Figure skating this was not, but I’m still glowing from the adventure of skating on our pond in Northwest Indiana.
“Making your own fun,” my daughter commented.
It amazes me that I actually got out on the ice.
Once I had laced up my skates, sitting in my lawn chair on the edge of the frozen pond, the whole getup felt precariously wobbly.
How was I going to rise to my full height of 5’11” and stand on those thin blades, let alone move about?
Overcoming that moment of fear probably constitutes part of the fun factor—you need a bit of courage.
If you don’t chicken out and give yourself that final push, and, teetering, move one foot forward, shifting your weight onto it, then, yes, you will glide, and slowly you will skate. Just as slowly, a warm joy will spread in your chest. And when you reach the lawn chair again, you will be proud of yourself.
When I chatted about skating on the pond with my neighbor the following day, he was all worried the ice might not have held.
“There are safety ice picks you can wear like a necklace,” he advised. Such a thing exists?
“Because if the ice breaks,” he continued, “It goes whoosh! You’re suddenly standing in five feet of cold water, and you can’t lift yourself back onto the ice. With the ice picks you can at least claw your way back.”
My heart sank.
I hadn’t been worried about breaking through the ice.
After three days of daytime temperatures below 20°F, the ice was thick enough (according to Google). Before I put on the skates, I had cleared a circular path on the ice by shoveling off the thin, fluffy layer of snow. My husband had followed me with a big broom. We were operating in the shallow part of the pond, and the ice was rock solid and black beneath our feet.
As I swept along, I could feel, with the rim of the shovel, where the ice was rough. I veered off, clearing a path with an ice surface that was smooth. From my childhood of skating on ponds, I knew that natural ice could present an uncomfortably uneven surface. A frozen ripple or a leaf stuck in the ice could be a hazard for tripping if a skate’s toe pick caught on it.
I had been worried about falling, the much more likely accident when skating.
And fall I did, on one of my later rounds, landing on my left knee and then flat in the snow. However, the resulting bruise didn’t even turn black and blue, just a sulfuric yellow. My long down coat, Jeans and long underwear had provided good padding. My son later advised kneepads—duh! I should have thought of that! Roller skaters wear them, don’t they? But no matter, I was out on the ice! My husband, whom I had asked to chaperone the endeavor, helped me up, and I kept on skating. Thankfully, I only fell once. Not bad for someone who hadn’t been on the ice in at least ten years, eh?
I used to take the kids ice-skating on one of the public ice rinks in Chicago.
We had even taken lessons one winter, and half the sessions had been cancelled due to too cold or too rainy weather. In the sessions that we did have, I had learned how to skate backwards. I also learned how to skate through a curve by lifting one foot over the other, an elegant move that requires some speed, leaning into the curve, and trusting that you’ll be fine with your entire body weight on one blade. Needless to say, I did not attempt any elegance this time around. I was happy that I remained upright, balancing along.
After several rounds, I took a break. As I sat in my lawn chair, sipping hot chocolate from my thermos (I was prepared!), it dawned on me that this adventure was the epitome of carpe diem.
How many things had to work out for me to sit here, after skating a few rounds on my own pond? Why had I never done this before? Mainly, it hadn’t been cold enough in recent winters for the ice to become thick enough. Or I hadn’t been at our country home when it had. Or I didn’t have the time during daylight hours to get out there and attempt skating. Or there had been too much snow on the pond. Or the weather had been too forbidding—sunshine and no wind are ideal.
So, as I sipped my hot chocolate, my thighs pleasantly buttery from the exertion, and the cold pooling around me, joy spread in my chest.