Datebook: Monday, May 28th ~ 2007

Okay, so there is a bit more pressure now Lake Placid is single digits away.

Nine weeks.

9 weeks.

IX weeks.

I have hidden from this fact like a three-year old playing hide-n-seek behind a flag pole. But, there it is, sticking out on both sides.

You would think after nine years I would be used to this. But, I’m not. The odd thing is, Lake Placid always has a bit of dramatic irony. The parents all know what is happening, or about to, but the skaters, or “characters”, don’t. They are there to skate and that is what they do so for the most part. They leave the anxiety and worry at home, or pack it in the parent’s suitcase.

But, parents know how important Lake Placid really is.

Junior Grand Prix assignments are made there, Senior “B” assignments are awarded from placements there, the scouts for Novice leaders are on patrol there. The evaluations form for which section to go out of there.

The skaters though are mostly occupied with just skating…eating pizza at Mike’s with their friends from across the country…and wondering how far the closest “real” shopping is.

Skaters just concern themselves with putting their programs “out there” and maybe hoping that the song from “Fiddler on the Roof” is really a folk song.

“It’s just practice,” we all say. “It doesn’t really count for anything.”

This, of course, is as logical as saying an ice cream sundae is better for you than an ice cream cone because you are adding fruit to your diet with the maraschino cherry.

I could be in panic mode right now but I have started breathing exercises that are supposed to ease the strain and stress.

Anyone can do this. You take a deep breath and blow it out slowly, repeating whatever mantra you want silently in your head. Repeat five times. (Caution: If little black spots appear peripherally you are taking too long to blow out the air or you need to change your chant.)

The good thing is that you can change your mental ovation as needed. At the beginning of the season when no one seemed to have a clue what “Folk” music was acceptable and we almost used a Hawaiian version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” I started mentally using the seven words George Carlin says are not allowed on television.

Once the kids got their Free Dance (which I have not seen) I changed my mental mutterings to “Oh My God, Oh My God”.

Luckily now, with the OD in the process, although this is being “pieced’ together—seemingly like a photo collage, I have upgraded to, “ I could have had a beach house, I could have had a beach house.”

So, with the glaring fact that Lake Placid is now only two calendar flips away, costumes being “conceptualized”, Folk Music with words no one understands, a summer ice bill of $3000.00, I am going to take the Scarlet O’Hara approach.

Deep breath…blow it out, “Cosmos at Nicola’s…Cosmos at Nicola’s.”

Mombo

Datebook: Monday, May 21st ~ 2007

It is sometimes very hard to keep things in perspective.

Last week, the USFSA published the list for Team USA with their various envelope designations, and although it is never noted specifically--the money in those envelopes is by no means substantial—in fact it is probably equivalent to what Bill Gates uses as “pocket change”.

Oddly enough, the amounts given to teams, both dance and pairs, is split between the athletes. So, a single skater in ladies or mens might get a Team C envelope amount that totals 7500.00 by the end of the year, while a dance team on Team C would split the same amount.

Well, some might say, a “team” splits the ice time so it is a bit cheaper.

True. Yet when a team orders costumes, they are buying two. And no one wants to compare the cost of a dance costume with that of a free style costume I hope. When a team gets choreography, it is for two skaters—each partner has different steps—it is not a shadow program, so one could argue it takes twice as long.

When there are competitions, both skaters travel—probably in coach no doubt—but each person buys a ticket and gets a hotel room.

Putting this in perspective is hard.

Over the weekend, the third installment to the Shrek trilogy came out and in a three day period the movie earned $ 122,000,000.00.

Think about it. A cartoon, in stage 3 of the story, has earned the second place gross box office amount of all time—only to fall a few million behind the opening of Spiderman.

This seems incredible to me because as most skating parents, I don’t go to movies that often—I wait for the cheaper arrival of the DVD to be rented at Blockbuster or NetFlix.

But it gives me an idea to dream about.

A new survey advises that 63% of the American population uses the “hope” of a lottery win to take the place of any plan for retirement savings.

I know.

As a skating parent I was surprised that many people actually thought they could retire. I envision pushing my walker down the hallways to my first period class where my students will continue to question me about what it was like to live before there was electricity.

No, I have written off retirement as quickly as I did the hit show “Lost” after I missed three episodes in a row. Both are now foreign concepts. But, I have never given up on the hope of finding a way to subsidize my daughter’s skating expenses.

In school, those in need sponsor fundraisers. They sell candy, cheesecakes, pizzas, candy bars, wrapping paper, and those little “gold” cards that are supposed to get you discounts at some fast food chains and dry-cleaners. We all hate them, but we participate with the same enthusiasm that we mail our taxes on April 15th.

So, my idea, since I discount ever winning the lottery as I don’t buy tickets, is to ask Dreamworks to donate one/hundredth of a percent for the next installment of Shrek IV to Ice-dance.com to be distributed evenly to all the dance teams.

This seems like a feasible idea to me. I mean, in reality, they wouldn’t even miss the money as it is probably like the lint that gathers on the change that is in Bill Gate’s pocket.

My daughter would tell you that this is just a ploy to have some contact, even if only remotely, with Antonio Banderas, who plays the voice of the cat in the movie. That’s just ridiculous, of course. I would simply have to be the contact person because, well, I came up with the idea after all.

If this doesn’t work out, I guess we could all pool our money and start buying Power Ball tickets each week. I think we are 160 strong now.

Think about it. It would pay for costumes at least.

Mombo

Datebook: Monday, May 14th ~ 2007

My life has become a list of rhetorical questions.

