“And now our A, B, and C skaters are here to welcome you to India!”
The first girl pushes back the red curtain, and we all skate on, single file. The air of the rink is a shock of cold water as it hits our bare arms. I glide easily across the ice to my spot, positioning myself between Kyra and Sami. I know where I’m supposed to be. I was born to be standing in this spot, waiting for our music to start.
When we’ve all arranged ourselves in a pyramid shape across the ice, Kyra at the tip, Sam counts down, “3, 2, 1,” and we all bend at once, one leg drawn out in front of us, arms stretched to reach our toes. It’s an awkward position, our muscles bent at angles they usually aren’t bent, but one we’ve grown used to after weeks of rehearsal.
There is no sound save for the breathing of the skaters around me, the soft whisper of blades against ice. I can almost hear the held breath of the audience. We stand, bent like trees in a windstorm, all of us wrapped in coloured scarves for saris. We look like a flock of nesting tropical parrots; although if we are tropical parrots, we are sorely lost.
I felt about as lost as a tropical parrot in an ice rink on my first day of skating. I stepped onto the ice in my $50 Canadian Tire figure skates, not completely sure that I remembered how to skate at all. I stood for a moment, marvelling at the ease with which every other girl on the ice moved. I started forward, catching my pick as I pushed, making an ugly scraping sound. I felt a heightened awareness at how tall I was, how large and gangly and awkward I was compared to these tiny little wisps of girls, sailing through the air like they were made of silk. Not one of them could be over thirteen years old, and they were already miles away from what I could do. I made a few clumsy circuits around the ice, acutely aware of the skaters watching me, wondering who I was and why I was so big.
The music starts now. We rise slowly from our bent position, our hands clapping over our heads. This is my favourite part of the routine, a part where carefully choreographed dance moves fit perfectly in time to the music. We shake our hands and shake our hips and we’re grinning because we know we’ve got the routine down, and we’ve practiced for weeks, and now…it’s showtime.
I’ve been skating for eight months now, but this next part of the routine still terrifies me because I’m afraid it highlights the difference between me and all the “veteran” skaters: we travel in lines to the circles on the ends of the ice, where we skate in a pattern, switching from backwards to forwards. I know I’m not as fast as the other girls, so I’ll have to push myself, strain to blend in. Fake it till you make it has been my mantra for the past eight months.
Blending into the skating scene was important from the start. From listening to conversations in the change room and watching the other girls, I learned things, like how every skater needs at least one pair of skating tights, if not several; every girl owns a pair of lululemon shorts and at least one Bench sweater; and you need a good pair of skates to be able to do real spins and jumps. This good pair of skates, however, turned out to be many times more expensive than my Canadian Tire pair, and they took a lot of breaking-in and bloody blisters before they started helping at anything.
Something unfortunate I learned, about a month in, was that if you hadn’t passed Level Five, you were required to wear a helmet on the ice. As I already stuck out like a very tall, very unskilled thumb, this wasn’t something I was happy about. Naturally, I was the only girl on the ice who had to wear a helmet, and I figured my dignity had pretty much run screaming from the ice forever at this point. But there comes a time (sometimes, multiple times) in your life where you just have to suck it up, swallow your pride, and work that helmet. Because what I knew already, after only a month, was that skating was worth that small price. And three months later, when I got my Level Five, the other girls surprised me with a signed card and decorated cupcakes, and if I didn’t know it before, I knew now that I’d found a second home at the rink.
I follow Sami down the ice as we head into our formation. I’m keeping up so far, but I can’t stop, can’t slow down; adrenaline is sparks in my muscles, making every move electric. I fit into the formation and we go around the circle, and when I have to switch from backwards to forwards, I do it as quickly as I can. I haven’t lost my place. I’m right where I need to be.
We move into the pinwheel. Pinwheels are a standard in ice shows – there’s one in virtually every routine, from the hockey-helmeted PreCanskaters to the A-levels – but they’re always crowd-pleasers, always eliciting oohs and ahhs from our audience. They are also very easy to screw up; one skater doesn’t move fast enough, the skater on the end wobbles in their Y-scale, and suddenly the whole thing is a mess. But we pull it off. I look down the line as we go around, and we look straight, strong.
The icy air is delicious as it freezes in my lungs. I used to get cold on the ice. Now it’s as if the artificially cooled rink temperature is perfectly suited to my body; or, rather, as if my body was created to live in this climate.
