Yesterday was cold, but bright enough to slice the eye. I left the studio around 4 and walked through the little neighborhood park, where the snow now reached half-way up the red-painted wrought iron fence around the play area. No one else was out. At the other end of the park I looked at the empty skating rink as I walked past, then stopped and climbed up on a bank of snow to examine it more closely. The ice, made by flooding an irreegular circle of piled-up snow, was smooth, with a light dusting of snow. Three dark trees, with snow left around the base as an optimistic cushion for flying bodies, stood in the center.
It all reminded me of the rink my father and grandfather made in the backyard of the big house in Sherburne several years when I was young. The ice, as I remember it, was always perfect. On the back side stood two tall spruce trees, and in the front, a huge sugar maple that dominates that street even now. My cousins and friends all skated there, staying out until we were blue with cold; we had wool sweaters and nylon snowpants but no fleece or down, and our feet inside our white figure skates would ache for an hour after we were finally ordered inside. We never played hockey; we just skated under the trees.
There were other places, too; the school rink on the playing field behind the shop and band room, or a town rink in the park downtown, and later on the lake where my parents built a house. Sometimes, in a very cold winter, we'd skate on the brook that ran through my cousins' farm, which gave the excitement of a journey rather than going round and round, as well as the fear of falling in. We knew the spots to avoid, around willow trunks and branches emerging from the ice or places where there were rocks and faster currents in summer, and so far as I know, no one ever fell through.
I took a few photographs from the far end of the park and then decided to go back to the northern side. The snow crunched under my feet with a specific sound, as accurate a gauge of the temperature as any thermometer. I looked up at the icicles hanging from the eaves of houses, knowing what sound they'd make when knocked off with a broom handle, or when shattered on the ice after being used as mock swords: a brittle glass harmonica.
In fourth grade, I remember there was a book about a little girl who had an accident while skating; something happened and she was cut badly with the blade of her skate and had to go to the hospital in an ambulance. It must have been written to teach children about the reality of hospitals. But somehow, I realized, it had become conflated in my mind with another book about a girl who had become a saint after dying in some unexpected and heroic way. Where did these books come from? They weren't the sort of thing my mother would have found in the town library, and the second one, it seemed to me, must have belonged to one of my Catholic friends who was taking catechism classes. Oddly, though, they had joined to create a memory of childhood injury, death, and saintliness, illustrated with vague mental images of white skates, blonde hair, ambulances, and a child in a field of flowers.
When I reached the north side of the rink again, there was a young woman sitting on a bench. She wore an off-white coat and was lacing up her figure skates. On the path in front of her was a wooden sled with a curved back, and on the sled, a swaddled baby. The mother wore headphones, and smiled at me. I wondered what she planned to do with the baby while she skated, all alone on the frozen rink under the trees, and was tempted to walk around the rink once again, to be able to see. But it was getting late and I needed to go home, so I continued down the street, imagining the tall dark trees with their white skirts, like dervishes frozen in mid-twirl, above the baby resting in its sled on the ice, next to a bank of snow -- an arctic version of Moses in the bulrushes -- listening to the rhythmic slash of its mother's skates cutting the ice.
Gorgeously written as always, Beth. You see so much.
Posted by: patry | February 16, 2011 at 09:45 PM
I wish I could follow you around for a day or two.
Posted by: Kim | February 17, 2011 at 12:04 AM
How entirely evocative! It's a mystery and a miracle to me how you draw together the present moment with the past in a way that makes the past as vivid and lively as the present, and don't stop there but turn outwards to new people and places also (the mother on her skates, the readers of your blog wherever they are in whatever climate. I found myself envying you your frequent skating. In southern PA, near the Mason-Dixon line in fact, the big pond only froze in exceptional winters. But on my uncle's smaller one, built in a hollow near the road downhill from his dairy barn, the neighbouring Amish mothers and children often came skating. Sometimes just sliding merrily around in their sturdy shoes, they didn't all own skates. Thank you for helping me make my peace with the long winter.
Posted by: Vivian | February 17, 2011 at 06:56 AM
The new skates are much warmer! Since we had no snow until the end of January we skated on our neighbors small pond. Our neighbor has two hockey playing girls and they liked having a private rink. Once the snow came we abandoned skating for skiing. But there is a rink on the park in town.
