Hockey Cures All Ills

I saw my first hockey game, and everything changed.

Julia

Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Badly    

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In general, my willingness to be publicly humiliated is extremely limited. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. And somewhat routinely. If there is coffee or beer to be spilled, I will find a way. Sudden pratfalls are another specialty. And, I excel at tripping both up and down stairs.

But when it comes to hockey, I am choosing humiliation—not just managing accidents—and my capacity for it seems unlimited—especially when it comes to learning to skate. Walk into any adult learn-to-skate class, and you will understand vividly what I mean.

Some Saturday mornings the classes were beyond perilous for the eight of us who looked and presumably felt like small horses do when they first try to stand up on their newborn legs. It didn’t help any of us to see the little ones taking classes nearby flying by at invincible speeds directly correlated to their lower vertical proximity to the ice.

Because of the anti-hockey-skate-talking-to I got from my teacher, I switched to a strange hybrid skate reinforced for use on cold ponds. They felt better balance-wise than the hockey skates I had tried before—it seemed I needed a flatter edge to get a sense of things. As the session wound down, my balance got better, and although my ability to stop was beyond miserable, other pieces of the skating puzzle slowly made more and more sense. Swizzles ruled, the concept of an inside and outside edge began to take shape in mind and muscle, and crossovers still terrified but also intrigued.

As the class progressed and we moved from swizzles to single-foot edge work, I began to question the wisdom of the new pond skates. At 70 bucks, they were a reasonable deal, but it was becoming clear that they weren’t truly figure skates, and they weren’t truly hockey skates. They worked great to help me get my initial footing. And I had come to believe my teacher’s assessment that for whatever reason I was better in figure skates.

Knowing that whatever chance I had to play hockey down the line rested on my ability now to get some understanding on and with the ice, I had a decision to make at the end of the session: Did I go back to my impossible hockey skates or commit to something that could take me farther from my goal now to get me back to it in a better way later? The circles kept getting bigger as did the figures in my dreams.

Trust Your Edges

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The more you learn about skating, and the more you talk to those who know a lot about it, you will hear: Trust your edges.

To anyone unfamiliar with skates and the best way to use them, this will make no sense. Aren’t you balancing on a flat metal blade? Is the edge that sharp star-like thing on the front of the skate? (FYI, that is called the toe pick, which is only found on figure skates. Hockey skates are angled, pretty much the opposite of flat, and do not have a toe pick—I didn’t know they were different, either, at first.) There is a lot more going on with that skate and the person controlling it than is immediately obvious. Anyone who makes skating look easy is using the edges.

Hockey and ice skate blades have edges on either side of the thin flatter middle. The edge on the big-toe side of each skate is known as the inside edge. The edge on the pinkie toe side is the outside edge. Skaters who really know what they are doing, who just effortlessly fly around, know the best edge to use at any given time and even can emphasize the front or back of these edges to suit their needs. Any beginning skater will start to feel (or, in my case, almost never feel) the edges when working on stopping. You cannot stop if you stay on the flat middle of the skate blade. You need to work the angle, to find the edge, if you want control.

When a skater first hits the ice, if that skater truly knows the score, she is testing those edges, getting a feel for them on this day at this particular time. Does one seem stronger than another? Has one dulled enough to require attention? Can she find the best balance among them? When she tests them, do the edges hold?

As a skater, your body and, by extension, your edges are different every day. It doesn’t take long to see where the vulnerabilities lie. As you get stronger on the ice, your edges tell you more about where you stand, about what you need to do to find the most balance, about the little mistakes that may drag you down.

Edges come into play with everything. Whether you call them boundaries, standards, or bullshit detectors, you must learn to trust your edges off the ice, too. Your edges keep you straight, allow you to react quickly, help you get to where you need to go next. They keep you focused and aware. And once you have learned to feel what they are telling you, they give you the balance and the means to meet whatever you encounter with some measure of strength and grace.

