Gifts of making do and persistence
It was our first winter in the little bungalow in Lake Carmel.
The air had turned cold and the lake, only a short distance away, had frozen solid. It became a stage on which children and adults played hockey or danced figures and, like thirsty wanderers in the desert; my sisters and I wanted what we could only watch.
Besides the fact that none of us had experience with ice skates, there were two additional and significant problems.
First, our mother, who had never skated on anything, was afraid that the ice would break and we’d fall into the freezing water, therein to perish or at least be maimed for life. Mom could conjure up stories in the blink of an eye about relatives who had been gruesomely damaged because of their participation in winter sports — and, second, not be discounted, we had no skates.
My mother’s apprehension was partially relieved when we pointed to the town police car, plow attached, clearing portions of the lake for a hockey game. Our father less concerned about the “what ifs,” told us stories of his daring escapades on ice ponds in the Brooklyn of his youth.
He knew how to get bargain skates in the city, and, ever resourceful, he brought us skates. They were second, maybe third hand, ugly scuffed black hockey skates.
Sometimes I think that my dad forgot that we were girls. We wanted to become Sonja Henie, the ice skating beauty we saw in the movies, not drooling hockey players.
But, we had learned not to complain. Both of our parents had huge repositories of stories about their youth and how they had to “make do.”
So there we were, making do, too. Besides the ugliness quotient and the fact that they were not figure skates, they didn’t fit. They were all too big, but, again being resourceful, that problem was fixed with a customized stuffing of newspaper and multiple layers of socks.
I can remember putting the adjusted skates on and wobble walking around our living room. “Go, have fun,” they said.
Our feet killed us. The city streets of Brooklyn did not prepare us for the effort that it took to stand up in ice skates.
Our ankles sagged, our arches cried out in pain. We fell down — a lot.
But we persisted. There is this thing that our father told us.
It went something like, “If someone else can do it, so can you. You just have to find a way.”
Oh, how I remember lying in bed a night after time on the ice, fee throbbing like crazy but keeping quiet lest our mother’s predictions lead her to forbid another foray onto the ice. Persistence pays off.
All of a sudden the pain went away and I could skate, even backwards.
With hockey skates, try as I may, figures were beyond my ability. I lusted after white figure skates.
Enter mom, yes the mom who feared for our lives on the ice. My mother found a pair in a second hand store in Katonah.
Following what had become a family footwear tradition, they too were a size too big. Sadly, we found that figure skates that are too big don’t really work.
I was resigned to a winter life in the ugly black hockey skates or the hope that my feet would increase in size.
Christmas came and, well, Santa knew of my great desire because there, under the tree was a pair of Sears best white, size 7, figure skates.
Oh my, I was in a 13 year old heaven. I proudly wore those skates through high school and brought them to college where I spent my first winter break skating on the pond in Thornden Park.
I haven’t worn them for more than 30 years now. They hang in the cellar, now too small, even if my arthritic body could attempt to skate.
They are less white than the ones of my memory and there’s a little rust on the Sheffield steel blades, but they bring back lessons about gifts of parents who went beyond to support our aspirations, of learning to make do, to persist in my efforts, and to, above all, find joy in the journey.
