Datebook: Wednesday, August 9th

So the problem to being back to normal is-- there is no ‘normal”.

Especially in skating.

While 90% of the skating world takes a much needed vacation, we are still in training due to another competition that is fast approaching.

And I say “we” in the ice-skating accepted plural. “We” means of course that my daughter skates, works-out, talks to the coaches, makes changes-- while I write checks, ask if she needs water, and hold my breath. (At Lake Placid I discovered that it is possible to not breathe for 2:37 seconds with no real harmful results other than the typical vertigo and nausea that is associated with any ice dancing event).

Actually, I don’t even get to ask about the water part anymore. This is because 61 days ago my daughter left for college.

This is how I think of it anyway.

My daughter found a great partner four years ago. The training commute for us was 150 miles round trip, and $11.00 in tolls each day. (Don’t try to figure that out, my husband has already computed this in Excel). Typically she slept on the drive up after school, and did her homework and talked to me on the way home. And although she got her license I didn’t want her defying the laws of fate by driving on the interstate and being flung upside down and suspended over the ice at 20mph all in the same day so I continued to act as chauffeur.

Last year she told the guidance counselor she only wanted to look at colleges that were within a ten mile radius of her training rink.

I got a call, of course. It seems this is not the best way to pick a college. Picking a college because of a sport is probably the deciding factor for many students, but, that is typically because the sport is offered at offered at that college. Maybe even with a scholarship.
No scholarships for skating.

My daughter could have told them she shot marbles, perfected blow-darting, or choreographed ribbon dancing and received more respect and interest.

But she was accepted at all five colleges within the area and we completed the required educational comparisons to make the logical and rational selection.

We drove to each campus with a stopwatch, analyzed traffic patterns and traffic flow, and evaluated class schedules to see which interfered the least with her skating.

Voila!

Then, we realized she could not live on campus.

She goes to bed by 10 and gets up by 6—the basic anti-freshman schedule. Also, the dressers and closets in dorms wouldn’t even hold her American Girl doll wardrobe when she was 10, let alone her skating gear and costumes now.

It was cheaper and more practical to rent an apartment with another skater.

Yes. You see where this is going.

Since summer training is usually more intense she moved in June to be at the rink to train now, and to be settled for the start of college in three weeks.

So I tell anyone who asks that she moved for college. This is not a lie and does not incite the whole karma thing.

I am really not that sad about the whole thing.

I have created a small shrine for her at my desk which includes a note she wrote to me when she was six (when I was “the best mommy in the world”), several photographs, a hair clipping, and a constantly running compilation video of her life that, admittedly, would probably make Donald Rumsfeld cry.

Ice skating mothers are made of tougher stuff.

So now I see her twice a week. Once for laundry. (It seems clothes don’t come out folded and smelling fresh in those apartment laundry rooms). And once for dinner. She calls me every night when she is in for the day, but this is not always comforting. Before Placid a call was highlighted with, “We saw a mouse run under the stove so we turned on the oven.”

Anyway, we are getting back to normal.

Mombo #9