In the morning, the resurfacer buffed the rink with water, and it was slick and clear, and you could see into the interior of the ice, even with cloudy patches here and there, like flocked Christmas windows. You tried to skate your name in cursive, wobbling as the blade refused to accommodate the curvy loops of B’s or lowercase L’s. And then you fell down. You would pause, pretending to be stunned, staring into the ice for just a moment. You knew there was something down there. You imagined it was silver coins, and white doilies, and a howling lumberjack with his pet bear, frozen and suspended. (If you didn’t get up fast enough, your gloves would stick to the ice, just a little.) Later, in the afternoon, when the ice was scarred and opaque, you would give up looking for anything. You would skate to the far edge of the rink and sit on a bench by a fire, and drink hot chocolate out of someone else’s dad’s Thermos, and talk to kids who didn’t go to your school, who you would never see again. And in the thin air, the sound of Johnny Cash playing on someone’s car radio; someone smoking in their Plymouth, the windows rolled down, though it was cold. This was when moths still liked to chew on your mother’s scarves and sweaters. When anchormen’s hair fell below their collars, and dads didn’t feel embarrassed to wear fur coats with a hood, and dogs could go more places than they couldn’t. When the girls on the playground all wanted to be the same ice ballerina, and it was easily pretended, with white skates and wool coats and knit gloves decorated with pixelated flowers.
Photograph of skaters on Creve Coeur Lake by James M. Carrington, courtesy of the Missouri History Museum, St. Louis
