ICE SKATING

By Noreen O’Brien

The first time I tried on a pair of ice skates, though terrified, I was determined to learn how to skate. Kathy Hart, Louise Salamone, and Mary Aria took turns holding me up leading me onto the ice amidst the throngs of skaters and hockey players whizzing around us at what I was certain was the speed of light.

My knees were like jelly and my ankles turned inward, looking to meet the ground resisting what was being asked of them, to support me on the slippery surface of solid ice while balancing on thin, single blades of metal. No double-runners for me.

Glen Park, a huge ballpark, was two doors down from where I lived. Every winter, the City of Somerville would build an ice skating rink by dumping dirt mounds around the perimeter of the park, and then flooding the center with a thick layer of water from fire hydrants. The excitement at the sound of that heavy equipment working out there in early November and knowing what was to come still sends the adrenalin up a notch when I think about it. Then, I could barely think of anything else, and I couldn’t sleep, as I waited for the first freeze of winter to solidify the flooded ball field.

Racing home from school every day so I could get out onto the ice, nothing else mattered to me. Ice skating became an obsession—much as reading was, or as bird watching would become later. I spent hours and hours on that ice, braving the biting wind and stray hockey pucks that caused excruciating pain when they bounced off an ankle. My hands and feet might be bright purple and numb, but I would not—could not—give in. I had to know how to skate and I had to know it well.

Never was I dressed warmly enough. A warm hat? I didn’t own one. I wore one of those wide, knit headbands that run across the top of the head from earlobe to earlobe, like a giant, flattened worm, tied with lengths of two skinnier worms, full of tight knots I could never get out, under the chin. It was gray with silver sparkly circles knitted all over it.

My best friend, Kathy, was beautiful and rich. She had earmuffs, or wore a hat similar to mine, but of a much thicker yarn, often a clean, bright white. She had a muffler for her hands, worn over warm, bulky mittens that matched her hat. Kathy wore stretch pants with loops at the cuffs that passed through the skate blades and snapped on the other side of the pant leg, keeping them from riding up and the cold draft from creeping up her legs at the ankles. Sometimes, she wore a skating skirt over thick tights. I would have looked silly in such an outfit—it simply was not me.

While I had nothing like these snug pants, or layers of brightly colored bulky sweaters, no cover for my hands, I learned to fly across that ice at least as well as Kathy. Still, I did have bells on my hand-me-down skates as Kathy wore on hers, mine silver, hers red, blue or green, depending upon her mood and sometimes worn in clusters, one of each color.

In retrospect, I guess I looked like something of a ragamuffin, but when it came to ice-skating, I could not have cared less about my appearance. I wasn’t out there for a fashion show—I was out there to skate.

More important to me was to be a part of the throng making those lovely scraping sounds of blade on ice. The soft, muffled clunk of blade to ice surface as my foot touched down to propel me forward, faster and faster, my eyes watering from the icy wind. The soft continuous “shhhhh” as my blades rode atop the surface at high speed, and the sound of the swirl as my skates carried me into a reversed direction, making yet another new swish, swish, swish, as I created a pair of curvy lines carved in front of me on the top layer of ice.

I wanted to be on that ice until I died and would have been happy to be there until that moment came.

I can still see Glen Park with swarms of kids whizzing by every which way and hockey pucks swishing past between players of several hockey games. However, I was barely aware of anyone else out there while I was on the ice. I was oblivious to the screams of laughter from those sledding and coasting on the park’s hillside.

Of course, I also was unaware of the moment the park lights went on at dusk, which was bad for me because the rule at home was to get up to the house when the lights went on. I simply never noticed that moment—I was too busy learning how to twirl, make figure eights, backward circles, skating on one foot and—what I loved best—skating backward creating those long-distance curvy paths. Who needs to eat when the park is flooded? There’s always time for food, the ice will be gone before we know it and the park then will be filled with softball games.

Am I the only one who longs for winter before it is even over?

Photograph courtesy of Noreen O'Brien

5 1/2" x 5" 2008 Wolf Moon Calendar just $10.00 each
More Info

More Info

© Wolf Moon Press 2002-2008 all rights reserved.

Submission Guidelines