I remember Montreal in the freezing winter days.
Posted by: zuleme | February 17, 2011 at 08:14 AM
Wonderfully described piece - thanks. My memories of skating are rather more urban. In the 1970s I used to go with my daughter, when she was a child, to the large ice rink in Streatham, south east London. It was such a happy place. You went through the front doors and smelt the ice and a strange rubbery smell, heard the blasting pop music, and immediately felt exhilerated. There on the rink were people going round, and round, and round... Occasionally the rink was cleared for the experts, people who could actually go backwards and twirl and dance. Then hoi polloi surged back in and joyfully went round and round... It was all decorated in an odd 1950s to 1970s style, with chandeliers, and a changing room with purple walls and large slightly crumbling gilt mirrors. Work, rent, mortgages, shopping, were all forgotten as we swirled round. I was about 29 and I remember it took quite a lot of courage to stop clinging onto the side and for the first time go out into the middle with no prop! My daughter took to it more swiftly. Ice rinks aren't so decorative now, certainly not the one in Oxford, which is more utilitarian (though thank goodness it's being saved in spite of the budget cuts!) - gone are the chandeliers and dusty ornate gilt mirrors. Ice-skating is one of the best things in life (if I were still 29 I'd do it again!)
Posted by: Vivien | February 17, 2011 at 05:41 PM
What they all said, Beth - a wonderfully evocative piece. I felt a bit worried for that baby though; I hope the swaddling was warm enough.
I never learned to skate, much to my regret. The one time I tried, at a resort in Austria, I instantly fell and broke my arm! Ach.
Posted by: Natalie | February 18, 2011 at 08:54 AM
This brings back experiences in the frozen north. But it is so far north where you are. I guess the sun must strike right into your eyes in the daytime. And the shadows must be very long.
Posted by: Hattie | February 18, 2011 at 09:14 PM
What happens when you put many small stones into one post? You get a small miracle like this one.
The first - and only - time I tried skating was a few winters back in Vienna, in a rink that had sprung up in one of the squares. There was music in the air and the festive atmosphere lured me into trying it out. It was difficult, but I managed, at the pace of a tortoise, to complete a couple of rounds, all the time watching little boys and girls effortlessly gliding and having fun. I must try again, someday.
Posted by: Parmanu | February 19, 2011 at 05:07 PM
I wrote to my cousin B. about this post; as children we played together almost as much as sisters (which neither of us had) to ask if it brought up any other memories for her. She still lives in the same area, in central new York, and she and her brother are continuing to run their family farm after their father's death in 2010.
She wrote back: "Hell yes!! I remember little double runner skates and learning how to skate at the backyard rink on Classic Street. But most of my skating memories are from the farm. I think I was probably 8 or 9 or so when we started going "over back" to check the ice on the pond every day after school. That was before we had snowmobiles - so it was a long trek. As soon as it was frozen, the after school trek was changed from checking to shoveling. When it was ready, Dad would take the cattle trailer over filled with straw and park it so there would be a place to get in out of the cold and sit to put on skates. He would also bring over plenty of stuff to burn. We didn't skate at night on school nights but on the week-ends, there were 20-30 people every night. We had "Capture the Flag" games and if we were lucky enough to get a thaw, the swamp/creek would flood and then we could skate all the way down to the Flat Iron. The grown ups didn't skate. They tended the fire and brought hot cocoa and homemade donuts and sat around the fire having as much fun as we did, I think."
I said: "My mother used to skate sometimes - until she fell one year and did something to her kneecap. Dad had skates but rarely went out on the ice except to shovel, but I seem to remember Grandpa skating - and being pretty good at it. I think when he was young he could do 'figures.'"
And she added: "Grandpa was a natural athlete. He was so good at so many things, wasn't he? I miss him!"
Our grandfather, born in 1900, died in 1990 and was active, physically strong, and quite sharp right to the end of his life.
Posted by: Beth | February 20, 2011 at 08:58 AM
Oh Beth, I haven't seen a rink like this since I was a kid and everyone had one in their back yard. What wonderful memories.
Posted by: Jan | February 27, 2011 at 05:19 PM