the unshared joy

Although I positioned it skillfully, I could not get Tom to the rink THU night. I put the invite to the entire team for Public Skating, but it stalled through the "proper" channels, and I ended up alone with just my client for a half hour power skating lesson. Midway through the lesson Michael and I stopped to talk to a real power skater, a speed skater who looked like he popped onto Earth after skating the canals of Mars in some Isaac Asimov novel. He was wearing shades and the latest speed skates complete with shiny black molded boots. A real "back to the future" character, and when he hit full stride, his form was impeccable. He stopped to chat with both of us and shared that in order to keep from blowing out of his flimsy boots (he claimed they had the support of a pair of flip-flops) he needed to really flex his knees to keep his ankles from wobbling. "If you flex enough, your ankle can't move anywhere, even when turning." This line came just after I was trying to reinforce the flex mentality. A bit of serendipity.

Michael and I communicated much better than last week, and he made some good progress. But his real benefit cam after I got off the ice. He had two teammate buddies also out for the public skate, and they were laughing and playing tag and not giving a hoot about form, just chasing and smiling. It was ice love. three 13 year olds, who could have been doing a million (literally, a million options for that genre) other things for fun, had chosen the ice, and were becoming more natural, instinctive skaters by tooling around and being goofballs on the frosty white.

I commented to Michael senior that I had a small case of "son (or parent) jealously," seeing exactly what I was hoping for for Tom being played out by others. Kind of like a weird dream. Two hours earlier I approached Tom after his trip to the batting cage at ball practice. He said he had only a little more homework, but that he really needed to practice the flute so he could be prepared for his lesson the next day. I told him to make the most of his practicing, because he was sacrificing something special. I will continue to try to get him out skating for the sake of skating. the bug hasn't hit him this season yet, and the calendar still says September, but it is autumn now.

I long to get him up to the magic of Lake Placid, where he kept me out on the oval on a late February night a full half hour longer than I would have turned in. I told him to tone down his pace so he could last longer and perfect his form, but he kept pushing it, without recovery time, his body responding to some kind of primal urge. I watched him become a skater that frigid night in the Adirondacks, and his hockey results flourished immediately after we returned. It's all about the skating.

I daydreamed a career/parenting path yesterday, a dream that would have me teach history at the Northwood prep school in Lake Placid. A former teammate from Sun Valley is a major adminstrater there, and the dream would include Tom playing and attending for free while I coached and taught in winter paradise. I shared the dream outside the cage, and he initially glowed, saying how awesome it would be. then his left brain kicked in, and he frowned about the prospects of Northwood probably not having a decent baseball team. Then he said he wouldn't sign up for that right now, but he's got nearly 3 years to make those kinds of decisions. A mature, reasoned response. Sadly, hockey and skating love are not mature and reasoned passions.