Datebook: March 31st ~ 2008

This is the time of year when we find out that many teams are not staying together for one reason or another—some move on to new partnerships, some move on to college, and some just move back home or to a new home. As T.S. Eliot advised in his classic poem, “April is the cruelest month of all….”

Years ago, I used to think that skating partnerships were like marriages. I now know that isn’t really true. I know this because with a nineteen year old daughter, and an eighteen year-old son, the drama involved in romantic relationships is much more intense than anything we can imagine in our skating world of matching costumes and side by side twizzles. When you welcome someone into your home as a “dating” member of the family there is an exchange of trust that is often handed back in a not so neatly wrapped package when the relationships don’t work out.

It’s not like the movies. Let’s face it, if Richard Gere had just gone to the airport and headed home in first class at the end of Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts may not be the star she is today and we would not have the concept of modern knights on white horse rescues. If Billy Crystal had not agreed with Meg Ryan that good friends can fall in love at the end of When Harry Met Sally we would all be a little bit more skeptical of that ‘love conquers all’ adage.

Both my son and my daughter would be able to relate, in great detail using numerous adjectives, two seemingly horrific Prom stories of which I had a very small, but I admit, pivotal role. I am sure that MTV is currently making a series spin off of their minor hit show “Your Mama Don’t Dance, titled “Your Mama Ruined Your Dance” and I will one day be sitting on some white leather armless couch before a booing studio audience who has watched video highlights of both Prom-inent disasters. There will probably even be subtitles for world-wide broadcast.

No, the end of a skating relationship is not as dramatic as a total eclipse of the heart.

But it is painful.

Even if it is mutual and everyone is following the yellow brick road to a golden future. This is probably because skating partnerships often create a bond between two families that becomes, well, like a bigger family.

There are no social mores for the dissolution of a skating partnership.

There are no 10 or 12 step programs to get through it.

There are no recognizable stages of dealing with the void.

I would imagine however, that the first stage might be one of Euphoria. This might occur at the end of the first month when you looked at your check book and then got a new calculator with a paper print out to try to figure out how you have two thousand dollars left over after you have overpaid all your bills.

The second would probably be one of “Haunting Lyrics of the Mind”. This might be prompted by not having to select music for the coming year, of hearing hundreds of possibilities in supermarkets and boutiques with nowhere to channel each coveted selection.

The third stage would certainly be called “Ticketless Master”. This would center around future ice shows that you would not have to attend because your child would not be skating. This would be an area of bittersweet association. You would revel in not being forced to buy an overpriced ticket to watch your child perform while you secretly missed going to the event by pretending you had better plans watching a rerun of “Monk” on television.

The last stage is a little Robert Frost-ish in that a path diverts in the woods of life.

You must choose the way at the fork in the road. One way leads to probable Pilates, Wool Spinning, or learning the various varieties on the Cosmo Bar of Fame. The other has your face pressed against a puck-marked ice rink where you are sponsoring some 8 year-old to go back and do a few more patterns of the Hickory Hoedown.

A sobering thought.

One destined for a Hallmark Movie channel premier. (I would love for Patricia Heaton or Reba McEntire to play my character!)

Anyway, with all this in mind, I think you can understand that if my daughter ever decides to stop skating, even for a season, I am just going to pretend she didn’t. Without a plan in place to help people adjust to the “ loss” of a skating family partnership, without a financial planner to help divert all of the extra coin in the purse, without a purposeful means to pursue a love of skating that ABC alone cannot fulfill, l envision a life tossed into chaos.

It would be a little too much Alice down the rabbit hole for me to handle I’m afraid.

So if my daughter ever stops skating, say to do a spot on Maury Povitch on a little thing they call “My Mom Is Way Too Intense” ,I’m just going to pretend she is didn’t stop skating. I’d still pick out music, get costume color swatches, and go to Lake Placid. Daphne would have to help by keeping her web-site up and making it a little bit like “50 First Dates”.

