Stepping onto the ice for the first time in probably twenty-five years can be a bit of a stressful experience. My mind turns back to the last time I ice skated: I recall being fairly confident; I remember the importance of having tightly-laced boots; I think about how I was finally able to skate backwards the last time I ever went as a kid. Or was I? I did go only a handful of times, after all, and most of those times my attention was not on the ice but on those on the ice around me — usually on specific person.
Maybe I only imagined I could skate, because the instant I step onto the ice, I’m fairly certain this is the first time I’ve ever ice skated.
Yet I watch the Girl, who truly is on the ice for the first time, and I realize that perhaps I haven’t forgotten everything. I push off and begin to glide — I realize I have.
Perhaps because I have more experience and a more developed sense of balance, I’m not as bad as the Girl: her feet are slipping this way and that, forward, backwards, left right. She looks like she could have been the model for some cartoon about a character’s first time on ice.
By the end of the hour, though, she’s able to skate glide by herself from me to K and back again. A few more times and she’ll be asking when she can try her first jump.