Skate Me a Figure Eight, If You Please

I have ice skates in the garage. They’re not the white size 7 pretty girl skates I had for years, they’re actually serious skates, light blue with a dark trim, size 9, probably from REI or someplace like that. And they might even still be sharp because I remember taking them somewhere to be sharpened not long before that last resounding fall backward.

I fell flat on my back and hit my head hard. In that second, I thought that’s it for me and skating.

It was at the city’s downtown rink. The ice there was super smooth and may have even had a thin melting sheen that day. We were skating with our granddaughter, and she was stiff and tentative and so I was holding her hand. Until I went flying and then I let go.

In East Lansing, the Red Cedar River runs through the campus of Michigan State University. I remember skating on the river, ice bumps and branches sticking up and all, and it was beautiful, skating amidst the trees, seeing people walking along on the shore admiring the skaters. I was them most of the time, among the admirers, not the admired. But skating on the river, I could feel people admiring my joie de vivre. That’s what it was. You only know it when you have it or when you see it from the shore.

When my older daughter was a kid, maybe seven or eight, we’d take a bunch of her friends skating for her birthday. It was always crazy fitting her little friends into the back of my VW station wagon, unloading them all at the park, and then trying to get all their too tight skates on before the sun set. They skated around with their coats flying open, lose their mittens in the bathroom, and disappear around the corners of the complicated pond where we skated so I’d worry they’d been abducted. I’d think that next year we should go tobogganing but the logistics of it were very intimidating. We stuck with skating.

After skating, we went home to our flat and had tuna casserole and cake. It was warm and cozy there and the kids all seemed happy. I probably lit a cigarette and watched all the action from the kitchen. I don’t remember that part. I just remember feeling I’d hit the birthday party thing out of the park.

I miss skating. I wonder if I could still skate. I wonder if my skates are still sharp.

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Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash