Pure Imagination

I have a wonderful young friend. He is nine years old with an amazing shock of curly red hair. He's creative, funny and fun, and he just happens to be a skater who is competing Freestyle 2 and whose favorite jump is Salchow. He calls me "Mrs. Allison" because he's polite like that. I call him "Master Jack." 

We got to spend some quality time together at the 2020 US Figure Skating National Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina this past January - what now, in this time of pandemic, seems like a lifetime ago. Jack got to meet some of his favorite senior level skaters, like Madison Hubbell (you cannot fault his good taste), as well as Nathan Chen, among many others over the course of the weekend. 


He sat in the stands absolutely transfixed, watching every edge and every nuance. He was absorbing it all like a sponge; I was impressed. 

One day, on the way to the arena, Jack and I were talking about what skating might look like in the future - not in the near term, but a hundred years from now. Jack pondered my question, came up with a few ideas and then we both promptly forgot amidst the excitement of all that was going on around us. 

Enter COVID-19 that turned our worlds upside down. Like all kids, Jack was coping with school at home, not being able to see his friends and not being able to skate. I sent Jack a letter with words of encouragement; in return, he sent me a lovely letter written in his best cursive. We were now officially Pen Pals. 

Recently, Jack's been skating again on limited sessions, like just about all the skaters who have rinks that have been able to open. In chatting with his mom, I remembered Jack's and my conversation and I asked if he would be willing to use his creative talents to tell me, in words and artwork, what he thought skating in 2120 might look like.
Master Jack gladly responded with his insights:

"I think in 100 years, skating will have septuple axels and salchows. 

There will lifts in pairs where the male jumps in the air while lifting his partner.  For costumes, I think ladies will be able to wear two piece costumes and boys will be able to wear shorts. 

In dance, I think there will little rockets on the back of their skates to make them go even faster.  

Possibly back flips will be allowed in competition.

For all skaters, I think they will have the ability to have fireworks coming out of their skates. I think we will be able to have all events in outside arenas where the temperature is controlled.  There will be fireworks during every event, and the fireworks are what will play the program music."

I won't be around to see if Jack's predictions come true, but somehow I don't think he's that far off. At least I hope not. Because what comes from the pure imagination of a child is often our future. I certainly hope so.

Post Script:

July 17, U.S. Figure Skating did something remarkable. In the midst of the continuing pandemic, they brought us skating again - and hope - by presenting the first virtual competition ever attempted: The Peggy Fleming Trophy. It wasn't live, but it was skating - and a glimpse into what our future may be, at least for awhile. With so many lows of late, it was something that got us all excited about how today's technology could bring us back together via watch parties, Twitter and Facebook, to enjoy and critique this very unique event. It took a lot of work, imagination, and skaters willing to put themselves out there in front of a virtual judging panel with just a scant few weeks of training after being off the ice for months. They became the Alpha adopters - the vanguard of what skating might become. There were no fireworks (though there may have been a few rockets on skates involved for some of the competitors), but this new world was something we certainly wouldn't have predicted ...just like my buddy Master Jack's vision for the future. 

You know, he may be on to something.

Facing Your Fears - Part 3: On The Edge of Glory

Between my last post and this one, I managed to have Christmas and New Year's all in one day with almost all my family. 
Oh, and I also retired. There's that, too.

One day last week, when the weather was lovely and the sun warm, I took our 8 year old granddaughter to Skate at the Park. She had only been on skates once before, and that was indoors. Being the life-enthusiast that she is, getting out of the house and to the rink was a breeze. Sweater weather made things much easier. A relatively decent pair of rental skates added to the excitement - for about 30 seconds. 

You know from my previous two Facing Your Fears posts that I was just getting back on the ice myself. Inching up a slippery ramp and then helping my granddaughter onto the ice was a fear I hadn't expected. I was scared of falling, or falling on her.
"NANA!! HOLD ON TO ME! I'M SCARED! I CAN'T DOOOOO THIS!" 
(Deep breath.)
"Let's try using the buckets."
(Whimper)
"Okay.."
That was the start.

