I clamp on my purple headphones, crank up the iPod, and in my mind’s eye, and I envision a woman, a girl really, skating in perfect accompaniment to whatever song pops up. Classical. The Stones. Springsteen. Gaga. She can skate to anything. She can do beautiful layback spins, and spirals, and double and triple spins, all perfectly.
As I’ve told you before, I’m not known for my grace. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I had, between my two ankles, broken them 10 times. So when I told my mother I would like to join my high school’s figure skating team, she was appalled.
“You?”she said.
“Yes,” I said. So I did.
It was not easy for the klutzy kid with a spatial disability learn to balance on metal blades. But I did. At first I moved stiffly, arms slightly out at the side, like a generic Barbie. Then I learned how to move quickly, curving forward and backwards across the ice, using a technique called crossovers, flipping back and forth with three-point turns, which are not just for cars. I learned a two-foot spin, then the more graceful one-foot spin. It feels like you’re spinning a cocoon, to pull your arms and leg in to yourself, and feel your speed increase as you lift your arms above your head, like a ballerina.
If you think the Dance Moms teacher is insane, you should have met our coach. Martha was so thin you could see her ribs through her loose-fitting spandex. Her hair was spikey, like Elizabeth Taylor’s late-in-life hairstyle. She’d chain-smoke and scream at you if you dared to question her choreography or if your parents refused to pay for a new purple sparkly unitard because you already owned a purple nonsparkly unitard.
I didn’t care. I only wanted to skate.
For my birthday, I got veddy veddy expensive Don Jackson figure skates from my grandmother. These are not Wal-Mart skates. These cost a couple-hundred dollars. Cheap skates won’t support an ankle in a jump. (my sisters, who skated on the national level, had custom-made skates) To me, those skates were golden. I needed them to jump.
I’ll say this for Coach Martha: she taught us to fall before she taught us to jump. Arms up; protect the face. (It’s kind of like the boxing stance I adopted 20 years later.) Hockey players wear equipment and padding. We didn’t.
It was tradition among us to perform a hockey stop when someone went down–skate up to them and spray the poor girl with an Edward Scissorhands-esque shower of snow from our blades. This was hilarious unless someone was really hurt. We hurt ourselves more than the hockey team. They wore helmets and padding; we didn’t. I racked up two concussions (my neurologist is fairly sure that’s what caused my epilepsy); knocked my two front teeth out when I landed on my face; and broke all the fingers on one hand, all when practicing and falling out of jumps.
I learned to jump, though. Martha made me get right back up and do it again. If I became scared of the ice, I’d never do it.
I remember vividly the day I landed that first jump, a toe loop. DID YOU SEE THAT I screamed to Martha, to my teammates, to rink custodians, loud enough to travel cross the country and be heard in San Diego. I was elated and terrified all at once. I was afraid I’d never do it again.
But I did.
My senior year I was elected captain. And I claimed Casey Kasem’s American Top Forty back-from-the-dead chart topper “Unchained Melody” for my senior solo (SHUT UP GHOST WAS OUT).
Like a million dusty and aged school auditoriums before it, the ice rink was beautiful on show night. We decorated it ourselves with dollar-store glitz, hanging magic from the penalty boxes. I had edited our music at the little radio station where I interned after school. We had rented our spotlights, and the kids from the drama club were our lighting pros.
We did our precision line to open the show. I was the center, and felt like my arms were being torn off.
And after pacing madly in my skate guards for half the show, it was my turn.
I wore a tulle skirt of dark forest green with a matching velvet bustier. My hair was up. I wore more eyeliner than I’d ever wore in my life, and I was a metal fan in 1991.
There was no audience. Just me, and the music, and the ice. I realize now as I write this I use the same disassociation when I go on the air, when it’s just me, the mic, and the news.
I often fall in the important moments in my life. I fell a lot in high school, being the chubby kid with a bad perm and ugly clothes and undiagnosed learning disability. I fell when I got to college, because I wasn’t prepared to be on my own. I fell in my personal life, because of what I later realized was a major anxiety disorder. I fell during relationships, because I’m really not good at interacting with humans. I fell at my own wedding, literally, during the first dance.
I didn’t fall during that solo.
I sailed. In my mind’s eye, I soared. I landed that flip (which is not a backflip, but a full rotation in the hair) I did! I landed that toe loop. I did that one-foot spin and my spirals, front and back, were strong.
I felt like a vision.
I don’t have a lot from high school – it’s not a time I wish to remember. But I got my jacket. On the back, it says “M.H.S Figure Skating Team.” On the left arm, it says “91.” And below that, it says “Captain.”
Photo courtesy of mourgeFile.
