Skating

One day, I’ll probably write a more detailed account of growing up in an ice rink. For now, I wanted to draft a sketch. This is a revision of one of my first posts. Even with cuts, it’s still long, but hopefully entertaining.
It started as many extreme life changes, with little knowledge of what we were getting into. I was five. A neighbor gave me her daughter’s old ice skates at the end of a birthday party. I was smaller than all other children my age, blessed with a closet full of hand-me-downs and now this pair of wonderfulness I carried home.
Two steps in the door, I asked if we could go skating. A phone call informed us we could go the following day. Unfortunately for my parents I was not a mild child. I screamed, cried and pleaded endlessly, as if by sheer will I could get my parents to make the rink change their schedule. Life goes on and even whiny children quiet down when waiting is all there is to do.
Next day, my mom, dad, a neighbor, her son and I adventured to the local rec center. (At this point my mother jumps in to tell of our first time, but she’s not here tonight so my memory will have to suffice) My parents’ friend Marie, her son Jonah and my dad, the same people who promised my mom they could help her skate, were all clutching the wall for dear life, waddling and slipping just like her. Irritated but undeterred my mom was also managing along the wall, bit by bit, looking down or no more than one foot ahead. I have no idea what I did.
This worked three quarters 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, reviewing her choices: get on all fours and crawl to the other wall; turn around and go back (breaking the rules); scream and yell much like I had the day before; do nothing and pretend it was a dream.
My brave mother did finally let go of the wall and carefully wobble, surely whispering a desperate prayer, and in great concentration, upright, all the long way to the other side.
So great was her exultant triumph she went around again and again (still a wall buddy) until she developed a firm belief that if she came back and took lessons, she might learn to glide first on one foot then the next, no hands.
This is how we came to live at the rink for the next eight years.
I don’t know the details of her story or my dad’s, other than they took lessons, competed, performed in shows 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.
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 fifteen other first graders from the beginner class. We emerged to delighted squeels as a spotlight tried to follow us. By eight I had solo parts in both the annual Nutcracker, 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. In same show my mom and her friend, both decked out in grass skirts, carried blazing torches across the ice to the tune of “Princess Pupule has plenty Papayas. She loves to give them away.” Fake skirts, real fire.
Every day after school I pulled the laces of white leather ice skates as tight as possible despite discomfort. I giggled and raced with other children who were always there with me. Much of our 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 for perfection constantly. Sara was often in tears. She was better than the rest of us but we did not 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 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 revealed a different aspect of their personality. And I love hot dogs.
When it was my turn to perform solo in any show, when all was dark save a ring of light following the preceding skater as they executed their much practiced routine, I stood shivering behind an enormous wall that reminded me of a giant black Hefty bag. I was nervously ready to launch onto the ice the moment their music faded. Out there, 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 second floor seating. I heard my blades scratch ice. I was aware a million people with two million eyes followed me, a lone figure in a vast emptiness.
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.
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: flying for hours every day, spinning fast and jumping in full circles; time with friends having spelling contests as we laced our skates; maneuvering through quick changes in crowded co-ed locker rooms (late seventies, early eighties); eating snacks at tables that remind me of Volkswagen Bugs for their chunkiness in solid bright colors where our mothers also sat waiting for us to finish practice; listening to the mothers talk, the rhythm of their speech, the way their mouths formed words, the way they leaned in to each other listening intently.
There was more to our rec center than ice rink. When I was six, the same year I started ice skating, on Friday nights, in another wing, a local gym set up open gymnastics 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 the year that program lasted.
As far as latch key children go, I was lucky. If I wasn’t skating I was at gymnastics (another unwritten story, “How I Became a Competitive Gymnast”) for three 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.
Just last Friday, to impress my five year old niece who would gladly live upside down herself, I was standing on my head while maneuvering my legs into artful positions until I nearly crashed into said niece. I caught sight of her right in my face. She was bent in close, studying maybe? In any case, when I saw her eyeball next to mine, I lost my balance and fell sideways with a twist.