Hell on Ice

You remember that episode of Northern Exposure, where the ice hasn't cracked yet, and they all have this crazy kind of winter fever and do these bizarre, reckless and crazy things? It's possible there was some of that going on back when Tina and I signed Luke up for hockey skating lessons at our local arena about a month back. It seemed like a good idea at the time, really it did. He had shown some real natural talent the few times we brought him ice skating over his February break, and ice skating just seems to us like one of those skills everybody should have to learn as a child. That way in twenty years when he's living in NYC and meets the partner of his dreams, but the only way to win that person, as fate often has it, is to glide by on ice skates under the tree at Rockefeller Center, his life won't be ruined because we failed to expose him during the key "window" where such things must be learned. Truthfully, I feel this way about a lot of skills (swimming, riding a bicycle, driving a stick shift), and as Luke gets older I'm feeling more rushed about defining this list and getting him the prerequisite experiences. We could have chosen just any ice skating lessons, but hockey ice skating lessons, although they had the disadvantage of requiring expensive equipment that just regular skating lessons wouldn't have, held the promise of eventually getting to hold a STICK while he skates, which we felt would be an important motivator.

That's how we all ended up at the rink at 5:45 this past Friday night, amid an army of uber-children who all looked like they'd been training for the Olympics since they were in the womb. They were Olympic athletes in past lives.

Remember T-ball? This was a bloodbath, compared to T-ball. It was hell.

Things started out okay. I did learn something from T-ball. The skating lessons are in the evening, not first thing in the morning when he's tired. I made sure I knew where I was going and that we got there as early as possible so he wouldn't miss anything at the beginning. There was a COSTUME, which I figured would buy me a lot of enthusiasm. It involved funky gloves and a helmet with a real mask and cool black skates. I got him all dressed up and some guy came around and handed us a piece of tape to stick to his helmet and put his name on. Then when Luke was all dressed, I tried to help him build up some butch energy, by modeling some growls and hockey-like sayings like, "I'll eat your leg!"

Then we headed for the ice. That's where things took a turn for the worse. Right away he got scared and started clinging to me. I tried to be lighthearted and gung-ho and basically pushed him out on the ice. Luckily, one of the teenaged instructors came over and engaged him and got him to skate away with her to where the other kids were.

Then four female instructors basically got Luke, one little girl in a pink parka, and five future Olympians to skate back and forth across one end of the rink for 45 minutes. It was broken up occasionally with lessons in how to fall down and then get back up. Luke looked like he was about to cry behind his face mask pretty much the entire time. He was consistently the last one to reach the other side, so all the other kids would have a break waiting for him between laps, but as soon as he got near them, he'd have to turn around and start back again. The others would race past him, and there he'd be, plodding across again and looking the whole time like he was contemplating suicide. Occasionally some kid would fall down right in front of him and almost take his head off with a skate blade. Amazingly, Luke hardly ever fell down. The problem is, he also didn't want to fall down when they were supposed to; he didn't have the wherewithal to outright disobey the instructors, though, so when they told him he had to fall down, he would, but then his misery index would rise rapidly and just when you thought he couldn't get any more miserable, you'd realize how wrong you were. A couple of times one of the other little boys came over and talked to him, and Teen wondered out loud what he was saying. I told her he was saying, "I'm going to beat you up in middle school."

At one point he just wouldn't do it any more, and one of the instructors brought him to a part of the rink not normally open and opened it up so he could get to me. She told me he said his feet hurt him. At this point there was only ten minutes left of the 45-minute lesson. I hugged him to me and rubbed his back and said a bunch of encouraging things to him while he soaked me in tears. Then I told him I wanted him to do it for just ten more minutes. And I actually sent him back out on the ice.

Crazy? Maybe. Nine-tenths of me wanted to pick him up and race him to the car and never set foot in the place again. But I was thinking about swimming lessons, and about T-ball, and about the world of things that Luke doesn't yet know how to do. I don't understand why it's so hard for him to do something new. I can't figure out why it is that these other kids don't seem the slightest bit fazed by it. I have no way of knowing if this is something he'll grow out of, or that will just grow with him, as it has seemed to so far. I know, though, that so far a few things have been consistent: he is terrified to try something new like this, and he can't stand it when he can't just do it, effortlessly. In essence, I think, he hates to be a beginner, and I know that this is something we share. This is terrible and I feel sad for him, that he will have to carry this burden, but taking him off the ice felt like it would teach him that if he was scared and put up a fuss that he could get out of doing the scary thing. It felt like the wrong message to give him, when ten more minutes on the ice could buy him a better lesson: that real courage is about being scared and doing it anyway, that he could hate it and be bad at it and just want it to be over, and still survive it. That there always has to be a first time, but when it's over, there never is again. And yes, although I know I may be planting the seeds of a future eating disorder, he also learned that if you do stick it out, mom buys you popcorn chicken and a slush puppy at the concession stand afterwards.

Although the entire time he was on the ice I convinced myself that this would end up being one of the major traumatic experiences of his childhood, that he would spend hours in therapy analyzing this scaring event, thankfully when class ended and we were riding home in the car, he didn't seem to be permanently damaged. When I said to him, "Gee, wasn't that fun!?" he even said, "Yeah!" in a convincing sort of way. I swear to you. Ask Tina if it wasn't convincing. Of course, at this point he had cherry slush puppy coursing through his veins and he knew he was done skating for a whole week, which when you're four, must be sort of like some time next August.

The one thing that has me feeling the slightest bit hopeful is that Luke asked me this winter if I would sign him up for T-ball again this year. Again, I swear to you that this came from him, completely out of the blue, and involved no coersion on my part. So I signed him up, indicating on the form (at his request) that he be on the team with the yellow shirts. I wonder if a year later we will have the same kind of angst around the first day of T-ball? We shall see. Pray for us, please, pray for us both.