Hockey Cures All Ills

I saw my first hockey game, and everything changed.

Archives for August 2014

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.