The Skates

28
Jan

Every winter when I was young, my father would make all of his five children an ice rink in our backyard and usually he came down with a “damn” cold while flooding the rink, smoothing out the bumps and filling in the holes.

The rink was incredibly popular within my family . . . and a big hit on our street. My mother was one of its biggest supporters because she tended to latch on to any reason to get all of us kids out of the house. The parents of our neighbourhood friends seemed to share the same sentiment as her. Their families were large – eight, sometimes thirteen kids in a family. We lived in a predominantly Catholic neighbourhood. There wasn’t any house on my street that could handle that many kids inside. No wonder our outdoor rink was a big hit.

My sister-siblings and I had significant competition to get a turn skating on our rink and even though the girls out-numbered the boys in my family by 4:1, the same wasn’t true in our neighbourhood. It was the reverse. We girls had to make sure that the boys didn’t dominate the rink and that hockey wasn’t the only activity going on in our backyard. We had to have time to practice our single swirls. (That’s what we used to call them.)

I have a memory of looking down from our upstairs hallway window, watching a lot of kids, including my sisters, skating on our newly-made rink. I wasn’t skating because the 4 girls in our family had 3 pairs of skates between us. My 2 older sisters and my baby sister were having a lot of fun going ‘round and ‘round doing their swirls. I thought it was especially unfair that other kids in our neighbourhood got a chance before me to skate there. I was beyond feeling miserable, looking at everyone enjoying our wonderful rink.

Maybe that’s what led me to do something I would have not dared to do otherwise. I disturbed my father’s afternoon nap. He didn’t nap often, so he must have had one of those “damn” colds and needed to rest, because he was snoring. That didn’t stop me from crying and waking him up. “Daddy, I don’t have any skates,” I remember wailing. I think I also remember him chuckling.

When I remember desperately wanting a pair of skates . . . and GETTING them for my 8^th birthday . . . it makes me smile for a couple of reasons. First off, my birthday is December 9^th. Since when in Southern Ontario has any family (no matter what size) had an ice rink in their backyard by that time of year? It wasn’t unusual back in the ‘60’s. My Dad would always, always, always have the rink ready for us by Christmas Day at the very latest every year. It was a promise (or maybe it was a threat to my Dad from my mother). In the very least, it was our tradition.

Another thing that keeps this memory special to me is how I remember feeling, knowing that my parents splurged on a brand new pair of skates for their third daughter, two and a half weeks before Christmas. I was a kid used to hand-me-downs for most things I wore. It’s one of the few birthday gifts that I can recall in detail – brilliant white, unscuffed skates with gleaming sharp blades. At 8 years old, I knew my parents loved me. (Either that, or it meant that my mother desperately needed me to get outside.)