 |
| My first -- and only -- pair of figure skates were the stuff of fantasy when I got them as a teenager. They're battered now and too small for my ancient feet, but they link me to a lot of memories. Photo by John Denniston. |
Once, at a
skating party at a schoolmate’s place, I ended up at the end of a “Crack the
Whip” line – a long string of kids whipped around by a central figure, with the speed and force growing the farther out you got. The predictable happened, and
I still can feel the scar from where my skull hit the ice, still remember the
doctor not being impressed at kids who play Crack the Whip.
Then there
were the figure skates, the fantasy of little girls who must make do with hand-me-down
brown boys’ skates when that’s all that’s available. When I finally achieved
the white version with the to-die-for little black heels, I lay them on the bed
in the box and tissue paper they came in, and checked on them all evening. They
looked magical in the moonlight.
Every day
through the long, long prairie winter, the blare of the noon buzzer at Lougheed
Elementary School unleashed a flood of kids to the outdoor skating rink kitty-corner
across the street. A brief lace-up in the bare-bones warming hut, with its
inadequate central stove and perimeter benches, and it was out on the ice for
an hour, round and round, to and fro, backwards and forwards, avoiding the boys’
roughest games, and not playing Crack the Whip.
In
Vancouver, where skating is mostly expensive and inaccessible, I haven’t skated
for years. When I last tried, the ice was so very slippy, the danger so
very high, my muscles so very unaccustomed, that I concluded it was something
old people shouldn’t dabble with.
Which is
why it was so surprising a couple of months ago to see my sister Betty –
granted, a few years younger, but still a senior and with arthritis, for heaven’s
sake – skating away like a teenager. Apparently the exercises she’s doing for
her arthritis have strengthened just the right muscles, and her physio says
skating is the best thing she can do.
Here is the
video she sent me, taken on a lake near her Quebec home. The very obedient dog
is Molly. I am jealous.
