Ice Skating

 The kids started ice skating lessons this week. It’s not something I ever imagined doing, but a friend is teaching the lessons. That means the children get two hours of skating one day a week with friends. It also means I get to skate as long as I am able to. I figure at the end of eight weeks I will have doubled my life time quantity of ice skating.

I remembered ice skating in Texas, and I dressed everyone just a little warmer. But it was COLD in that arena. It was especially difficult my first few times around the ice as I was moving VERY slowly with one hand on the wall. It was my second time to skate since we moved to Vermont, and maybe the second time in ten years, so slow was the only speed available. BY the third time around, I was moving well enough to be having fun and I wasn’t thinking about the cold and I was able to see what the kids were doing.

It was fun to see their different reactions. They have skated one to three times each winter, but it’s new each year. Sylvie and Ezra bombed along, falling here and there. Ezra fell more often; there is something uncoordinated and flailing in his movement. He has gotten much more fluid in the last year, but he still willingly abandons himself to earth. Sylvie is fearless and fluid; if there is a natural athlete among my three children, it’s Sylvie. I could see her grasp of skating improving by the moment. When she fell, she just laughed as she leapt back to her feet.

Phaedra’s caution is a sticking point. She wants so much not to fall that she barely moves. However, by the end of the lesson, she was using both feet.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the next couple of months will bring. We all have skates, and we can skate any time we go skiing or once the pond up the road freezes, we can meet friends there. I like to have lots of reasons to get outside in the winter.