Brothers of the Rolling Blade

Tonight, we discovered new territory that works for the quality-of-life of all interested parties.

Amy is quite preoccupied with the cause of getting us all to do something "active". Unfortunately, from December through much of March, "active" means sliding on snow or ice, in temperatures that ensure frozenness for anyone that hangs out in them long enough.  Even in the spring/summer/fall, "active" means stuff like long walks down "nature trails" or, even worse, up and down our own street.  Normally, many of us don't like "active."

But tonight, for the first time ever, we went roller skating - or  more correctly, "roller blading" at a rink about a half hour from our  house.  As usual, it was like pulling teeth to get the project underway.  The XBox is in Xile (the boys don't know where), and we had to turn off the TV screen as well to get them out.  I had to hunt for Daniel's shoes, and it seemed like a vast rightwing conspiracy was keeping us from leaving.  At almost-7:30 this evening, Amy came downstairs and pointed out that we wouldn't get to the rink until 8:00, and proposed that we not go at all.  I lost it.  And she sort-of relented, and we went - the boys and I, for the first time ever, to a roller rink.

***

Tonight, I figured something out about Ian.  He should have the last name "Brown."  For in many contexts - such as anything academic - he's like Encyclopedia Brown (the clever, if dorkile, lad who used his "encyclopedic" knowledge of the world to figure out pressing mysteries in the petty crime of paperback suburban pre-adolescent American fiction), and then in other ways, he's like Charlie Brown, especially Charlie-Brown-on-the-football-field.  For example, when we went skiing in Colorado (after a fashion) a little over a year ago, our Joe-Cool son was in his natural habitat, as Daniel took to the slopes like an Austrian on steroids, while Ian struggled with the sport amidst all kinds of protest and Angst.  Tonight was the same way.  Ian battled the roller blades and the Law of Gravity for much  of the evening, while Daniel would just make an occasional cameo appearance gliding past the bitter battle at random intervals, always quite happy with his circumstances.  Ian traded roller blades for roller skates; he said he had barely mastered roller skates, and now he was embarking on yet something newer.  But he quickly determined that he was even worse off with roller skates than roller blades, and traded the skates back for their inline cousins.

I trailed behind Ian extensively, offering my hand when he would fall, blocking him the rest of the time from anyone who might be inclined to come near him.  I offered little suggestions - stay on the periphery, bend your knees to balance, toes in to slow down, glide wherever possible, push off with one foot and then bring it back in line.  We had a little session inside "The Cones" - the orange cones in the middle of the rink, occupied conspicuously by a couple of Indian families - the parents without skates, obsessing over the safety and learning process of their children with a touching mixture of hyper-caution and exhortation.  When the boys took a break to share a "blue raspberry icee" slush, I scrambled at the chance to skate faster than five miles per hour as they slurped from a single cup at a little table alongside the rink.  (I couldn't help but take a few pictures and videos as I passed them, they were so cute...)

But somehow, he got  it.  He figured out how to skate.  And there was something quite powerful about the whole evening.  It  might have been the music - rap, rhythm and blues, etc. in the background.  Somehow the crowd seemed much  more wholesome than what we're used to - when people are moving around, skating, having fun, they seem happier than when they're lining up for some semi-passive entertainment.  And I even think there was a racial/ethnic factor.  Where we live is overwhelmingly Franco-Italo-Irish, but this rink, less than three minutes south of the state line, with its proximity to Lowell, had an infusion of Latino, East Asian, and black families, as well as the usual white demographics, and I think the variety kicked a touch of energy into the scene.  Plus there were lots of teenagers, and Daniel is basically a teenager at 8, (and so am I, at my advanced age), and Ian, at 10, probably welcomed a crowd less resembling an elementary school yard at recess.  I don't know what it was, but between the energy, the music, the crowd, the movement, we all had lots of fun.

Daniel was in his element for an additional reason.  We quickly figured out that "skating rink" doesn't mean "skating rink"; it means all-purpose-teenage-hangout, complete with a snack bar (nachos, soft drinks, etc.), video games and arcade games with tickets and a glass case full of plastic prizes, vending machines -- endless possibilities.  There was even a small dance floor in a corner at the edge of the rink, for whatever reason.  And Daniel, cleverly, had brought $5, no doubt the Tooth Fairy's Arcade-and-Junk-Food Endowment.  So half the time, we didn't even see Daniel; he had bigger fish to fry, and the only grownup - a nominal one at that - was busy skating.  The whole complex flashed with phosphorescent lights to make your tee-shirt glow, disco ballish lights, etc.  Kidtopia.  Geared toward Ian and Daniel, but really customized around Daniel's precocious adolescentisms.

Time came for us to negotiate leaving-time.  "Open skate" ran until 11:00.  But that would mean getting home at 11:30.   Ian meekly vacillated about departure time - in no hurry to leave, but eager to spare me the domestic arrival aria.  Daniel suggested that we leave at 11.  I proposed, at one point, that we stay for one more song.  We stayed for three more.  And "staying" is relative; it took us so long to turn in our skates and gradually sway Daniel away from the vending machines that our actual departure time was much later.

As we pulled into the driveway, the house was dark. We took that as a good sign, and quickly started "casing the joint" to figure out how we could gain entrance to the house without awakening the Matriarch of Orderly Priorities.  Ruthie the Dog was standing sentry in the window - propping herself up from the back of the couch with her front paws exactly as if they were the arms of an anxiously waiting party.  Ian suggested that we give her a few minutes to bark herself out and then sneak in.  I told him, sincerely, "I like the way you think."  He thanked me.  But we went in anyway, since it was late, and there was a bit of tooth-brushing, icon-kissing, and tucking-in.

As we were walking down the path to the front door, from the car, Ian, recognizing that we may be in trouble with Mommy at any moment now, put his arm on mine and said something to both Daniel and me that moved me very deeply in its purity and joy:

"[Even] if we all get in trouble and get yelled at and get mad at each other, I want you all to know that I had fun tonight and loved it, and love you both."

(March 1, 2014)