Oh, and I’d still write. I have way too much to say for my daughter to get off that easy.

Mombo

Datebook: March 24, 2008

I have discovered there are two ways to be inducted into the Total Access Ice-Dance Club.

1. You have to think your mother was put on earth to embarrass you and/or always interfere with your life.

2. You have to be able to recognize all the nuances of greatness reflected in the form of Charlie White.

In my daughter’s case, the two merge into one.

In her defense, I did tell her at Nationals that I would not “ruin her life” by “continually holding her up to ridicule by my constant chit-chat about all things Charlie White,” but I think we all know that deals brokered at Nationals are null and void when the plane lands at the home airport. As the song goes, “it’s a new dawn and a new day.”

And truthfully, if I had ever really intended to embarrass my daughter and her former roommate I would have mentioned their “Charlie White” pins and t-shirts that they wore on “Hair Tuesdays,” but I am not that kind of mother.

So, while the rest of the world followed the dribbling basketball, those of us attracted to sequins and tights waited anxiously for whatever tidbits ESPN offered us each night from Worlds. In the annual ritual of pizza, salad, and free dance, my daughter and friends watched breathlessly as the clock ticked to the anointed minutes dedicated to Ice Dancing.

With it came the montage of skating highlights that featured Charlie and Meryl performing at what looked like eight years of age. This, of course, tugs at a mother’s heart and launches a renewed conversation by the younger set of the “10 things to love about Charlie White.”

I may have things out of order, but as I recall, the main items on the list were:

* his twizzles: they are faster and cleaner than any other in the world.

* his smile: it is so genuine that he could never utter a bad pick-up line, or ridicule his partner if she missed a step or two in an early morning practice. He would probably even offer an encouraging comment about a bad hair day like, “I think My Little Pony was so inspirational for young girls.”

* his dedication: he obviously works hard on his craft and stays focused. He probably leaves Meryl little notes at the end or beginning of each day that say, “Let’s do four run-throughs and then take a few minutes to privately meditate on our performances and visualize our mistakes with corrections.”

I have to admit, the conversations trailed off a bit when the girls saw me taking notes.

“Mom, you aren’t going to write about this! You promised! Because of you, I can never talk to Charlie White, and I can hardly look him in the eye without feeling the need to apologize.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure he is used to girls swooning when he walks by.”

“We aren’t swooning, exactly, we just think he’s a good skater. It is embarrassing when you write about him. I know he thinks it’s weird.”

“I am the voice of the people. Do you mean he reads Mombo? I can’t believe…”

“Mom, I’m sure he gets up early on Mondays and keeps hitting the refresh button until the new one is posted. No, silly, but I’m sure people tell him about it. Evan would never be able to pass up an opportunity like that.”

“You mean Evan reads Mombo?”

“Stop, you’re such a freak.”

(They really need to teach the nuances of sarcasm in school. The kids are almost mastering it, but then they lose the dénouement of the moment.)

“I’m just wrapping up what you girls are always saying. Charlie is a role model for skating and the youth of today. He is the opposite of Dante’s levels of Hell, for he possesses the seven layers of goodness.”

Four mouths drop open a little at this. (Two have brownie crumbs on the lower lip). I sigh because I know I start to lose them when I bring in literary allusions.

“You know, for a fund raiser, we could make those little plastic bracelets that so many groups have put out -- blue WWCWD bracelets -- to remind all skaters to twizzle hearty and keep on pushing through the pain.


My daughter collapses onto the ottoman, holding her head in her hands. (I seriously worry that marketing is not the right major for her if she fails to see the vision and likelihood of success for this project.)

“Mom, I’m begging you. I’m sure Charlie would beg you -- if he would ever talk to any of us ever again -- in fact, I’m pretty sure he would give anything not to ever be mentioned on a bracelet of any kind.”

“Really? Do you think he would autograph the purple and pink backpack they gave them at Worlds and send it to you to store my old Mombo columns in?”

“Am I supposed to be saving those?”

