He likes it?

Let me pause here. The fact that K liked skating, to the point where he talked about it outside the class, was new to me. I was fully anticipating the words, "This is too hard, I quit," or "I hate falling down," or just rounds of tears.

That didn't happen. Anytime K fell, he got back up.

I had never witnessed this before.

That twinge, that one that kept bothering me whenever I saw an ice skate? It was a full on vibration now.

K likes skating. K lives near a rink. Lots of them, actually. Where we live is virtually saturated with ice rinks. We might have something, here.

Ice skating is something ethereal, isn't it? It's moving a human body across a sheet of ice, and making it glide, spin, jump and twirl in impossible ways, all on a quarter inch of steel blade. It's beautiful, mythically beautiful, and to think that my son might have an interest in such a thing was astounding. Not just watching it, mind you, but doing it.

I'm not going to lie.

I have harbored visions of K being the next Evan Lysacek. Fleeting visions that normally get shot down when he's doing his scooter-push sans "I hate you" move across the ice.

My son is moody, intense, thoughtful and thoughtless, changeable and changeless, an enigma to me even though I consider him a friend, and I am trying to whittle my Olympic dreams down to a successful local competition or two. Such a thing would work wonders for my weepy, moody, embattled little boy. He's fully half the size of other seven year olds, and its something he struggles with. However, within our brief six month foray into figure skating, he's learned that he can outskate the hockey kids who are bigger than him, and that alone makes me happy.

That's what this blog is about. It's about me reconciling my lost dreams of skating, my desires for my son, and my endless battle to not foist my wishes of greatness on someone who might not want that and who will feel terrible if he can't live up to it. He's seven, for cripes sake. Even if he does make the 2026 Olympics, that's sixteen years away.

I cringe at the thought that I've done that math. I cringe that I've even thought of it.

I can't talk about this with other parents. That's a subject for another post. So, I have internets, who are all encompassing and all forgiving. This blog is anonymous, and if it is seen and you recognize yourself, chances are that you've seen me and you can talk to me about it. I'll do a better job of protecting the innocent, I promise. I'm pretty nice.

What I've learned in six months of skating is akin to walking into another universe. I'm actually glad that my mother and I didn't do this when I was young. We would never have been able to stand it. When someone first laughed at me and said I'd be getting a Zuca bag, I had no earthly idea what the fuck they were talking about. What in god's name is a Zuca bag?

Now I know, and I wish I didn't.