An Embodied Lesson in Flight
The rink is smooth as glass and we are the only ones there. I station myself beside our youngest, who is struggling to keep herself upright, and begin coaching her to move forward.
“You’ve got this. It’s hard, but it will be so great once you get it.”
She hesitates, wobbles, and falls to the ground, feet shooting out in front of her, bottom smacking onto the cold, hard ice.
I pull her up.
“Want to try again?”
This time she starts panicking before she begins to wobble, her confidence waning, and falls hard (again) against ice.
Just then, my husband swoops around behind us and grabs her by the back of her snowsuit; she is horizontal, arms flailing, giggling as they fly around the rink. Halfway around, he plops her down in front of him, her skates inside of his, and she watches as he pushes off on one foot and then the other.
Instead of coaching her from the side, he takes her for a ride. As he moves, she watches, mesmerized by the movement of his skates beside hers on the ice. Feeling the wind against her face and the glide beneath her feet, she gets a taste of what it is like to fly.
They come around the last corner and he plops her back down where she started (I am still there, having witnessed this lesson in flight).
I ask if she wants help trying to skate on her own.
“No, I got this.”
She bends her knees, lifts one skate off the ice and then the other. A run on its way to a glide.
On this beautiful afternoon in October, her dad has taken her skating, instead of telling her what to do — an embodied lesson in flight.