“How else will you remember all the things I say?”

“Do you think I forget?”

“Sweetheart, What Would Charlie White Do?”

“I don’t know, but it probably involves a few restraining orders.”

Well, maybe she is getting better at sarcasm.

Mombo

Datebook: Monday, March 19th ~ 2008

We are in the eye of the storm that is called March Madness in the major part of the Free World.

Oh yes, a huge part of the population associates this all with basketball and young college boys wearing long shorts, sporting the newest 500 dollar sneakers, and crowds with painted faces.

Most homes even have a few dollars down somewhere on the brackets.

But in Figure Skating, we have our own “madness” going on.

It kicks off with a little thing we call “Worlds”.

And some of us even create our own little brackets of who we hope will eventually come out in medal position after the CD, or after the short--to the final brackets after the FD or long programs.

Unlike basketball however, at the end of the event, our players don’t really get downtime—in reality, the last zamboni on the ice at Worlds is really just the blowing of the proverbial whistle that the start of the new season has commenced.

New patterns to practice; new costumes to contemplate; new music to mull over.

This is the true March Madness.

And I have to admit it—I am a March Madness music program junkie.

Seriously, I need to be in a 12-step program—but then I’d try to set that to music and I’d be off again. I become obsessed with listening to music and imagining skaters (sadly, not just my team) performing to it.

Most of my quality March listening time is spent in the car, where I can set my Audiovox to scan every 4 seconds. I have bypassed bemused and horrified motorists in the passing lane who are momentarily stunned by my perfect shoulder set and pantomimed hand holds as I glide in my heated-leather Volvo seat to the rise and fall in the musical score blaring out of my quad speakers.

And so that I don’t forget, I write song titles and artist’s names on scraps of paper from my glove box or center console and then stuff them in my purse for later perusal.

Sometimes this doesn’t work out the way I planned.

“Mom,” my daughter asks after she has blown her nose in a tissue from my purse, “Why does this say ‘Clare and Chase- Pearl Jam- Nothing as it Seems’?

“What?” I say trying to diffuse what I know is coming, “Why are you looking at your tissue after you use it—who does that?”

“Everyone does it, but I’m pretty sure they don’t plan music for other teams without them even knowing about it.”

She continues digging through my Coach bag (last year’s model) and pulls out a bank deposit slip with, ‘Todd and Jane--Nora Jones—Come Away with Me’.

“Mom….”

She pulls out a gum wrapper with ‘ Pilar and John—Bon Jovi—This Ain’t a Love Song.”

“Oh, come on,” I implore her, “that is so perfect after last year’s free dance.

She continues digging and finds a Safeway coupon with ‘Milli Vanilli—Blame it On the Rain’ scratched in eyebrow pencil.

“Mom,” she starts, but I put my hand up because my cell phone is ringing with the tune “Wake Up Call” by Maroon Five.

She shakes her head and looks out the window and this gives me time to slip a Wendy’s napkin with a Rascal Flatt song I have earmarked for Nick and Charlotte into the car door slot.

I try to prolong the call but eventually the recorded life insurance plan offered by my credit card company plays out and I have to hang up.

“Do you have any other great ditties hidden away anywhere?”

I sigh and reach up in the visor for the Dunkin Donuts lid, where I have written “Billie Jean by Michael Jackson.”

She takes a long time to read twenty six letters.

“And who where you bequeathing this little gem to?”

“Kim and Brent.”

She closes her eyes for a moment and then puts her hand to her forehead.

“Oh, come on—can’t you just see them—one rhinestoned glove each—his hair slicked back, her all Billie-Jeanish in something blue and black.”

She shakes her head.

“Mom, you’ve got to get a hobby. You could try quilting, or stain glass—anything, really—maybe I could just make you a new CD with all these songs on it, or change your ring tone—please, at least let me change your ring tone.”

I smile at her passively as I reach for my sunglasses, closing the case before she spies the lens cloth with “Neil Diamond—Brother Loves Traveling Salvation Show” written in Sharpie pink.