You know, things I ask myself that I don’t expect an answer to:

1. Why have I not started drinking more? 2. Why do I need hydrocortisone crème whenever I hear the words “Original Dance”. 3. Is that ringing in my ears or just a reaction to listening to so much “potential” skating music? 4. Could you skate to something that just produced a ringing in your ears? 5. Is it possible to just be so creative this year that you just “mimed” music and skated without sound—perhaps wearing white-face as country of origin—France, as in Marcel Marseau? Is it possible to be driving the car and, just from the overload of it all, simply forget how?

Why am I so stressed you might ask? (Actually that isn’t rhetorical, I want to answer.) My sister’s house burned down (no injuries) and that little magnet that I have on my refrigerator that reads “Barn Burnt Now I Can See the Moon” isn’t all that comforting to someone who walked out of a flaming house with one shoe and bag of McDonald’s toys.

And my daughter moved this weekend to her new studio apartment.

This might have been excited except for three factors. The first was that my daughter and her former roomie are sad because skating training camps have pulled them apart—the distance is too far to travel regularly. The division of property was painful to witness.

My daughter got the all-season decorator tree, her roommate took the Charlie While campaign poster (a different CW but the name and the slogan were awesome). No one could remember who bought the blender or the lamp with the new shade.

Their sobs eventually fell to just minute intervals of full body shuddering.

The second reason the move lacked excitement is that her apartment is the size of a Honda Element, well, minus the engine compartment. And it cost three hundred dollars more a month. It would have been easier to have her sleep in the closet and arrange her clothes and shoes in the “Big Room”. When I was young I had stamp collection and my friends collected coins. My daughter collects Steve Madden, Marc Jacobs, Chloe, and Coach.

The third reason I was not excited about the move and brings this column, as Brian McKnight would say, “Back to One” or “Why am I not drinking more” is that my daughter moved AGAIN and it was not back home.

This is like taking two steps away from the starting block in Candy Land and only confirms that my daughter will probably not be coming home to stay---ever.

She has learned to be independent. She has learned to vacuum in the corners and put trash bags in the bottom of the can so she can get to them easily when she takes out a full bag. She has learned to buy 3 apples because she knows she will eat grapes the other days. She has learned these things and she likes how it feels to have her own schedules and time tables to complete tasks (although she does set her clock 20 minutes fast—why can’t we all just live in “real time”?)

And so, driving home from her “apartment” on Mother’s Day I was pondering the things that my sister lost recently, and the losses that all mothers share when they let go of a child to the call of adulthood and I started getting a bit, well, misty-eyed.

So I turned on the radio hoping to sing out loud to a little Bruce Springsteen but my sound system was set on scan as I had been on my quest for the Holy Grail of music on the ride up.

Then the ringing started in my ears and my arms started itching…and I was worried I would forget how to drive…..

Happy Mother’s Year—the other 364 days.

Mombo

Datebook: Monday, May 7th ~ 2007

“Our doubts are traitors

And make us lose the good we oft might win

By fearing to attempt...”


I know.

A few people groaned that I started with a Shakespearian quote from Measure for Measure but I think this is such a symbolic message from our skaters that we should have it tattooed, or at least make a gross of t-shirts with that as the slogan embellished across the front.

I said “from” our skaters because, well, they are usually the ones who have all the confidence.

I, as a mom, often have doubts. My doubts have nothing to do with ability, but with choices made.

I sometimes think back to that day when I signed my daughter up for group lessons—seventy dollars for eight weeks of lessons. Suppose I had sent her to a music camp to study, oh, I don’t know, the Viola instead. Or maybe to drama school, or clown college, or space camp. What would life be like now?

After elementary school the number of skaters from our original “group” dropped in half. At the end of middle school, there were only a few girls still buying tights and S. P. Terris.

“Don’t worry, after a few months in high school, they fall like flies,” a former skating mom told me.

And so I waited.

But it didn’t happen. In fact, the training picked up, and the travel increased. My daughter would come home at 10:30 on a Friday night instead of staying for a sleepover because she didn’t want to wake her friends for a Saturday 7:30 ice-time.

“What are we doing wrong,” I queried my husband late at night.

In my mind, I thought that regardless of how bizarre our lives had become, it would settle down at high school graduation. Kids go to college. That is the natural order of life.

But not ice skaters. Well, they do, and they don’t.

My daughter made her college choice based on the distance to the ice rink. She made course selections based on getting out of class in time to train at her regular schedule.

This past Saturday she finished her first year of college (I say “of” because she was never really “at” college—she attended classes and bought a sweatshirt). But, all the exams and projects are in.

Most parents now have the joy of having their children home for the summer months— I see all the Mazda 6s and Sebring convertibles in my neighbor’s driveways—marking the return of the fledging students for their sunny months of hibernation.

But not the parents with skating offspring.

So it is natural that we sometimes become worried. Worried that maybe this isn’t the best investment of time and money and focus.

Worried that all of the training hours can be taken down a few pegs or placements by a level four being downgraded or missed.

Worried that Lake Placid this year will become a Rocky Horror Show of misplaced OD selections.

Worried that so much depends on a thin steel blade on a slippery surface.

My daughter keeps it all in perspective, and hence keeps me “couraged” as opposed to “discouraged”.

“This is such an exciting year,” She tells me on the one of our daily cell calls. “We really like our direction this year—we like the focus.”

And so we support them, these skating spirits with hearts on fire who are not afraid to make the attempt at a dream.

We miss them, but we let them go.

Hopefully, however, they never know that we pack Tums, Kleenex, and Vodka drips in our luggage for every skating event.

Mombo