 

Dorothy and Ruby Return

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My last grandparent was taking her last breaths, and I was sitting in Verizon Center watching the Capitals play the Panthers. My mother had been giving me updates throughout the previous weeks that Grandma was feeling worse, that she was ready to be done, and my mother was by her side on this night, Nov. 2, 2013. But there was no way I could make it back home in time. So, when I surveyed my options of what to do as this was happening—especially as my mother was sure Grandma would be gone in mere hours—I bought the last-minute ticket that brought me to section 119.

If it seems odd that I took comfort in going to a hockey game instead of staying home to cry hysterically and alarm the pets or watch yet another British mystery that I had already seen three times, I must admit to being a firm believer in denial as a first reaction to any tragedy. But that would only be part of the explanation. Grieving alone for a woman who would soon be at peace after a life well-lived did not seem right. It would make Dorothy sad to see me as the recluse I was slowly becoming, and I wanted to think of her from a place of joy. From outside the litany of losses that had marked the past few years of my life, hockey had become the new good thing, separate from everything else that had fallen apart and with a strange power to calm me down. It also didn’t hurt that my grandmothers—Dorothy, who was now in hospice, and Ruby, who had died 11 years before—had been the only ice skaters in the family.

Being One and Three

Although it is a somewhat rare occurrence these days, my parents had me when they were fairly young—both of them were 21 when I was born. Having such young parents meant that as a kid my babysitters were a fascinating rotating cast including not only grandparents (who were younger than I currently am now when they first watched over me), but also great-grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, my mom’s stunning younger sisters and their equally bewilderingly beautiful friends, assorted neighbor and church kids, students from the teams my dad coached, and my dad’s bachelor college drinking buddies.

My parents were the ones who stayed in our little town. Because of that and because they were young and without a lot of money and because people were close to each other in a way that they aren’t these days, I knew and remember all of my great-grandparents, save my dad’s mother who died long before I was born. Growing up, I was a bike ride away from many relatives, although I could walk right through the woods to visit my mother’s parents.  

Dorothy and Ruby were both World War II brides, class valedictorians, and farm girls who survived the Depression. In short, they were women of substance, tenacity, smarts, resourcefulness, and heart who raised children also deserving of those adjectives. For Dorothy, and my mother’s side, I was the first grandchild. For Ruby, and my dad’s side, I was the third.

Key Figures

Dorothy had been extremely close to her siblings. They would ice skate in the rink or on the frozen rivers and ponds. They did this regularly, large groups of young adults spending time together as the war loomed in the background, ready to change all of their lives. Dorothy skated to be with those she loved, and her interest in continuing to skate changed as marriage and the war changed those who had skated with her. She still took her kids out on the ice, but it was not her chief source of amusement past a certain point. It may have been hard for her to continue; she associated skating with a life, time, and people she loved dearly and lost in many ways through the war.

For Ruby, however, skates of any kind were a way of life. Between gas rations and working the farm she struggled to keep afloat for her aging parents, Ruby roller-skated down the road when she had some place to be. In the winter, she would get there by frozen river and ice skates. She loved to be active. She loved water. When she wasn’t in it, she was on it. She taught her children to roller skate and ice skate, and she went with them until doctor’s orders forbade it. One broken arm too many in her early forties meant no more skating of any kind, which always seemed so cruel. You break a heart to fix an arm? I have her skates and the “skating skirt” she made.

Ice Blue

Unlike many of my friends, I did not have phantom or abstract grandparents, blurry memories of vague faces because I was too little to have ever really known them. Mine had been in my life my entire childhood, my entire adolescence, and in Dorothy’s case, as I was staring down middle age. When Ruby died, I was 32. When Dorothy died—I got the call from my mom as I sat at the Verizon Center—I was 42. Their loss remains keenly felt.

But, so does the connection. When I switched from hockey skates to figure skates, I felt this keenly as well. Circling around the ice, moving from this edge to that, working on a slalom, attempting cross-overs for the first time, I often thought of them. Of their movements into grace, of their strength and beauty, of continuing a joy they had to stop. Of their blue eyes that skipped a generation to me. And of their circling with me and through me as I lived the things I loved and not the things I feared.

