Menagerie On Ice
I’ve long believed that certain days are constructed from a different material than others—something more slippery. No matter how earnestly you grab hold of them, they slide right out of your hands and disappear into thin air like my son’s second sock in the pair, or worse, like my critical thinking skills after three or four fingers of Lagavulin.
This particular day (a Monday, though that feels irrelevant) was such a one. I began it with aspirational intentions of calling a friend, checking in, you know, maybe one of those refreshing five-minute conversations that, for no particular reason, ground you for days.
But when I next looked at the time, it was nearly five o’clock. It felt as though ten actual minutes had passed, the sort of trick time plays when it’s feeling mischievous. The sun had vanished completely. The remnants of breakfast oatmeal in my bowl had hardened into geological formations, and my coffee had grown acidic and cold, resembling something brewed inside a neglected percolator at a VFW hall.
Did I even move today?
But evening comes for us all, even those who haven’t accomplished anything more strenuous than fat-thumbing an email response on a tiny screen. (I am, however, proud to say that it was in fact quite productive in that regard—no message left unchecked, not a one.)
After collecting my things, I set off into the dark for an evening stroll to collect my car. With the chill of the air cooling my cheeks, a bit of classical music in my ears, and that peculiar mix of homesickness and contentment settling over me like a wool blanket, everything felt so peaceful. Somehow I escaped the usual traffic jam and arrived home much too soon without having adequately decompressed. And so, on an otherwise quiet evening of contented reflection, I escorted my daughter to her weekly ice-skating lesson.
Now, if you’ve never been to the Monday evening “Beginner Penguins” class at our local rink, imagine combining the chaos of a preschool field trip with the existential dread of a DMV lobby, and then chill the whole mixture to twenty-five degrees. Add fluorescent lighting, the faint smell of popcorn & pre-teen boys and you’ve got the basic idea.
My daughter, who at six is wise beyond her station, has taken to skating with a kind of earnest determination. I had begun to suspect she didn’t exactly like this particular class, but she continues to approach it with a brave air.
The rink this evening was especially lively thanks to the Twins.
Doesn’t every class have a set of Twins? Not necessarily related by genetics, just a matched pair of trouble who move as one organism of pure mischief. Ours happened to be actual twins, decked out in matching Giro bike helmets (safety first), and matching teal-and-purple one-piece snowsuits (a fashion commitment I admire).
It had apparently taken all available grown-ups to wrestle those boys onto the ice —an effort I could only imagine resembled trying to shove two furious raccoons into a mailbox. Their screams echoed through the rink, a sort of operatic lamentation about betrayal, abandonment, and the cruel injustices of their short lives.
These boys had the aerodynamic efficiency of a couple of sacks of potatoes—and about as much enthusiasm for skating. Before class even formally began, one had barrel-rolled across the ice all the way into the neutral zone, while the other, close at his heels, was army crawling like he was reenacting a sequence from Band of Brothers. Suddenly, one of them had managed, somehow, to entangle himself with a nearby traffic cone and was squealing like a barnyard gate in need of oil.
The volunteer teachers tried the standard tactic: distraction. Often used on toddlers, puppies, and certain types of adult uncles committed to their projects, distraction usually involves waving something exciting in the air and hoping for the best. In this case, the teacher rummaged through the prop bucket and produced a rubber duck, which she tossed in a bright arc across the ice as though she were starting a very odd Easter egg hunt.
The Twins watched it in silent awe, and for a moment I thought the gambit might work. It did not. Instead, both immediately began wailing and clawing toward their mother, who stood safely behind the plexiglass sipping from her thermos and pretending not to be related to them.
One teacher attempted dragging Twin A by the ankles, helmet bumping repeatedly over a kaleidoscope of colorful rubber toys now strewn across the ice—toys meant to serve as incentive to learn to kneel and then stand— or prizes you might win from a quarter machine at a small-town bar that inexplicably has enough real estate for two perpetually occupied quarter machines.
Finally, one twin flopped onto a rubber orca and the other collapsed halfway atop him, legs sticking out in opposite directions like a marionette. Their tears flowed freely. Their noses ran. Their bodies went limp in the universal posture of children staging a protest.
The high-school volunteers, bless them, tried lifting each twin, but the boys had perfected the art of dead-weighting their bodies. No joints. No cooperation. Just pure, resolute mass. If these kids had been put to work anchoring tugboats, they’d have excelled.
Eventually, the volunteers gave up and called in reinforcements.
A new volunteer glided over—a younger, gentler looking person whose aura suggested she had the makings of a preschool teacher or at least someone who could soothe feral animals. She crouched down beside Twin B and spoke to him in a voice that seemed as gentle as her posture—soft enough to calm a skittish colt, if appearances were to be believed.
One twin perked up in cautious curiosity, as though wondering whether she had snacks. Then he seemed to remember the overall injustice of his situation and resumed beating his tiny fists alternately against the ice in a futile attempt to crack it open and escape straight down through the ice, as though tunneling out were somehow more feasible than retracing his steps.
Midway through this performance, my daughter caught my eye.
She stood on the blue line—skates tilted inward, arms slightly outstretched for balance. Her expression landed squarely between exasperated and pleading. With that look I could hear her saying, “Please don’t sign me up for the next session in this menagerie.”
I gave her a subtle nod of acknowledgment.
As class finally wound down, with the Twins being airlifted (well, ankle-lifted) off the ice like captured fugitives, I resolved to switch from Monday class into another session. I also couldn't help but find myself contemplating a radical notion: perhaps we were not meant for indoor skating. Perhaps fluorescent lights and rubber ducks and panicked teenagers were not part of our destiny.
Perhaps we were meant for the wild.
I helped my daughter unlace her skates, her small fingers stiff from the cold. Together we shuffled toward the doors of the rink, the blast of warm lobby air hitting us with the softness of late-night diner pancakes.
“You know,” I said as we stepped outside, “do you think we might be the sort of people who skate outdoors?”
She looked up at me. “Where outdoors?”
I smiled.
“Oh, I’ve just the place in mind.”
A magic lake. A quiet clearing. A stretch of ice unbothered by rubber animals or screaming twins or bike helmets. A place where a person might glide unencumbered across winter’s glassy canvas and feel, for a moment, like time has stopped slipping away.