With temperatures again pushing 50 degrees, the ice was rapidly softening and rutting. That made the edges by the rail something akin to skating on a severe case of acne. Raised bumps and uneven edges were everywhere, making the task of holding on to her while she held on to the buckets quite the challenge. 
After much cajoling, and reminding her that turning can't into can happens by doing, we started to make headway.  About 30 minutes into the session, the "Can't" started to become, "Let me try myself but I want to stay close to the 
rail." 
I suppressed my inner Skate Mom and didn't even try to give anything  resembling "instruction" because it was not going to go well if I did - either for her, or for me. We set some goals of going from one panel to the next without holding on. After a turn around the postage-sized rink, that started to seem like a doable thing. One panel turned into two, then three.

But things really got better when my granddaughter made a friend named Olivia. 

Olivia was also using a barrel, but she was already stepping away and was trying things on her own. She and my granddaughter started venturing out to the center of the ice with the barrels. The squealing changed from terror to joy as the two of them figured it all out. Before I knew it, they were both racing around the ice at an amazing clip. The operative phrase went from "Hold on to me!" to "I can do it myself. Watch!" 

It was "Skate With Team USA" that afternoon, so we stopped for lunch, went back to the rink, got our skates on again and tried to find a centimeter of ice that wasn't taken up by all the people who had come out to skate with the athletes. At that point, I was exhausted. I had been on my skates for nearly four solid hours. I also had no intention of getting on the ice with the Team members, all of whom I knew. That would have been taking the Skate Mom thing to an entirely new and awkward level. 


At the end of the day, exhausted and exhilarated, we headed home. My granddaughter faced her fears and learned that anything is possible if you are willing to work for it. 

Me? I managed to do some very tentative crossovers for the first time in five years. 

At home by the fireplace that night, with hot cocoa in hand, we both agreed that we had accomplished much that day in the park, under the sun. 

And we agreed that it was just the beginning.

Keepsakes

There it was. 

In an Instagram story on the day before Thanksgiving, it all became clear. My son, sitting at a table with his idols, who became mentors, then friends, were now his extended family. Twenty nine years of skating was summed up in only a few words inserted over a photo taken in a restaurant.

I don’t know how to describe exactly how I felt; perhaps that’s why it has taken me a few days to organize my thoughts. But as the last Grand Prix of this Olympic season got underway in Lake Placid today, it made me think of everything it took to get us to where we are now, to every experience along the way, and to all the people who were the tight fabric – or the loose threads – that wove our journey to this revered and almost sacred place in skating called “Family.”

The timing for his post could not have been better because I had just spent a week with my daughter in Idaho culling through a mélange of literally hundreds of old photos that had managed to find their way into boxes, envelopes, tattered scrapbooks, crates and suitcases. Some I hadn’t seen in more than 25 years; some were more recent. For better or worse, they all brought back a flood of memories surrounding that one particular moment now frozen in time.

Images scattered on the floor took me on a visual and mental roller coaster ride from Vancouver in 2010, back to Aspen in 1989, and forward at seemingly warp speed to Sochi 2014 and Stars on Ice this spring. Years of competitions were laid out before me. Not all the images were salvageable after decades of wear, weather and bad storage, but most of the memories remained, even if the pictures were faded.

I bring this up mostly because today we live in a digital world where we are posting our lives by the hour and minute to a multitude of social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Tumblr. Everything is in the “now.” Many are designed to simply disappear. It is true that they are not all jewels worth preserving, but the aggregate make up the more linear stories of our lives.

Nick Kole, Evan Gibbs, John Coughlin, Jeremy Abbott

My point is this: 

Make sure you document and preserve important milestones for posterity. Make sure you don’t discard those photos from a young age with friends and competitors alike. Take pictures with coaches and judges. If you meet someone you look up to, make sure to record the moment. We live in a world of disposable media, but that doesn’t mean we should also dispose of the memories that caused us to press the button and save the moment. Images are catalysts. They can remind us where we have been so we can appreciate how far we have come, and how quickly the time in between has passed. And how, along the way, idols became mentors, and mentors became trusted friends who are now truly family - not just in skating, but in life.