The Day My Sister and I Learned How to Fly

We went ice skating with our grandchildren yesterday and I was reminded of the day my sister and I learned how to fly.  

It was a rough start even though I was quite the proficient skater as a child.  It doesn’t come back quite as quickly as riding your bike but it does come back.  After my initial hesitant skate around the rink I started warming up and the muscle memory returned.  Along with the muscle memory my memories skating as a child also returned.  So much so that I got teary eyed at the memory of unbridled joy I used to feel as we cracked the whip around the ice rink and the day my sister and I learned how to fly.

Our ice rink was the flooded tennis courts of the local park.  There was a small outbuilding where we could change into our skates and warm up if necessary.  On some really special days one of the local Dads would build a fire, the ideal and most Hallmark way of warming ourselves up.  A picture right out of Norman Rockwell.  We never had to plan with friends to meet up at the skating rink because no matter when you went there were usually at least another 10 or 12 kids there.  No parents.  They trusted us to walk over to the park, skate and play and make our way back safe and sound.  Ah, those were the days.

The best game we played on the ice was crack the whip.  Lining up holding hands from the center of the ice rink to its edge the stronger skaters would go on the inside, the faster ones on the outside.  Everyone would then start skating in a circle the inner skaters making small circles and the outer skaters making progressively larger and larger circles until you got to the last few skaters who were skating the entire diameter of the rink.  One day my sister and I were the last two skaters, me the second to last and Beth hanging on at the end.  It started slow.  Everyone moving along pulling each other in the same direction around and around.  Our skates were skimming along the ice and with the help of everyone in the line we were moving along at way more speed than we could have moved by ourselves. 

At first we were laughing, as we moved faster and faster.  I turned to my sister holding tightly to her hand.  She was leaning forward, a big smile across her face, concentrating on keeping up with the speed in which everyone was pulling us.  We could hear the other skaters swishing along, they too laughing at the speed.  As the group got going faster and faster we were finding it harder and harder to keep up.  We stopped skating and were pulled, or rather whipped, around the rink.  It felt like 60 miles an hour as we went flying around that ice rink, the cold wind rushing past us. But then our smiles slowly faded as our legs ached from the effort trying to keep from plopping face first onto the ice.  The leaders weren’t slowing down. They had no idea we were losing control and couldn’t hear our pleas to slow down through their laughter. I was finding it more and more difficult to continue holding Beth’s hand as the group whipped us around.  Looking over I saw a silent panic on her face. Moments later she yelled out to me at the top of her now bursting lungs “Don’t let go Laura, don’t let go” and me returning with “I can’t hold on much longer.  I can’t hold on.”  At this point if you are the last person on the line and experienced, you eventually let go yourself.  You choose when to let go and then let yourself glide forward until you come to a stop, very often by running into a pile of snow.  With experienced skaters you will watch kids drop off one by one, maybe two at a time but in a controlled manner.  My sister and I had not learned this yet and we had already lost control.  I felt her fingers slip through mine as neither of us had the strength to keep us together.  As she went flying through the air, her legs flew up from under her and she landed squarely on her tailbone.  I knew I was in big trouble and had to save myself from certain death. I too let go and went flying. Luckily I landed in a snow drift by the side of the skating rink. My sister never forgave me for letting go.  She would never hold my hand on crack the whip after that day and even to this day at the age of 70 if you ask her about the time Laura let go I guarantee she wouldn’t hesitate to tell you this story of how I let her go and let her down. 

This is how I remember this day.  I laugh at it now.  How trusting our parents were to not kill ourselves.  I can’t imagine now  a parent being around when the kids start playing crack the whip on ice and not stopping them.  Too dangerous they would say.  Someone’s going to get hurt they would say.  What a shame.  My sister survived that day.  Her tailbone survived.  Our relationship survived.  We can laugh at it now.  We were just going too fast to hold on and too fast to let go gracefully.  With that one experience we learned more about physics and centrifugal force than we probably learned in any science course. 

Learning through life’s mistakes, what a concept.