At first, my body resisted. I would get numb fingers and ears, shivering in a sweater and tiny shorts. From the very start, my elbows and knees became permanently mottled with purple-red bruises; I got used to having constantly throbbing joints after smashing into the unforgiving ice over and over, often in the same spots in the same night. The bruises, the falls hadn’t let up yet, nor would they ever; I would continue to get intimately acquainted with the ice, up close and personal. But the difference now was that I embraced it. You had to either accept falls as part of the process, or each one would hit harder than the last.
The fear of falling was something I had to overcome. Fear of falling can actually make it harder to do a lot of things; you aren’t going to jump your highest if your body is tensed up from fear. You have to completely let go of yourself, have to skate with complete abandon and take leaps of faith and throw yourself at the ice and dare it to defy you. A lot of times, it does. But the more you try, the more you’ll win.
We’re all in a line now, all of us girls, with our arms on each others’ shoulders. We go down the ice in a kick line, trying not to catch our picks on the ice, or on the ankles of the girls on either side of us. In this part of the routine, this group of skaters is like a choir; we all need to be in tune, to feel the music, to keep time with each other. We’ve all struggled with it – figure skating is a primarily solitary sport, so we don’t get practice with teamwork.
The last part of the routine will be a true test of just how connected we really are. We link hands and skate around the centre circle, and once we’ve gone once around, every second girl lifts her leg, hip-height, into a spiral. The rest of us have to keep the spiral girls steady as they balance like flamingos. The audience is eating it up; this move is a show-stopper. We haven’t had anyone get their eye taken out by a blade yet, but we still all hold our breath until all the spirals come down.
As the music wraps up, we curl into a tighter and tighter circle. We stop in place and clap along to the music till it ends, and we bend into our starting position, arms drawn in front, our heads down. For one moment that’s as short and long as forever, nobody moves and nobody speaks.
Then comes the applause.
It starts off slow and then crescendos into something thunderous and booming. We stand and bow, and, grabbing the hands of the girls on either side, we skate off the ice, letting the applause wash over us like waves. Our bodies are buzzing, still hyped up on adrenaline, but now calm starts to set in, and we all hug as we come off the ice, laughing in our relief. Our arms are wrapped around each other, shivering in our sari-scarves, and the only word I can think of to describe how we all are, right now, gasping in frozen air, a gaggle of delirious figure skaters, is alive.
The first girl pushes back the red curtain, and we all skate on, single file. The air of the rink is a shock of cold water as it hits our bare arms. I glide easily across the ice to my spot, positioning myself between Kyra and Sami. I know where I’m supposed to be. I was born to be standing in this spot, waiting for our music to start.
When we’ve all arranged ourselves in a pyramid shape across the ice, Kyra at the tip, Sam counts down, “3, 2, 1,” and we all bend at once, one leg drawn out in front of us, arms stretched to reach our toes. It’s an awkward position, our muscles bent at angles they usually aren’t bent, but one we’ve grown used to after weeks of rehearsal.
There is no sound save for the breathing of the skaters around me, the soft whisper of blades against ice. I can almost hear the held breath of the audience. We stand, bent like trees in a windstorm, all of us wrapped in coloured scarves for saris. We look like a flock of nesting tropical parrots; although if we are tropical parrots, we are sorely lost.
I felt about as lost as a tropical parrot in an ice rink on my first day of skating. I stepped onto the ice in my $50 Canadian Tire figure skates, not completely sure that I remembered how to skate at all. I stood for a moment, marvelling at the ease with which every other girl on the ice moved. I started forward, catching my pick as I pushed, making an ugly scraping sound. I felt a heightened awareness at how tall I was, how large and gangly and awkward I was compared to these tiny little wisps of girls, sailing through the air like they were made of silk. Not one of them could be over thirteen years old, and they were already miles away from what I could do. I made a few clumsy circuits around the ice, acutely aware of the skaters watching me, wondering who I was and why I was so big.
The music starts now. We rise slowly from our bent position, our hands clapping over our heads. This is my favourite part of the routine, a part where carefully choreographed dance moves fit perfectly in time to the music. We shake our hands and shake our hips and we’re grinning because we know we’ve got the routine down, and we’ve practiced for weeks, and now…it’s showtime.
I’ve been skating for eight months now, but this next part of the routine still terrifies me because I’m afraid it highlights the difference between me and all the “veteran” skaters: we travel in lines to the circles on the ends of the ice, where we skate in a pattern, switching from backwards to forwards. I know I’m not as fast as the other girls, so I’ll have to push myself, strain to blend in. Fake it till you make it has been my mantra for the past eight months.