Revised Goals

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“You not fall if you wear figure skates.”

I was looking up at her, a heap on my stomach on the ice, the hockey skates that betrayed me attached to my splayed legs. To my credit, it was a graceful slow-motion-type fall that I was rather proud of successfully executing. But the Russian was unmoved.

“You could ice dance. Why do you wear those skates? You will ruin your form if you keep wearing hockey skates.”

I was starting to think she had a point. It was week four. I had skated for two weeks in all-purpose rental skates, a peculiar hybrid of figure and hockey skates designed to offend no one and confuse everyone.

Because I had not died during the first two lessons, I felt brave enough to wear my hockey skates and was once again back in the universe of no stops because there was no toe pick I could use to cheat. Plus, I liked the flatter blade. I kept pitching backward, then forward, then downward in these freaky fast-angled foot-covers.

Maybe it was time to revise goals. I went home and ordered from Amazon what I thought were figure skates. But, really they were cheap and supposedly warm enough to wear on an iced pond. They would last a while, until I decided to buy a real pair.

I am easily persuaded by Russians.

Ode on Crossover and Turn

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One of the simultaneously beautiful and frustrating aspects of being a new hockey fan is all that I don’t know. Beautiful because I am constantly surprised. Frustrating because I am constantly playing catch up. (You don’t even want to know how long it took me to understand offsides.)

Last week, as it usually does in general and especially with hockey, the beautiful won.

My dog, the foster dog, my cat, and I were watching vintage games on the NHL channel. We do some version of this almost every day. Last week, it was the 1996 final World Cup game between Canada and the United States. I love watching these old games. I get to know the players I hear mentioned, often see interviewed, sometimes see coach, but never saw play—Messier, Gretzky, Richter, Leetch, Lindros, Coffey, Modano.

I suddenly noticed number 27 on Canada’s team. He wasn’t at the center of the action right then, and what he did was small and quick—two back crossovers, turn, two front crossovers (whistle), stop. I kept rewinding to watch him. He wasn’t skating. He was floating.

He reminded me of my favorite dancers and demonstrated my favorite things about hockey—the flow, the ease, the smoke and mirrors way the players dupe us into thinking it is oh-so-easy. We are really seeing the hours, the injury, the perseverance, the luck, the natural gift, the grit. Yet, as with all truly beautiful things, we let ourselves remain duped. Because that is all we know on earth and all we need to know.

My TiVo Hates Me

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It was time to get my ex-husband’s name off my cable bill.

After a few years of seeing his name each month; then getting angry; then calling up RCN to remove him; and then being required to fax in the divorce decree, my wisdom teeth, and my dog’s DNA, I decided to open a new account.

Through this upgrade, I would lose the interview with U2 that I had saved to the pre-TiVo DVR. This was the reason I had held out on a new account. YouTube came to the rescue.

My next concern was two-fold: I needed only the NHL Channel and WETAUK—the local PBS affiliate’s Anglocentric offshoot.

Before I found hockey, I watched one thing—whatever British mystery I could find anywhere. This meant I saw a lot of commercials involving catheters, reverse mortgages, and devices for elderly people who fall down and/or lose things. This sometimes concerned me.

The advent of WETAUK meant that I could go to one commercial-free place to watch those who solve crimes with various British accents: the horticulturalists, the drunk women, the restaurateur, Brenda Blethyn and her hot sidekick, the bitter Scandinavian cop, the small-town inspector whose wife barely hides her contempt for him, the lonely misanthropic Oxford intellectual as an old man and a young man, the former partner of the lonely misanthropic intellectual and his brooding intellectual sergeant, the Belgian detective everyone knows, the old lady everyone knows, the divorced inspector who pines for his tough-as-nails co-worker, the private detective with the most adorable daughter in the world, the Venetian in Rome, the morose gentleman cop and his working-class sidekick, the war-time inspector, the widowed inspector and his swinging 60s partner, the ambitious DSI demoted in charge of unretired cold-case coppers, and the 1920s pistol-toting-airplane-flying-hard-drinking Australian lady detective (Otherwise known as my hero. I am sure she plays hockey.).

