Wobbling and Falling My Way Around the Rink

Over the holidays, I had the chance to go ice skating with my daughter and three of her younger cousins. My daughter knows how to skate, but her cousins were beginners. I wondered how long they would last on the ice, slipping and falling their way around the rink before they'd want to pack it in and do something else. To my happy surprise, they kept at it and skated for 90 minutes until the rink closed.

As a parent, there is almost nothing funnier than watching a kid trying to learn to skate. It's slapstick watching them tentatively wobble forward on shaky skates, then haplessly gyrating their arms to regain their balance right before the inevitable splat-fall on the ice. The adults burst into laughter every time one of the kids fell. Heartless, I know. But watching a brand-new skater fall over and over again is like watching the characters on Gilligan's Island repeatedly trying and failing to leave the desert island -- only funny. Later that night, we saw all the movie footage my father had shot and we laughed all over again.

My 6-year-old nephew probably fell about 1,000 times. But he always got up and continued on slowly around the rink, at first using the wooden walls to balance, then later winging it on his own. I skated with him sometimes, and every time he took a big fall, I helped him up and reminded him that he could take a break to warm up anytime he wanted. But he didn't want to stop. He loved ice skating so much -- even though he was bad at it and his jeans were soaked -- he picked himself up and kept going. If he was frustrated or angry at how difficult it was to learn to skate, I didn't see that. He didn't let those emotions get in the way of trying. It was remarkable, his determination.

Finding my way after divorce sometimes makes me feel like a young kid learning how to skate. You fall down a lot in the beginning. There's no way to avoid all the nasty spills and the embarrassment of repeatedly falling down. But you pick yourself up and slowly wobble-walk your way around the rink on cheap rental skates, balancing yourself on the wooden wall until you get a little better, a little braver. Eventually, it will lead to the exhilaration of being able to gracefully skate around the rink with only infrequent falls. The trick -- which really isn't a trick at all -- is to just keep getting up and trying.