The Blur of Childhood

Perhaps because we here on the east coast have had a bit of a cold spell lately. Perhaps because the heating system in our old house went down a few months ago (and cannot be repaired til summer, leaving us with a patchwork of space heaters, leaving me endlessly bone-chilled, cold pounded, fractured), I keep thinking about my early days on ice skating rinks.

This was after I'd taught myself to skate on Boston ponds. After I'd told my parents that I wanted nothing more than blades and ice beneath my feet, that I might die if I didn't have this, that I might not grow up to be me. After Robyn Rock, the skating sensation of the Wilmington, DE, rink, came out one day during a public skate session (this being a few months post-Boston) and taught me to waltz jump for real, to rightly spin. This was after that, when I was skating early morning, late afternoon, most every day. It's those days that I've been thinking about lately.

Days when the cold was something I sought, I craved, when I craved that music playing. I wanted to float—forever, always. I wanted to leap and never land.

There are few photographs of me as a child. There are just a handful of me on skates. I have in my possession two. It seems right that they are imprecise, blurred through.