Datebook: Tuesday, July 31st - 2007

Travel Day.

This is the morning I envy all of those who arrived at Lake Placid yesterday. They have a “free” morning to wander to the shops, eat dinner at the “Veranda” and sit in the lobby today as the rest of us arrive, bleary eyed, stiff, and a bit jealous that our skating offspring spent seven of the past seven and a half hour journey sleeping against the side of the locked car door.

In our situation, the parents all arrive at the rink around eight o’clock Tuesday morning to wait for “the signal”.

The signal is when our main coach deems the skaters are now ready to proceed to the competition. We think this means when they have completed the required near perfect run-throughs of the Free Dance and Original Dance, and the required combined 84 patterns of all the Compulsory Dances, but it is soon obvious that this is not the process.

It is a bit like “Ash Wednesday” in that they seemingly get a blessing and are allowed to “go forth”, and unlike it in that it is, of course, on Tuesday and the imprint on the forehead is merely figurative.

As parents we continue to stand around with our cars filled with gas, our empty Dunkin Donuts coffee cups, and our not-so-covert looks at our watches.

The coach is unmoved by our maneuvering and posturing.

In fact, he further prolongs the process by not staying with one team for a lesson but moving through them all per dance, per pattern, and then coming back, time-after-time.

A ground movement usually starts with the parents around 9:00. They practice strategy with each other:

“I’d really like to get going soon.”

“It would be nice to get in before night”

“I’d like to get to the grocery store after we unpack.”

Eventually, one parent will gather the required bravado to approach the coach on an ice cut.

“What time do you think we’ll be able to leave?”

We all hold our breath as the coach looks at us over the top of his glasses and at first, we aren’t sure he will answer. After about ninety seconds, he responds.

“I don’t know. I’ll keep you informed.”

On the next ice cut I ask my daughter if he has given her any indication of when they can leave.

“He hasn’t really said. He wants us to be organized.”

Organized? What does that mean in the skating world? I’m sure the twenty odd parents standing around would gladly go to his house and help him organize anything he wanted. I could take his kitchen silver-wear drawer, or junk drawer, and organize and discard unwanted plastic ties and old pens. Another parent could work on the tool shed while another straightened the coat closet—we could have umbrellas lined up by color and size at a moments notice.

“Well, can you hurry up and do that?”

My daughter just looks at me as she drinks from her sport top Deer Park water bottle.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I beseech her; “I don’t know what that means. Do you all need to line up together, the twenty of you, stroke around on the same foot? Make sure the hems are straight on all of your t-shirts? Whatever it is, it needs to happen.”

I see the other parents have had similar conversations with their kids and that we have all been deemed “Retarded”—a word I don’t allow in my own house as it is demeaning, but one I have little control over in the ice house.

While I am looking for gum in my purse ten minutes later, the skaters leave the ice, and as surely as I would miss that flash in the Northern Lights, I have missed the second they all obtained “organization”.

I would query further but I am third out the door, as I can easily slip past all of those carrying skating bags, as we all jockey for positions from the driveway.

I glance at the Sun Chips bag, the cooler, the morning newspaper, and a tote bag that has slipped sideways across the back seat. I motion for my daughter to hurry in case my car chaos voids her skating organization, whatever that is.

As I feel the turbo kick in once we hit the interstate, I feel a similar charge shoot through me although my daughter is by now asleep.

We’re going to Placid!

Mombo