The best way to skate

This morning I skipped the first few hours back at work after a two week break ... to skate with disabled kids.

This is a grant-funded program in the San Mateo schools. Every Thursday in January, several classes of disabled kids come to the San Mateo ice rink and are escorted around by women hockey players. It's a coincidence that we are all women hockey players ... the call for volunteers goes out to the NCWHL, and we respond.

These kids have a variety of challenges. Some have mental/emotional issues, some have sensory issues, some have physical issues. Most have more than one. The therapy of being in the cold and moving so smoothly on the ice does wonders for them.

It takes the strong and nimble skating skills of hockey players to do this. With chairs, wheelchairs, and kids skating on their own, it's amazing we don't have collisions.

We help kids who hang onto the wall: my first kid, Angel (no real names here), went all the way around the rink with one hand on the wall and one arm supported by me. I closed the doors along the boards so he could cross the gaps. He whimpered in fear when I moved away from him by inches to pull the doors shut, although after the third he understood the drill. My feet were enormously cramped after that!

We push a lot of kids on chairs. This is my favorite part. I later took Angel around on a chair. With his limited communication skills, he laughed and expressed that he wanted to go faster, racing the other kids. We spin the chairs in circles, either by pulling the chair in a circle (variously with ourselves or the chair as an axis) or by tossing the chair forward with a spin and then catching it. Angel loved that one. After our first turn around the rink, as I checked in with him, he waved his hands with his fingers spread. I couldn't hear him, so I scooted to the front of him. "Five times!" he shouted gleefully. He'd counted: I'd spun him five times.

As I was resting, one of the teachers turned to me and said, "You'll take Charlie around, right?" I looked at Charlie: a 200-pound kid who was just staring forward, with no response to our words or the world around him. I said, "Sure." We maneuvered him into a chair, and I began pushing. It's actually not hard to push someone that big on the ice. I knew right away that he was smiling, and the teachers along the side told me so. His only reaction to his surroundings was that smile.

We push kids in wheelchairs: my first one was Debbie. She smiled her crooked smile and laughed the whole time. On a couple of occasions a teacher stepped onto the ice to take a picture, and we lined up the wheelchair kids. Debbie was the only one who responded with a huge smile. (I asked for a copy of the photo, but there are legal issues with releasing them.) Pushing Debbie, I practiced spinning a wheelchair on the ice. A skill I am still working on.

My last kid was Susie. During the wheelchair pictures, Susie appeared as a pile of purple jacket. She was curled in a fetal position in her chair covered by a hood, completely rolled up. A teacher tried to prop her up for the photo, but over she went.

I took over pushing her little chair. After a loop around, I stopped to chat with the teachers, and suddenly she turned around and gave me a brilliant smile. It turns out that she loves to be surrounded by conversation. I'd take her around again, and she'd flop forward; I'd talk to someone, and that smile would reemerge. Everyone celebrated that she'd come out of her frightened shell.

Then I discovered that she wasn't completely covering herself when she flopped forward: Susie was watching the ice go by beneath her chair. I knew just the snow and the grooves in the ice were enough for her, but I also took her around the painted center of the ice. I traced the circles, the blue lines, the red line, the dots, the crease. I followed the concrete lines showing through the paint. The brilliant smile, right at me, appeared several times. I don't know what she was experiencing, but I loved providing it for her.

Dream of the Blue Jersey

It's summer, and I dream of being athletic.

Specifically, I dream of playing hockey.

I dream I'm skating. The other night I dreamed I spoke to a woman who said she played in a league in San Francisco. I was thrilled when she said her league was fun and that it was at Yerba Buena. It all came back to me: where to park, carrying my bag in, the visual of being on the ice. I think maybe I've been back once since I broke my collarbone there.

It's summer, and I can't believe how long it's been since I was athletic. Before I started my current job, I was unemployed, working with a trainer, doing yoga, going to hockey camp. Since then, I keep setting a goal of being active, but it just hasn't happened. I took a break from hockey almost two years ago to recover from an unrelated injury, and I keep telling myself I'm going back. I am going back.

Summer is a great time to return because of the longer days, not having to leave in the dark for a late afternoon game. But I dread the idea of playing in Belmont, the rink where my league has so many games. A rink that is super-small and so poorly insulated that the ice doesn't freeze on warm days. So the puck comes to a dead, stuck stop when it hits a puddle. Where you have to lace your skates loosely because your feet swell as soon as you put them on, where you wish you didn't have to wear shoulder pads or a helmet because it's just too hot.

I miss the smell of the ice. I miss my regular pre- and post-game routines, including hydrating and handwashing before and then afterwards drinking Gatorade, eating a recovery hot dog, and laying out my sweaty gear to dry. I miss carrying my sticks, and I miss the sound and use of hockey tape. (There aren't really a lot of uses for it outside of hockey, unfortunately.) I step over low fences and other objects as often as possible to relive those many exciting times I stepped over the boards to get on the ice. (I do not haul myself over fences and other objects to relive the paralysis of utter exhaustion that accompanies getting off the ice.)

I'm a good hockey player. Not a great player; not even a very good player. Maroon #15 does not have a lot of presence in the record books, or even on the crumpled, damp scoresheets that live in the bottoms of captains' bags. I probably have had one or two penalties, and I can't even remember them. I've had very few goals but a few more assists. I'm most proud of my assists -- I love setting up plays and passing the puck to someone who can do something great with it. I miss freaking out the other team's defense (and surprising myself) with a threading-the-needle pass from behind the net through several players' legs and sticks to the blade of my waiting teammate (who usually has several people hanging off of her and can't get the shot off, but, hey, the pass was pretty). Mostly, I have been a smart teammate who can read a play and know where to be.

If I could, I'd be a full-time coach. People sometimes come up to me and thank me for coaching them, which sends me to the moon, even if I don't remember who they are. I love seeing my former players run a play that I taught them, which more often than not they're doing against my own team (while I'm sitting, helpless, on the bench, knowing they're going to do it).

But I can't just be a coach -- because it's too agonizing. Because no matter how slowly or poorly my body reacts to my brain's quick commands, I need to be physically in the game, not just thinking about it. It's also why I like to play forward positions: playing defense gives me way too much time in my head.

I do love having a two day weekend, not dealing with hydrating and carbo loading and traffic, having Sundays to nap or paint or do whatever else comes up, not being worthless on Monday morning. But I so dream of being on the ice again. I need to find a decent pick-up game. I need to get my skates sharpened. My hockey bag sits in my large powder room near the front door, waiting to be taken out again, falsely announcing to visitors that I am an athlete. I am not ready to retire. I need to be active again.