children quiet down when waiting is all there is to do.
The next day, my mom, dad, a neighbor, her son and I adventured to Robert Crown Recreation Center. At this point my mother jumps in to tell it at the potluck, but she’s not here tonight (she’s wisely in her bed asleep, I have no excuse). My memory will have to suffice. Our friends Marie and Johnah and my dad, the same people who had PROMISED my mom they could help her skate, were all clutching the wall, waddling and slipping carefully around the edge of the rink. Irritated but undeterred my mom was also managing along the wall, bit by bit, looking down or no more than 1 foot ahead. I have no idea what I did.
This worked 3/4 of the way around. Fortunately, one side of the ice was sectioned off by orange cones, therefore no wall. When my mom reached this terrifying place she froze. She could get on all fours and crawl to the other wall. She could turn around and go back (breaking the rules). She could scream and yell much like I had the day before. She could stay there and do nothing and pretend it was a dream.
My brave mother did finally let go of the wall and carefuly wobble, surely whispering a desparate prayer, and in great concentration, upright, all the long way to the other side.
So great was her exhultation of triumph over what she had believed to be a doomed situation that she went around again! and again! until she had developed a firm belief that if she came back another day (soon), she could learn to glide first on one foot then on the next, no hands. This is how we came to live at the rink for the next 8 years.
I don’t know the details of her story or my dad’s, other than they took lessons, and could get around real fast. Eventually they both learned to jump and spin! I do know my story, at least an outline of it. The whole story is a book. Until it’s written, here’s what I’ve put down for posterity.
I started in group lessons, quickly tested up the patches of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and into the freestyle levels where I had the advantage of a private coach. The fruits of this labor?
My first group performance I hid under an enormous hoop skirt with 15 other 1st graders in from the beginner class, emerging to delighted spueels as a spotlight tried to follow the equivalant of human cats. By 8 I had solo parts in both the annual Nutcracker and Spring shows and group performances that involved more skill than toddling out from under a dress. At different times and in no order I was the sugar plum fairy, a snowflake, a tiny furry mouse being chased by the housekeeper (my mom) and in one act, my friend and I did cartwheels and front walkovers on ice.
Every day after school I put on white leather boots with sharp blades attached. I pulled the laces as tight as I could despite the necessary discomfort of snug fiiting skates. I giggled and raced with the other daily kids. Much of our practice time was unstructured when we were expected to practice waltz jumps, spirals, lunges and eventually axels, back spins, flips and loops. This we did, but in our own loose jointed kid way, except for one girl (I’ll call her Sara) who was always with her mom. Her mom skated behind her every day, pushing her constantly, to the point of tears. Sara was better than the rest of us but we didn’t envy her. We reached out to her in friendship careful never to mention the obvious.
I was always aware of the concession stand. I’d trot off the ice with a skip as my blade hopped onto the foamy floor and dash to the high red ledge, asking for another hot dog, bag of orange salty popcorn and a coke…my parents complained that I spent too much time there and not enough time on the ice they were paying for me to practice on. Maybe, maybe not. Half the joy of those years was in memorizing friends. Sharing a bag of pretzels reveals a different aspect of their personality. And I love hotdogs.
During anybody ice hours, hockey skaters took over public sessions and figure skaters tried to take over the center, marked off with orange cones. Most rinks still do this. I figure rinks that support a non college level hockey team still have mini padded, helmeted figures, swinging arms, cutting through the middle of the rink aggravating daintily dressed figures in white leather skates.
When it was my turn to perform solo in any show, when all was dark save for a ring of light following the preceding skater as they executed their much practiced routine of jumps and spins to a familiar tune, I stood shivering behind an enormous wall that reminded me of a giant Hefty bag, nervous, ready to launch onto the ice the moment their music faded, just before mine began to play. Out there on the ice, a million miles from anyone, engulfed in a bubble of terror, I couldn’t hear the cheering section of my peers in the far right corner 2nd floor seating. I heard my blades scratch the ice. I was aware that a million people with 2 million eyes followed me, a lone figure in a vast emptiness. It really was that scary. I wish I’d enjoyed those brief moments more, been present, or at least not petrified. If anyone had asked me what I was afraid of I wouldn’t have told them. Too embarrassing. I was afraid of what my friends thought of me. I was afraid they were high in the stands secretly laughing, talking about how pathetic I looked. Back in the changing room, surrounded by encouraging chatter I was over it, until next time.
Every December Naomi B. made white chocolate candies before the Nutcracker. She made them in blue, red and yellow, as horses, hearts and stars. I love white chocolate. She passed them out to her fellow skaters as we entered the ice for dress rehersal. Naomi was part magic.
My feet hurt in stiff white boots that left red dents in my legs and squinched my toes. Taking them off at the end of practice was a high point. But I LOVED everything about skating! I loved flying for hours every day, spinning fast and jumping in full circles. I loved time with friends having spelling contests as we laced our skates or maneuvering through quick changes in crowded co-ed locker rooms. I loved eating snacks at tables that remind me of Volkswagen Bugs because of their chunkiness in solid bright colors where our mothers also sat hours later waiting for us to finish practice. I loved listening to the mothers talk. I liked the rhythm of their speech, the way their mouths formed words, the way they leaned in to each other listening intently.
There’s more to Robert Crown than the ice rink. When I was 6, the same year I started ice skating, on Friday nights, in another wing, CPC gymnastics set up an open gym for all kids who wanted to fly in circles around little bars and fling themselves off the end of runways into a foam pit. I was there EVERY Friday I possibly could the year that program lasted.
In that wing there was an arts and crafts studio with potters wheel, kiln, sewing machines and big half circle windows at the top of south facing red brick walls. This is where Nutcracker and Spring Show costumes were sewn by a volunteer staff of overwhelmed but dedicated mothers. This is where I took my first pottery class. This is where I would sometimes wander to if I got bored in the ice rink area.
As far as latch key children go, I was lucky. If Iwasn’t skating Iwas at gymnastics practice (another story or, how I became a competitive gymnast) for 3 hours after school most days. I had somewhere to go regularly where I exercised, made friends, ate expensive junk food and learned skills that still live in my muscles, ready to show off whenever I enter an ice arena, gymnasium, backyard with friends or anywhere with a semi soft floor.
I have photos to prove it. Last Friday I was upside down in a friends hallway standing on my head while creatively swinging my legs around until I nearly crashed into my niece who was wide eyed and too close.