My last grandparent was taking her last breaths, and I was sitting in Verizon Center watching the Capitals play the Panthers. My mother had been giving me updates throughout the previous weeks that Grandma was feeling worse, that she was ready to be done, and my mother was by her side on this night, Nov. 2, 2013. But there was no way I could make it back home in time. So, when I surveyed my options of what to do as this was happening—especially as my mother was sure Grandma would be gone in mere hours—I bought the last-minute ticket that brought me to section 119.
If it seems odd that I took comfort in going to a hockey game instead of staying home to cry hysterically and alarm the pets or watch yet another British mystery that I had already seen three times, I must admit to being a firm believer in denial as a first reaction to any tragedy. But that would only be part of the explanation. Grieving alone for a woman who would soon be at peace after a life well-lived did not seem right. It would make Dorothy sad to see me as the recluse I was slowly becoming, and I wanted to think of her from a place of joy. From outside the litany of losses that had marked the past few years of my life, hockey had become the new good thing, separate from everything else that had fallen apart and with a strange power to calm me down. It also didn’t hurt that my grandmothers—Dorothy, who was now in hospice, and Ruby, who had died 11 years before—had been the only ice skaters in the family.
Being One and Three
Although it is a somewhat rare occurrence these days, my parents had me when they were fairly young—both of them were 21 when I was born. Having such young parents meant that as a kid my babysitters were a fascinating rotating cast including not only grandparents (who were younger than I currently am now when they first watched over me), but also great-grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, my mom’s stunning younger sisters and their equally bewilderingly beautiful friends, assorted neighbor and church kids, students from the teams my dad coached, and my dad’s bachelor college drinking buddies.
My parents were the ones who stayed in our little town. Because of that and because they were young and without a lot of money and because people were close to each other in a way that they aren’t these days, I knew and remember all of my great-grandparents, save my dad’s mother who died long before I was born. Growing up, I was a bike ride away from many relatives, although I could walk right through the woods to visit my mother’s parents.
Dorothy and Ruby were both World War II brides, class valedictorians, and farm girls who survived the Depression. In short, they were women of substance, tenacity, smarts, resourcefulness, and heart who raised children also deserving of those adjectives. For Dorothy, and my mother’s side, I was the first grandchild. For Ruby, and my dad’s side, I was the third.
Key Figures
Dorothy had been extremely close to her siblings. They would ice skate in the rink or on the frozen rivers and ponds. They did this regularly, large groups of young adults spending time together as the war loomed in the background, ready to change all of their lives. Dorothy skated to be with those she loved, and her interest in continuing to skate changed as marriage and the war changed those who had skated with her. She still took her kids out on the ice, but it was not her chief source of amusement past a certain point. It may have been hard for her to continue; she associated skating with a life, time, and people she loved dearly and lost in many ways through the war.
For Ruby, however, skates of any kind were a way of life. Between gas rations and working the farm she struggled to keep afloat for her aging parents, Ruby roller-skated down the road when she had some place to be. In the winter, she would get there by frozen river and ice skates. She loved to be active. She loved water. When she wasn’t in it, she was on it. She taught her children to roller skate and ice skate, and she went with them until doctor’s orders forbade it. One broken arm too many in her early forties meant no more skating of any kind, which always seemed so cruel. You break a heart to fix an arm? I have her skates and the “skating skirt” she made.
Ice Blue
Unlike many of my friends, I did not have phantom or abstract grandparents, blurry memories of vague faces because I was too little to have ever really known them. Mine had been in my life my entire childhood, my entire adolescence, and in Dorothy’s case, as I was staring down middle age. When Ruby died, I was 32. When Dorothy died—I got the call from my mom as I sat at the Verizon Center—I was 42. Their loss remains keenly felt.
But, so does the connection. When I switched from hockey skates to figure skates, I felt this keenly as well. Circling around the ice, moving from this edge to that, working on a slalom, attempting cross-overs for the first time, I often thought of them. Of their movements into grace, of their strength and beauty, of continuing a joy they had to stop. Of their blue eyes that skipped a generation to me. And of their circling with me and through me as I lived the things I loved and not the things I feared.