Skating

by Nancy Brittain

On a February day nearing dusk, when I was eleven years old, I skated on the pond next to our house with my little brother and his two friends. Crusty snow covered its surface due to a wet snowfall a week before that had hardened. We had managed to shovel pathways on the ice, just enough of the heavy snow to create a skating surface. We were impatient; we meant to continue clearing snow to make a rink, but the temperature dropped before we had the chance.

So on that February afternoon, instead of skating in circles and figure eights, the four of us played tag, skating within the paths, trying not to get caught. I became giddy as the pace of the game quickened, digging the tip of my figure skate into the ice and pushing off to avoid my pursuer. The effect was that of running on my skates. When I tried to stay in the path, which curved sharply to the right, I caught the jagged tip of my skate mid-turn. My body turned to the right but the force of my forward movement, abruptly halted by the skate, sent me into the air. What happened in the next split second will forever remain both crystal clear and hazy. Suspended above the ice I heard the crunch. As I hit the ground pain flooded through my leg.

Kids are great fakers – especially when they do something stupid and want to divert attention. It took all of my anguish turned into forbidden, four-letter words to convince my brother that I was truly hurt. I commanded him to fetch my mother. I could think only of the love and comfort with which a parent could satisfy my distress. Off the three boys went, beyond a small grove of trees, across the driveway and up to the door of the house. I couldn’t see them but I envisioned their short trek to preoccupy myself with the thought that soon I would be safe. I waited for what seemed an eternity. Rather than cries of concern and nervous chatter in the distance, I heard silence. Surely Jimmy had communicated the seriousness of my fall.

Several minutes later, my brother returned with his friends, pulling a toboggan. Now, cold and scared from the unbearable pain in my leg, a vulnerability seared through me knowing my mother was not coming. I reasoned that she was getting dinner ready, keeping order in the house preparing for my father’s arrival from work. Perhaps she was trying a new recipe or keeping to a tight schedule so my dad could get to bowling league on time. Whatever the reason, she did not come.

I tried to overcome the agonizing throbs swirling in my left leg so I could be helped onto the toboggan. But the pain was unwavering and I swore off their assistance. I screamed for them to get my mother, because now I could feel, after moving just a fraction of an inch, that my lower leg was no longer one solid piece. Sensing my terror, the boys abandoned their rescue attempt and ran back toward the house. By then my father had pulled up the driveway and was flagged down by my brother. In just moments I could feel the scratchy surface of my father’s wool coat as he slid his hands surely but carefully underneath me, lifting me into his arms and off the ice. The pain surged, and I cringed at the sight of my leg flopping off to one side. But I knew I was going to be all right. No matter how many times my father would not be there for me in years to come, he was my hero that bitter day in February.

For those few but telling minutes I lay on the slab of numbing ice, I did not know that the crunch I heard was the sound of three breaks in my leg: two in the fibula and one in the tibia. I did not know as darkness descended on the pond that I would remain in a full hip-to-toe cast for eight months – a cast that could not bear weight. I did not know as voices trailed off for a second time that I would remain on crutches for another ten months after the cast came off due to the severe atrophy of the limb. I did not know that unforgiving afternoon in February that I would give up my dream of becoming a runner because the strength in my leg would drain away after sprinting several yards and I would collapse.

What I did know waiting for my mother on the frozen pond in the waning afternoon that February was the limit a person could place on their capacity to love. A limit that allows the heart to expand only as far as the chest cavity. A limit that says there is only enough love and caring for one person at a time. And I was not that person on the cold grey day in February at the age of eleven.

-Nancy Brittain