the cheepers are coming, the cheepers are coming...

Is it the first sign of spring? Today, the girls and their protector left the barn and walked (slid?) over to the garage.

This sign of movement, of abandoning their corner of the barn where they huddled all day long for all of  January, is hope-filled. It's as if you can remind yourself that no huddle lasts forever, no brutal wind can bar you from eventually moving forward. 

Marveling at the beauty of it all, I sit down to breakfast, alone because Ed could not, would not wake up before the lunch hour.

It looks like it is a fairly good day for ice skating. Below freezing, but with a bit of sunshine. Yet there's a hidden gut punch: the wind. Oh, the bitter cold wind! Nevertheless, I had said that if all goes well and Snowdrop manages to check off the requisite number of days under incarceration (surely it felt that way to her) symptom free (check!), we can go skating today. Sparrow wants to join, but he doesn't have skates and I feel he is not yet ready for them (unless you put him on double blades and even there, I think he would be a reluctant ice boy). Nevertheless, there is such a thing as boot skating and what's to stop him from keeping up with us on the ice in this way? His mommy would be there for moral support.

And so we meet up by their neighborhood ice rink: my older girl and her two older kids and I. Eating snacks and figure skating and boot-skating on a pretty good piece of ice.

(look gaga! with eyes closed!)

All was grand until we were done. I waved them toward the bench and went out to do one last fast loop around the rink. Yeah, there's the clincher: I wanted to be quick and so I picked up speed. And the blade caught on something and pretty quickly I went down, chest and knee thumping the ice like a big lid clamping down on a pot that's about to boil over. That'll teach me!

I doubt that I did any lasting damage but it was a good reminder (because I seem to need a million of them) to not go for speed. I suppose my ego had been bruised when the other day Ed said I was good, but not as good as the twelve year olds playing hockey on the ice rink the evening he and I stopped by to test the ice. The kids had commanding speed. I suppose somewhere in the back of my head lodges the idea that I still can have commanding speed and at the same time remain safe from crushing falls. Possibly that is not a good way to approach skating at my age.  

At home, I spent the rest of the day cradling my ego on the couch and hoping that the knee and the ribs are all intact. 

(Ever nimble deer outside, laughing!)