Few things terrified me more as a new figure skater than going to a busy public skate, where I would be elbow to elbow with skaters of all levels. Perhaps this unease had to do with my previous boss telling me about the last public skate she had attended, when her kids were young, where another child had dropped in front of her, causing her to fall in a way that broke her wrist instead of the child.
Or maybe it had to do with my continuing inability to stop and my need to remain as close as possible to the wall, which I could, with terror in my eyes and flailing, outstretched arms, use as a sort of bumper-car fail-safe in a public skate emergency.
Such emergencies generally involved the below skater categories:
- Other new skaters, who, like myself, had no idea how to stop and would grab onto me as I was grabbing onto the wall (boards, really, but I did not call them that yet). I could sympathize, but did my best to avoid them anyway lest their tragedy suddenly become mine as well.
- Small children, whether new or experienced, because they had no sense of potential injury, and their falls resembled a brief, mostly ignored bounce onto the ice. I admired and feared them.
- Hockey players, especially the younger ones, who would chase each other or an imagined nemesis, dodging every obstacle (i.e., me and every other skater out there) with such last-minute precision that my heart jumped in my throat each time I saw or felt how close they had come. I was convinced they did this to terrorize us all. As with the indestructible children, I admired and feared them, too.
Because of these dangers, I became a master at finding empty ice. One of my best friends lived across the street from a restaurant that turned its patio garden into a winter rink. Skating there any weeknight meant lots of space and one low price for hours, and you could find me there most nights.
If I could slip away during lunch, I would go to Cabin John, which happened to be 10 minutes from my new job. As the Olympic season ended and my Kettler lessons wound down, I generally went there because their adult-only day skates eliminated the second and most third skater emergencies. With 10 skaters or less at most Cabin John sessions, the first emergency diminished as well because I had more room to focus and fall and avoid others when doing both.
As I found a corner of my own and worked on spins, I would watch anyone in hockey skates out of the corner of my eye and marvel at their speed, fluidity, and ice-spraying stops. My stops still involved vigorous toe-pick cheating, if I were lucky. Imagining myself in hockey skates was starting to feel like imagining myself in an astronaut’s suit.
And so I spun. My doubts and hopes wrestling in my mind and heart, I sought the equilibrium available to me in the moment. I would spin to the left, then I would spin to the right, ignoring the conventional skating wisdom that I should choose a stronger side and focus there. Many years of pilates had taught me another way, one that sought to balance strength and weakness, that would ensure I could spin both ways with equal grace and flexibility as my mind spun everyway for answers it could not yet have.