I blame my mystery fixation on Edward Gorey’s Masterpiece Mystery opening credits, which hooked me as a small child and never let go: Why is this glamorous woman fainting on the ledge of a creepy old castle (i.e., my dreamhouse)? Who is that guy in the cape? Can I wear a bat hat on my head and carry a fan that changes colors?

My customer service conversation went something like this.

“I watch two channels—WETAUK and the NHL channel. Do you have a package for just those two?”

She and her Boston accent paused. For quite a while.

Turns out, I also needed CSN if I wanted to watch the Caps games.

Meanwhile, TiVo insists on taping programs with no relation to British mysteries or hockey, such as FOX news and the daughter-in-peril-of-the-week on Lifetime. And no, it wasn’t Paulina Gretzky.

But while scrolling past Mother May I Sleep With Danger, I was shocked, shocked to find that my TiVo, on its own accord, did record the best movie in the world.  TiVo, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Falling

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Anyone who skates knows that you have to learn to fall. To learn it first is best, but to learn at some point is necessary.

My first time in hockey skates at Fort Dupont Ice Arena was all about falling, something I had been doing for months in other contexts.

Raised Lutheran in the Midwest, I became convinced of my fragility. I was taught to fear the many things that could break me—love, death, divorce, mistakes, disappointment, judgment, imperfection, loss.

“Don’t break your arm,” they all said when I told them I would learn how to skate.

They should have said, “Don’t break your heart.”

But I would have ignored both.

I had made a decision that fear would no longer dictate what I did or didn’t do. I had a new philosophy: “Caution, meet wind.”

So skating and hockey found me at the perfect time.

Skating required me to do two things I don’t like to do: fall and stop. Sometimes suddenly, sometimes deliberately. But I was determined to learn how to do both—and when each needs doing.

So, when it all fell apart, and I had no one to show me what I needed to learn, I took a little break from the ice, put away my skates until October.

In this picture, I am afraid, but I am focused. My mind is racing, my thoughts on repeat: Ican’tstopIcan’tstopIcan’tstopI’mgoingsofastandIstillcan’tstopI’mgoingtodieIdon’tknowhowtostop
howdoIstopI’mgoingtodieunlessIfigureouthowtostophowcanIgosofastwhenIdon’tknowhowtostop.

Caution, meet wind.

1980

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“Blue helmet, red pants.”

It was 6:45 a.m. when I watched him go to the Arlington rink locker room, and I walked to the second level overlook at Kettler Capitals Iceplex. Unless a funeral or a house fire was involved, I never saw this time of day. That tells you everything you need to know about how I felt about him.

I was about to see my first live hockey game. The full import of his “blue helmet, red pants” comment hit me when I looked at the ice and could identify no one, everyone covered in armor, sleepy Vikings. Not that I knew anyone but him. Not that I knew him well or ever would. But, on this April morning, I knew everything I needed to. I was fully awake.

I searched for the blue helmet and the red pants—every player seemed to wear one or the other. And when I found him, I watched someone I loved shift into something more.

So fast on frozen water, he was purely elemental. As were those he dodged and chased in a flow I had never before seen, that made no and perfect sense, that felt like something I had once understood and had forgotten.

It was the sound, the skates scraping ice that brought her back to me.

I felt the cold on my cheeks, saw my breath. I was 9, an avid watcher of all things 1980 Olympics, and a determined speck in over-sized figure skates on the frozen field belonging to my grandfather. The ice had a softness to it, so I could dig in the toe pick to twirl and jump, avoiding the winter wheat that poked through. It would all melt away soon.

But I had that day. And the horizon and the joy of the moment and a peacefulness found in cold open spaces bounded by enormous sky and skeletal trees and undaunted childhood. I felt perfectly still even in motion.

Who were you before it all fell apart? Where were you when everything made sense? What did you do that gave you peace? That morning, I had my answer.