We are in our city’s open outdoor skating link, cold. But I am hot. Sweat is formed in my neck and torso. My body is in a medical menopause, so there’s a hot flash now, and every time I get stressed, embarrassed, or too warm, a lot of fever pours out.
I brought her daughter, her friend, and my son to the link. I’m out of breast cancer treatment and this is a big out for me. I carried my own skates, and my son was both heavy, sharp and bumped into my side when I walked from the car to the link. I curse about being a person who owns a skate but does not own a blade cover.
But if we are on the ice, it is better to move. My very careful son is slowly learning. He holds my hand and we turn the Rink at the speed of the snail, or slowly dance around the skate penguins, such as rubber penguins.
I think this is good. The last six months have been hurt by chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and the whole family as well as me. Now I can be a mother again. I can take the children to skate when they were initially dismissed. I can skate with them.
***
The link is almost empty. But not so much. Two college students in a lonely young woman professionally skating around and around? -Please struggle along the wall. In the end, another mother arrives with two children.
My daughter, her friend, and 5th grade students do ice hockey in the co -team. This is embarrassed by me in itself. I haven’t had a team sport, I didn’t push my body as a limit outside the yoga class, and I never started technology from the beginning surrounded by my colleagues. They are very good at ice and show off. They quickly skate, bend lowly, and sometimes cross the center. They are dangerously close to others, including me.
I’m angry and ask them to slow down to better recognize their surroundings.
“This is not a hockey practice.” “There are young children who learn here.” My daughter’s friend pays attention to my warning, but his daughter is not. She passed through me and almost fell down.
I pulled her sideways and had her. Ordinary mother -beyond the company -I started the game. I sweat in many floors and angry her. I will let you get off the ice. I threaten her. You must know others.
Is this what I want? If my life is shortened by disease, is this an important maternal lesson? word – You must know others -After sculning, she sends her back over the ice and pops up like a pinball around her head. Are you reducing your adolescent daughter? In some ways, the answer is an example. Stupid. As a woman’s weaknesses, some of the constant apologies and compulsive interests for others who are satirized are sympathetic and caring. important.
But even under my white anger and used figures, my little part is pleased with her power and fear. It is an alien for me: I always apologize when someone bumps into me.
***
When I was 10 years old, my husband at Tonya Harding hired a man on the knee of Nancy Kerrigan, and after a few weeks later, I saw two women skating at Lillehammer at the 1994 Winter Olympics. Each sparkled in Leotard and Tights, but Nancy seemed to be classic with gold. Tonya was inexpensive and Tati looked red. I think it’s cruel to me now.
Like my friend Mandi and I am pretty, strong, persecuted, and elastic! -We we sailed along the frozen ponds of the neighborhood, lifted up the legs, boiled the butt forward and moved the arm to the side. We couldn’t jump or at least I could not do it. Maybe Mandy can do it. I think I was envious of her skating skills, but I don’t remember why. In the ice, we were dressed like Jordan Catalono, all flannel shirts and converse, but Nancy was always in a pond in front of us than us, shiny and shiny.
***
In the winter of the fifth grade, I thought it would transform into Nancy if I skated hard enough. Now I know that after that winter, I no longer lived near the pond and rarely skated. I surpassed the ice skating and did not get a new ice skate. Once I tried to skate again at the Boston Common in college, I was able to stay upright, but almost 20 years later, I was temporarily appearing in our new city link to our new city and not difficult at all. Now I also knew how I was revealed, competent, gathering, middle -aged, love, thoughtful and kind. I don’t shine like Nancy, but most of the day (not every day, but elsewhere).
Nobody is looking at skates. I don’t look great and I’m especially not good. My right foot is dominant. I struggle to stop elegantly. But as I skating for a long time, the pain of my waist is blurry. I live on the ice, fluid, and move to move. I was surprised at the joy of being released when I was in the pond and when I was in the city’s link. The indoor link in the suburbs also smells dirty refrigerators. The dream of becoming Nancy is no longer pushing me forward. Now I am pushing across the frozen water with other power: the pleasure of my body’s movement.
***
Until the next year, my daughter is soft with her expertise. She saves a big trick for ponds in our small cities. Still: Sometimes she is too close to me. Once, he popped back and hit her friend’s dad. She really apologizes and says, “It would be better to know what was behind me.” And I am relieved. But I am also curious about how do you see what you are behind you? And how do you learn how to skate back if you don’t have a blind belief that the world will escape your path?
In one afternoon, my dad lends a puck full of leads to practice my daughter. It is heavy and moves differently from the normal puck. She wraps together, while she is on the frozen underwater leaf, chasing the strange weight around the ice. I tell him that I like skates here.
“I am coming every day after it frozen,” he said. “My words, can you do anything else for free?” His question is rhetorical and I do not answer “sex”. If you do not like running or basketball in the Urban Court, he is right. Physical thresholds often cost a lot. But the comparison of erotic is not lost to me: Joy for Joy ‘sake.
If you take a skate in a pond, it will be the last time. It is rust forever As if I was worried that time with children would be stolen by disease. This deals with the joy of anxiety of anxiety, but it also makes it seriously precious. While the world is burning, it slides in frozen water and feels like a rare gift after my body betrays me. Smooth and fast, and the hawks fly parallel to the lines of the tree.
What are you preparing for your daughter? How do I want to push her body and action clay? I teach my son the same. We pay attention to other regions of the world, think about people around them, and think about their comfort and care. Also, I shouted at them all halt If someone does not respond to your polite request, raise your voice than DIN when you have a good idea. What I want both is to master the balanced behavior.
***
At work, a middle -aged mother like me and a colleague like me say she has taken the violin for several years. She says she has joined the local violin group. She is playing: For herself, fun, with others. We sat and waited for the meeting to start, and tears shed tears and insulted. “Michelle, I’m crying.” I wiped her eyes and talked to her, and we laughed and laughed.
This is something in itself. When she pursues a lead puck with a hockey stick, she wants to scream at her daughter. Skate in the pond, look at the feeling of moving, and see if you can stop quickly or rotate rapidly. When you think you can go beyond, correct yourself, lose your balance and erase gorgeously, and have difficulty in your feet. This is considered joy.
See her armed with her stick. In fact, don’t look at her. Keep in front of the tree. You can feel the way you are tilted forward and send you back in a cruel winter. Not so. You will skate until the ice becomes water again.
Miranda Feather Stone I am a writer and social worker. Her essays on parenting, family, disease and loss appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic Ocean, Yale Reviews, Virginia Quarter Reviews, Los Angeles Books and the following newsletters. Parent data and Too much. She lives in Road Island.
PS 21 teenage girls and teenage boys are completely subjective rules.
(Photo of LEA Jones/Stocksy.)
