SKATE CITY

Erica, Tania and I have been planning a skate date for ages. There’s a rink in the northland that has a an adult only skate night on Wednesdays, but every time we have set a date, life would intervene. This time, it was Tania who had to work late. So Erica and I decided to go, just the two of us. Erica and her family live just a few blocks west of me, on Terry’s street. I see her and her family playing in the yard and riding bikes all the time now. Josephine makes a point to growl at Erica’s husband when he jogs by us as we walk to the park in the mornings. We’re neighbors but didn’t know it until last year.

I drove over to Erica’s house last Wednesday for our skate date and walked into her kitchen. One child was in the middle of a melt down while the other one solemnly made themselves a snack. Erica’s husband said “I got this.” and Erica and I ran out the back door. It had been a rough day. For everyone. She said that they had not talked about the latest mass shooting with the kids yet, but the kids knew. The oldest is a third grader and Erica figured the kids talked about it at school. The youngest, who is six, was probably just absorbing the vibes around him. I almost asked her “At this point, what do you even say anymore?” but I didn’t.

As we were getting out of the car, Erica confessed to taking skate lessons as a kid and that she owned her own skates. They were white with pink pom-poms and when she said that I gasped. “So did I!” I exclaimed. We walked into Skate City and I looked at her and said “It smells so familiar in here.” Erica nodded and said “A mix of church and movie theater.” It smelled like our childhood. From the earliest time I can remember and well into middle school, the roller rink was a cornerstone in my life. If church was twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays, then the roller rink was every Tuesday and sometimes Sundays. My skating was nothing fancy, just simple loops around the rink. Occasionally there would be a game of limbo. Occasionally we would all do the Hokey Pokey and turn ourselves around. The first time I ever held a boy’s hand was during a couples skate. I remember how we both wiped our sweaty palms against our respective pant leg afterward.

I do not remember the boy.

My first loop out on the rink wasn’t great. I was disappointed and thought to myself ‘skating should be easier than this’. Was it possible that I’d forgotten how to skate? It took two turns to realize that my wheels were too tight. I’ve never used a skate key in my life, but I instinctively knew how to loosen the nuts on my wheels. Then the skating was effortless. Erica and I swayed easily back and forth, skating loop after loop, admiring the more advanced skaters. Erica introduced me to a couple of her friends that are regulars at Skate City. I wanted to be best friends with both of them immediately. We stood as a pod in a one corner, sipping on fountain drinks and water bottles, laughing and telling stories. Then we skated more loops and for a few hours we were children again.

For a few hours the noise of the world outside was drowned out by loud hip-hop music and the sound of wheels rolling on hardwood.

Tania, we missed you.

ROLLER SKATING WITH PANTHERS

I was roller skating through a park and at was marvelous. I was swaying and grooving, doing turns, and moving my skated feet in fancy moves. To the left, I saw a panther or a mountain lion, a very large cat. He was crouched low preparing for a sprint, looking for a chase. I picked up speed as the path curved this way and that way. Then I saw another panther crouched in a tree up ahead of me. I skated past as he leaped from the branch. Now I had two large cats chasing me as I continued down the path. I started to seeing more mountain lions and panthers crouching under bushes, near trees, in trees and all of them joined the first two so that now I had a herd of large cats chasing me through the park. Even though I had picked up my pace and was staying ahead of all the big cats, I was still swaying and grooving, doing an occasional turn and moving my skated feet in fancy moves.

I have gotten into the habit of sitting down on Sunday mornings and filling out a calendar for the week. This was a practice I started doing way before the pandemic. It got put on pause for a while because of the pandemic. Now that I have figured out a way to live a life during a pandemic, I have picked up the habit again. I write down what exercises I am doing on what days. I schedule the dog walks and my yoga time, what days I am in the office. I write in meeting times and seminar times and COVID testing times. Somewhere in the margins, I write down a couple of personal goals for the week. Things are written in different colors. Gray for exercise. Orange for work. Purple for all the other stuff because I like purple. I write all of these things down and then I never look at it again.

Not once during the week do I open up this calendar and review the things to be done or check off things that have been accomplished. It seems that just the act of writing it all down is enough. Some of the things on the calendar are just things that I do anyway. There isn’t even really any reason to write them down. It’s like one of Chris’s daily lists that included things like ‘take shower’ and ‘brush teeth’. The exercise. The dog walks. Those are things I just get up and do. I don’t need to write in a yoga time because I just always make space for my practice. That work meeting I have every other Thursday? I have to write that down because I forget about it every time. I cannot commit to daily journaling or a traditional meditation practice, even though both of those things have made an appearance in the ‘personal goals’ section of my calendar. This Sunday morning practice of writing down what I should expect for the week seems to be something I can commit to doing. It is something that makes me feel more focused for the week ahead. It establishes my intentions for myself for the week to come. Even if it is the same intentions from the week before and the week before that.

I believe it is this simple act of weekly planning that keeps me skating ahead of the large cats. I believe that in time, I will not just be skating ahead of the panthers and mountain lions. I will be skating backwards while I take pictures of those beast chasing me.

I SEE A GIRL, SHE'S ROLLER SKATING

Skating

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I don’t remember when it started or when it came to an end, but I remember the window of time where I lived on roller skates. I remember watching early episodes of Facts of Life and thinking that Tootie was the coolest character on that show. She went everywhere on her roller skates and she was cute, funny and clever. I wanted be just like Tootie. When I inherited my sister’s hand-me-down roller skates, I never wanted to take them off. They were white and I had made pink pompoms for the laces. I roller skated down our street on the rough asphalt. I roller skated in the garage on the very few occasions that the garage was clean and the floor space was empty. Mostly, I roller skated at the local roller rink. The closest roller rink was in Owasso. Rick’s Roller Arena was the place to be. Church outings, birthdays, school outings. Every Tuesday night was American Airlines night which meant that AA employees and children got in to skate for $1.

Mom would drop us off and we’d skate for hours. We’d speed skate, racing each other around the rink or dance along to the music while we skated. Of course, there would be boy watching and that awkward pre-teen couples skate where you hopefully ended up holding sweaty hands with a boy who could actually skate. We’d take a break in skating to play a few rounds of skee-ball and then jump back onto the rink in time for a game of Limbo. We all did the hokey pokey. When I said that to Michael, he said “You did the hokey pokey on roller skates!?!” and I laughed. It was the only time I ever did the hokey pokey. I didn’t even know the hokey pokey was done outside of the skating rink. Hard wood floors. Disco lights. Hits from the 70s and 80s. The slight breeze you generated as you swayed your way around the rink floor. It was all bliss.

It has been ages since I was on roller skates. Maybe it was my thirtieth birthday. I think I talked Stephanie and Cati into going roller skating with me. Cati was still little and I spent more time keeping her from falling down than I did actually skating. I was terrified she’d fall and break a bone. That was the last time I wore a pair of skates. That was fourteen years ago. The Cabbage is now at that age where she likes roller skating, so that was our family outing on Saturday. Her skating method is still a work in progress and she has falls, but she’s independent. She’s self confident enough to not need me skating with her and I had the time mostly to myself. I put on my rental skates and did a tentative run around the rink. It was an unsteady run and I knew something wasn’t right. I exchanged my skates for a size smaller and everything fell right back into place. I spent my first two or three laps tense and panicked over crashing into falling children (they were every where). Then I found an opening in the crowd, relaxed and just skated round and round and round.

Then I took a break to play skee-ball.