She’s not ready for Exhibition ideas yet.

Mombo

Datebook: Monday, March 10th ~ 2008

So, odd things happen when worlds collide.

This, of course, means the skating world and the “other” world.

My daughter was on vacation last week in California. This was the first time she has been on a plane in five years that did not require her to pack her skates and have her carry-on consist of four competition dresses that are always scrutinized at customs as if we are potential diamond smugglers.

Them: “What are these costumes used for again?”

Me: “She is an ice dancer, she wears these for competitions.”

Them: “It just seems odd…there is not much fabric…and the ice is so very cold.

Why do you need all these doo-dads—there are more of them than
fabric?”

Me: “It just helps accentuate the dance…they’re just crystals really…
merely ornamental.”

Them: “And yet you hold them so tightly...as if they are worth thousands
of dollars.”

So my daughter got to travel very light this trip; no skates and no mom, just a VISA--platinum edition. By Tuesday, I was beginning to realize how all of those people must feel who get postcards from their traveling garden gnome—I was getting phone calls about all the adventures of my little plastic pledge card.

“Mom, guess where I am?”

“You’re sitting at the beach watching big waves?”

“No! I’m sitting in a restaurant in the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

"That’s nice,” I reply as I sip my can of Campbell’s Creamy Tomato Soup To Go.

“No, it’s awesome. I’m just killing time until my 5:00 appointment at LA Ink. They have a two hundred dollar minimum there, does that sound right?”

She asks me this not because I am a tattoo expert but because she is aware that her perception of costs has been skewed or warped a bit, like a DVD that has been left in the sun on the dashboard, because of skating.

In her skating world it is normal to pay a few thousand dollars for a dress she might only wear four or five times—so does it not make sense to buy jeans that ring up at 250.00 when you can wear them forever.

In her skating world it is normal to pay 1200.00 for a pair of boots and blades that might hold up for six to eight months—so why is it not practical to buy a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps and Tory Burch sandals that will last several seasons.

In her skating world it is normal to pay some coaches two dollars a minute for their time (even when the first 10 minutes of a lesson is just warming up—which means literally I handing over a twenty dollar bill to have them say “Go stroke.”) so is it not reasonable that a tattoo artist can charge even more for their artistic needle carving.

I hesitate before answering her.

I know she is only getting a small, miniscule piece of art that is symbolic and very special to her. It probably would not take more than fifteen minutes to complete—the only other option is to allow them to fill up the minimum price with vines, or flowers, or angel wings—do I dare think she would get a little token “mom” engraved on the top of her foot?

I shake my head and bring myself back to reality.

“It’s okay sweetheart. It’s like when you have a lesson and you aren’t feeling great that day. You have to pay for the lesson if you cancel anyway so maybe you get a little bit out of it even if you’re not feeling prime.”

“Oh, that makes sense.”

I smile because, unfortunately, for many of us, it does.

My daughter is continuing with her plans for the week “…and tomorrow we’re going to Laguna Beach and on Thursday we’re going back to Rodeo Drive.”

I sit my soup can down on the counter so I can savor the creamy smoothness later, the highlight of my day, and realize even if I never get to see her adventures via her Facebook photos, I’ll still have memories-- courtesy of my Chase credit card receipts.

Mombo

Datebook: Monday, March 3rd ~ 2008

This is the time of year that everyone spends a few hundred dollars on CDs and music downloads trying to find the right song to take to the ice for the coming competitive year.

This is also a tentative period because often you have heard great songs the year before and wonder how long you must wait before you can “borrow” it. The answer is, of course, once it is used you can never truly borrow it because it will always be know as “Naomi and Peter’s” or “Charlie and Meryl’s”. And just like plagiarism in the literary world, one might think you could change it up just a bit, add 30 seconds from a companion song here, a different 30 seconds of the song there, and it you might be able to call it your own.

Wrong.

