Skating

It starts to snow. The edges of his blades carve into the uneven ice. He barely remembers what it feels like to to glide and carve and shift direction; to stop. It seems like a hundred years ago when it all came natural and smooth, like breathing. He has never been the best skater. Never been one of those guys who look like they are floating. No, it had always been work for as long as he could remember. But the fun was always there.

The push to see just how fast he could go; the sounds of steel slicing into frozen water; the slide and the spray of slush splashing up; a confirmation of the manouever now complete. He feels the cold wind pushing on the back of his neck. The memory of freedom, of control; taking his body any direction he wanted. A wholesale shift with only the slightest turn of the blade. At the time it seemed so easy; so ingrained; as if stitched into the very weave of his DNA. Now it seems so very far away, a distant memory of what was, what could have been, and what never will be again.

But this isn’t why he skates now. It isn’t about recreating old memories or satiating a yearning for the days when he was young and strong with what seemed like the whole world in front of him. No, the reason he skates now is to find the moment.

His 9 year old son motors around the rink, with tilted ankles and long legs pushing off left and right, purposely gaining speed to then slide across the ice, arms and legs akimbo, a smile exploding on his face.

His daughter, a five year old with sandy blond hair streaming out beneath her black helmut and tumbling down her rosy cheeks. She holds on to the blue plastic walker as she moves around the rink until she gets bored and reaches for his hand and then her brothers and then her mothers; and then no ones. Her feet moving in choppy strokes; body bolt upright, hands waving back and forth at her sides, doing their best to fight gravity which threatens to topple her backwards onto the ice.

His wife moves the same way without skates; beautifully and smoothly assured; gliding and then stopping; starting again with ease, only the gentlest of efforts, moving alongside her son or daughter, or both, for a pep talk, a skating tip, or simply to be a silent skating companion.

And as the snow starts and the family glides around the ice. When there is only now; this small beat of time on a snowy rink in the middle of the city; when their breath hangs silent in the air; he is quite certain that he has found the moment, the one we spend so much of our lives chasing only to pay so little attention when it actually arrives.