We are on the public outdoor skating rink of our city, but it’s cold, but it’s hot. Sweat is formed on my neck and torso. My body is overflowing with thorns every time I have a medical menopause, every time I feel stressed, embarrassed, or overwhelmed.
I brought my daughter, her friend, and my young son to the link. I’m out of breast cancer treatment, but this is a big outing for me. I have brought my skating, but I have my son’s skating. When walking from the car to the link, both are heavy and sharp and hit me. I curse the person who owns skating but is not a blade cover.
But when we are on ice, it feels good to move. My very cautious son is learning slowly. He holds my hand, we surround the link at the pace of snails at the pace of snails, and he dances with his arms around the rubber skate penguin, which is a dapper’s taxi dating for small children 。
I think this is good. For the past six months, I am afraid of not only me but also the whole family due to chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation. Maybe I can be a mother again. I can take the children to skate on the early firing day. I can even skate with them.
***
Links are almost empty. But not. The only young woman skate around and around, two college students -maybe a date? -I struggle along next to the wall. Eventually, another mother arrives with two young children.
My daughter, her friend, and the fifth grader do ice hockey with a co -education team. This is confusing to me. I have never played team sports, I have never pushed my body into that limit outside the yoga class, so I started my skills from zero surrounded by my friends to enjoy it. Was not. They are very skilled on ice and are proud. They skate fast, turn low, and sometimes cross the center. They are dangerous to others, including me.
I am frustrated and ask them to slow down, as if they know them better.
“This is not a hockey practice,” I point out. “There is a small child who is learning here.” My daughter’s friend listens to my warning, but my daughter does not. She passed me and shot, cut me, and I almost fall.
I pull her sideways and let her bring it. The average mom came to play beyond the solids. I sweat in many layers and get angry with her. I will let you get off the ice, I threaten her. You need to be careful with others.
Is this what I want? If my life gets sick due to illness, I’m worried about it almost every day, so is this an important maternal lesson? words – Be careful with other people -After SC, I bounce around my head like a pinball, as if I reluctantly send her back on the ice. In a sense, the answer is Jesus. The person who dislikes。 The LESS apology and obsessions of other people who resemble feminine weakness are empathetic and compassionate. important。
However, even in my white anger and used shame, my small part is delighted by her skill, her bold. It’s a heter for me: I apologize when someone hits me so that I don’t always get in the way.
***
When I was 10 years old, my husband at the time of Tonya Harding hired a man to hit Nancy Kerigan’s knees, and a few weeks later saw both women peeled their hearts at the Lillehammer at the 1994 Winter Olympics. Ta. Each was shining with leotard and tights, but Nancy looked classic with gold. Tonya was cheap, red and tatty, or at least what I thought. Now it looks cruel.
My friend Mandy and I hurt, like Nancy, beautiful, strong, persecuted, and elastic! -I sailed along the frozen pond in the neighborhood, lifted his legs, stretched his hinges forward, and flocked on our sides. I couldn’t jump. At least I couldn’t. Maybe Mandy can do it. I envy her skating skills, but I don’t think that’s why. Outside the ice, we wore Jordan Katarano, all flannel shirts and converse -like clothes, but Nancy was always in the pond several yards in front of us, shining and won. I did it.
***
In the winter of my fifth grader, I thought I would change myself into Nancy if I could skate hard enough. Now, after that winter, I know I haven’t lived near the pond anymore and rarely skate. I surpassed those ice skating and did not get new things. I tried to skate again in college in Boston Common, and I couldn’t stand upright, but almost 20 years later, I provent to a link to our new town. , I found that it was not difficult at all. Now, I know. I’m not like Nancy, but most days -not every day, but I feel that other things are enough.
No one is looking at my skating. I don’t look good and I’m not doing it. My right foot is dominated. I have a hard time quitting gracefully. However, my lower back pain after I have been skating for a long time is vaguely fun. I’m alive, fluid on ice, and moves to move. I am surprised at the joy of radiating when I am in the pond or even the city links. Even an indoor link in the suburbs feels like a dirty refrigerator. The dream of becoming Nancy is no longer pushing me. Now, I am promoting frozen water by another force: the joy of my own body movement.
***
By the following year, my daughter became mellow to her expertise. She saves a big trick for the pond of our small city. Still: She sometimes gets too close to me. Once in the back, she hits her friend’s father. “I need to improve what I know behind me,” she really apologizes to him. And I was relieved. But I wonder how to see how you are behind you? And how do you learn to skate behind if you don’t have the blind faith that you won’t disturb you?
One afternoon, in the pond, Dad lends his lead packed to practice my daughter. It is heavy and moves different from a normal pack. She chases a strange weight around the ice and runs together while sliding on frozen submerged leaves. I tell him that I love skating here.
“I’ve been coming every day after frozen,” he says. “In other words, what else can you do for free?” His questions are rating and I do not answer “sex”. If you don’t like running, or the basketball in the city’s court is correct: you are often expensive to get physical exhilaration. But comparison with eroticism is not lost to me: joy for joy.
Every time I skate in the pond, I am worried that it will be the last. It melts forever Just like worrying about my time with my children being stolen. This covers the joy of anxious plywood, which also makes it sharp and precious. Sliding frozen water while the world is burning after my body betrayed me is like a rare gift.
What is your daughter preparing for? How do you want to push her body and action clay into it? I teach my son the same thing. To pay attention to the rest of the world, to think about the people around you, and their comfort and care. Also, I tell them to shout at them Stop When someone does not respond to your polite request, raise your voice on Din when you have a good idea. What I want for both is that it is sparse to learn a well -balanced act, but two thin blades are not unstable. Take space and secure space for others.
***
In the workplace, like me, like a middle -aged mother and wife, a colleague says she has taken up the violin for years. She tells me she participated in a local fiddle group. What she is playing: She himself, with others for fun. We are sitting and waiting for the meeting to begin. And my eyes are filled with tears. “Michelle, I’m crying,” I wipe her eyes and laugh, laughing as a young colleague is watching.
This is something itself, I want to shout my daughter because my daughter is chasing the lead pack with a hockey stick. Check how your movement feels like you are skating in the pond for yourself, and check if you can stop immediately or change the direction. When you think you may fall, correct yourself, lose your balance, wipe out spectacularly, and struggle with your feet: this is counted as joy.
Looking at her, she is armed with her stick. In fact, don’t look at her. Look at the ice and trees in front of you. Feel the way you tilt forward and feel the cruel winter wind that can return you inside. I will not do so. You skate until the ice becomes water again.
Miranda Feather Stone A writer and a social worker. Her essays on raising children, family, illness, and loss have appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, Yale Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, and book -like newsletters. Parentdata and Many ideas。 She lives in Road Island.
PS 21 A completely subjective rule for raising a girl in a teen and a teenager.
(Photo: Lea Jones/Stocksy.)
Source: Cup of Jo – cupofjo.com