Blending into the skating scene was important from the start. From listening to conversations in the change room and watching the other girls, I learned things, like how every skater needs at least one pair of skating tights, if not several; every girl owns a pair of lululemon shorts and at least one Bench sweater; and you need a good pair of skates to be able to do real spins and jumps. This good pair of skates, however, turned out to be many times more expensive than my Canadian Tire pair, and they took a lot of breaking-in and bloody blisters before they started helping at anything.
Something unfortunate I learned, about a month in, was that if you hadn’t passed Level Five, you were required to wear a helmet on the ice. As I already stuck out like a very tall, very unskilled thumb, this wasn’t something I was happy about. Naturally, I was the only girl on the ice who had to wear a helmet, and I figured my dignity had pretty much run screaming from the ice forever at this point. But there comes a time (sometimes, multiple times) in your life where you just have to suck it up, swallow your pride, and work that helmet. Because what I knew already, after only a month, was that skating was worth that small price. And three months later, when I got my Level Five, the other girls surprised me with a signed card and decorated cupcakes, and if I didn’t know it before, I knew now that I’d found a second home at the rink.
I follow Sami down the ice as we head into our formation. I’m keeping up so far, but I can’t stop, can’t slow down; adrenaline is sparks in my muscles, making every move electric. I fit into the formation and we go around the circle, and when I have to switch from backwards to forwards, I do it as quickly as I can. I haven’t lost my place. I’m right where I need to be.
We move into the pinwheel. Pinwheels are a standard in ice shows – there’s one in virtually every routine, from the hockey-helmeted PreCanskaters to the A-levels – but they’re always crowd-pleasers, always eliciting oohs and ahhs from our audience. They are also very easy to screw up; one skater doesn’t move fast enough, the skater on the end wobbles in their Y-scale, and suddenly the whole thing is a mess. But we pull it off. I look down the line as we go around, and we look straight, strong.
The icy air is delicious as it freezes in my lungs. I used to get cold on the ice. Now it’s as if the artificially cooled rink temperature is perfectly suited to my body; or, rather, as if my body was created to live in this climate.
At first, my body resisted. I would get numb fingers and ears, shivering in a sweater and tiny shorts. From the very start, my elbows and knees became permanently mottled with purple-red bruises; I got used to having constantly throbbing joints after smashing into the unforgiving ice over and over, often in the same spots in the same night. The bruises, the falls hadn’t let up yet, nor would they ever; I would continue to get intimately acquainted with the ice, up close and personal. But the difference now was that I embraced it. You had to either accept falls as part of the process, or each one would hit harder than the last.
The fear of falling was something I had to overcome. Fear of falling can actually make it harder to do a lot of things; you aren’t going to jump your highest if your body is tensed up from fear. You have to completely let go of yourself, have to skate with complete abandon and take leaps of faith and throw yourself at the ice and dare it to defy you. A lot of times, it does. But the more you try, the more you’ll win.
We’re all in a line now, all of us girls, with our arms on each others’ shoulders. We go down the ice in a kick line, trying not to catch our picks on the ice, or on the ankles of the girls on either side of us. In this part of the routine, this group of skaters is like a choir; we all need to be in tune, to feel the music, to keep time with each other. We’ve all struggled with it – figure skating is a primarily solitary sport, so we don’t get practice with teamwork.
The last part of the routine will be a true test of just how connected we really are. We link hands and skate around the centre circle, and once we’ve gone once around, every second girl lifts her leg, hip-height, into a spiral. The rest of us have to keep the spiral girls steady as they balance like flamingos. The audience is eating it up; this move is a show-stopper. We haven’t had anyone get their eye taken out by a blade yet, but we still all hold our breath until all the spirals come down.
As the music wraps up, we curl into a tighter and tighter circle. We stop in place and clap along to the music till it ends, and we bend into our starting position, arms drawn in front, our heads down. For one moment that’s as short and long as forever, nobody moves and nobody speaks.
Then comes the applause.
It starts off slow and then crescendos into something thunderous and booming. We stand and bow, and, grabbing the hands of the girls on either side, we skate off the ice, letting the applause wash over us like waves. Our bodies are buzzing, still hyped up on adrenaline, but now calm starts to set in, and we all hug as we come off the ice, laughing in our relief. Our arms are wrapped around each other, shivering in our sari-scarves, and the only word I can think of to describe how we all are, right now, gasping in frozen air, a gaggle of delirious figure skaters, is alive.
Addie B. 
TheGoodTwin
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