There will always be program police who will identify is as belonging to prior skaters in the past.

My daughter is one of them. She can hear five notes and announce some obscure (to me) skaters from 10 years ago who skated to that music at an exhibition in Prague. Additionally, she is a name linguist—as in she knows how to pronounce every name from any country with the correct accent on any and all syllables.

This is not my forte. But she is such a perfectionist about this that, just to annoy her, I will sometimes say things like “Eye-Gor” just so she can correct me as if she is a Russian IV language professor. And, I admit, it should be easy to remember these things but I can’t—maybe I cloud my brain with too many other superfluous things like the 480 different breeds of dogs in the world and the 190 different Cosmopolitan drink flavors at the Manor Inn Tavern. Whatever the reason, I concede, it shouldn’t be too hard to remember if you pronounce the “e”, or not, at the end of “Pasquale” but I tend to switch it up, often in the same sentence.

So finding music is always a long journey for those of us who can join in the hunt and are not just assigned a ballad by our coaches. What typically happens, in our camp, is that we come up with five songs. Songs the skaters like, songs the parents like, and songs the coaches like—which typically has one or two selections by Frank Sinatra (per said coaches). So your selection CD can range from Motley Crew to Bryan Adams to Michael Buble.

You then have to listen to the CD at the rink to see how it “plays on the ice”. You are in a sense calling “Dibs” on these songs as they are on your potential selection repertoire heard by all the other skaters on the ice that day.

What happens next is that the coaches make the final selection based on a number of factors that I have yet to process: “The second song is best because there are more words with the letter “A” in them so they have a stronger beat”. “The title has 46 letters in it and if you multiply that times the number of judges on the panel and then carry the 5 and finally you have the distance from Cleveland to Pittsburgh.”

The final songs are never unanimously accepted in our camp—someone is left pining over a song not skated to—hence know forever as “the runner-up song”.

To complicate things, our last two runner-up songs have been selected by a team in one of our triad of training rinks each of the past two years. A good team, a close friends team.

“Well,” I say to my daughter who is a bit conflicted by this, “you just made their job easier for them and saved them some time and money—maybe they’ll take you out for dinner or something, or give you a shout-out in the program.”

“Well, I know you can’t call dibs on a song, but it seems a bit unethical almost—I’m not sure what, but it seems a bit of something.”

I look at her and realize that she has been sheltered from many things in life, like the one day shoe sale at Nordstrom’s where it is every woman for herself, and ten years ago fighting the crowds at Toys-R-Us on Black Friday to get the last two Power Ranger Kicking Action Figures—I still walk with a limp on cold rainy days.

“Sweetheart, you’ve been driving for three years—what happens when there is only one parking space left at Trader Joe’s on a busy Saturday afternoon”

“That’s different—those are strangers, not good friends”.

“Okay,” I acknowledge, “But remember what Grandmom Freberger always said, which I admit I have semi-forgotten verbatim, but it was something about those who covet what others have or want are really just exhibiting a form of flattery.”

My daughter’s mouth twitches a bit because she wants to correct me but she senses this is a learning moment. So she merely nods and says, “I suppose.”

“And”, I continue, “There are few factors the other team hasn’t considered.”

My daughter looks at me with trepidation.

“There were reasons you didn’t settle on the other two songs—major reasons that they probably haven’t thought about in their camp.”

She nods.

“So, that makes it a bit more like what Grandma King used to say—there will be a hex in both their houses.”

“Mom, that’s from Romeo and Juliet.”

I am rendered speechless and a bit teary-eyed for a moment by her memory of 9th grade English.

“So, I paraphrased a bit. It was the same message—nothing good can follow a bad start.”

She rolls her eyes finally so I know she is over the whole thing.

“Besides”, I venture on, “You can have fun with this and start them off for next year by raving about the musicality of “Muskrat Love” or one of the songs by Hanson.

She shakes her head and goes back to reading her book which I assume is the “Pronunciation of Azerbijanian names—the 300 series”.

Mombo