From the Wings of Night
I remember that November morning so vividly. On my bedroom wall, I have a calendar of Olympic and World champion ice skaters and I recall standing there just staring at it. Black marker poised in a shaking hand, I watched Kristy Yamaguchi frozen in a layback spin while the days and weeks went by beneath her. Yesterday had been the best day of my life. I had won the Central Pacific Regional Championships on the Junior level and I feared putting an X through November 12th would obliterate the experience. More days went by and it was nearly December before I could cross out November 12th and the subsequent days that had elapsed. I fingered my gold medal and warily changed the calendar month to find Scott Hamilton beaming. I let out a long sigh.
I stopped going to school in third grade. My parents hired tutors but they didn't make me do too much work. While I despised Math, I took a liking to Literature. Whenever I wasn't at the rink, the gym, or dance class, I would read. Sometimes, I would memorize poetry—just for myself. Even now I think of the lines from, My Antonia, "the best days are the first to flee" and how fitting they are to my present situation.
Private Ice is Best Viewed in Firefox.
I began skating at the age of five when my grandmother, a widow living in Los Angeles, purchased me a pair of ice skates for Christmas.
One weekend shortly thereafter, my mother brought me to the rink nearby our home in Pal Alto to try out my gift. When I look at those skates now they seem small enough to belong to a doll but at the age of five, those skates—the sheet of ice I was supposed to balance on, and the crowd of people—were rather daunting.
My mother knew little about skating back then but did her best. She pulled my feet into her lap one at a time and tied the laces on my skates before tending to the pair of blue ones she had rented for herself. After we had our mittens on, she took my head and unsteadily led me towards the ice where skaters where flying by. Mommy clung to the wall to keep from falling and almost immediately I slipped and fell. My attempts to stand were unsuccessful and I began bawling.
Those were the first of many tears I would shed in various ice rinks; some happy like when I landed my first clean Axel, some sad like the time I fell out of an illusion and my blade cut into my leg. The cut was so deep I needed three layers of stitches and couldn't train for eight weeks.
As I sat there on the ice, Mommy struggling to help me up and nearly losing her own precarious balance, I suddenly felt a mittened hand envelop mine. A much older girl—she looked like a fifth-grader helped me to my feet. She was wearing a shiny, short, purple skirt. I noticed other girls wearing similar skirts, and this one smiled. "Don't cry," she said, "I'll teach you to skate."
My mother looked grateful and this girl (she said her name was Meg), explained how to keep my balance. "Keep your body up and your arms out," she instructed, "That will keep you from falling. And push off from one foot, then put both feet together, other foot, together. Try to glide. Hey, what's your name?"
"Ariel," I told her and concentrated on gliding. I kept looking down at my feet but Meg told me to keep my head up or I was going to bump into people. I tried, I really did. And it was fun. I was ice skating!
At the end of the session, Meg and I found Mommy sipping a hot chocolate. "Thank you so much for helping Ariel. This is her first time," Mommy said to Meg, "Can I pay you? Do you give lessons?"
Meg giggled. "I can't give lessons because then I wouldn't be allowed to compete."
"Oh no! I wouldn't want that to happen," my mother interjected but I didn't know if she meant it. Often I found myself not knowing if she meant what she said. Like this time I heard her on the phone with one of her clients reassuring the lady she wouldn't lose her kids.
But after she'd hung up she had turned to my dad, shaken, her head, and sighed. "I don't know why I took this case. With what the husband's got on herÉ" She stopped speaking when she saw that I was eavesdropping
Meg shrugged. "Don't worry about it. But you could talk to my coach. Her name's Nancy. If you want maybe she could give Ariel lessons."
So that was how it began. Nancy was my first coach and she said I was a quick learner and "a natural jumper", a very important skill in the sport of figure skating. I got a whole wardrobe of skating dresses. Nancy didn't allow me to practice in jeans because they didn't allow me to "move as freely" and she couldn't see my form to correct what I was doing wrong.
I worked with Nancy for three years. She taught me the basics like stopping, forward and backward crossovers, edges, and she started me on the easier jumps, like the waltz jump and the Salchow. I learned two foot spins, which gradually advanced to one foot and scratch spins.
Nancy coached me for my first competition. It was a local competition and I was skating on the Delta level in ISIA (Ice Skating Institute of America) which is below to the USFSA (United States Figure Skating Association). I wore a pink satin dress covered with sparkles and a matching scrunchy in my hair. Nancy choreographed my program to the music from E.T. I did all the moves I was supposed to, fumbling only a little here and there, and came in second place to a dark-skinned eight year old. Mommy whispered she only won because of "affirmative action", whatever that meant! Nevertheless, I was more than happy with my bright silver trophy and the flowers my family threw on the ice after my performance. As I scooped them up, I smiled so widely I forgot all about my braces!
Like tennis, gymnastics, and I guess pretty much all competitive sports, figure skating is awfully expensive. Ice time, private lessons, clothes, custom skates, traveling to competitions, and even Band-Aids, added up. But I was an only child with two successful attorneys for parents and three wealthy grandparents who had dreams of seeing their granddaughter win an Olympic medal before they died, so I guess they scrounged up the money.
Enter: Richard, the coach who first recognized my "potential" after seeing me win Regionals. He convinced my parents Nancy was a, "nice, beginning" coach, but was "holding Ariel back."
I had heard about Richard through the skating grapevine. He was taller than my dad who I knew was 5'10, owned a Nylon jump suit in every color, and coached the current World Junior Champion. It was rumored his students practiced every day but Sunday, worked with private tutors instead of going to school, and were forbidden to have candy, soda, or even hot chocolate.
The school piece was confirmed when I heard him tell my parents, "Dissecting frogs and taking field trips to the planetarium is not going to get her on the podium."
My mother looked worried. "But what about friends?" She had spent enough time around the rink by now to know the other skaters were about as warm and fuzzy as cacti.
"What about them?" Richard responded in a condescending tone I would come to know well.
"Wouldn't she be lonely and isolated?"
Richard sighed, tapped his foot, and looked at his watch. "Her social and emotional development is really none of my concern." He sighed, again. "How old is she?"
I wondered why he didn't just ask me my age. He was talking like I wasn't even in the room but they were planning my life.
"Eight?" my father sounded unsure and I glared at him. He had been out of town working on my last birthday.
"She's starting to get up there. I have a nine-year-old Novice. She can do triple, double combinations. What about your daughter? Has Nancy taught her that?" He glanced at his watch again then to my parents. "Listen, I'm going to be very blunt. I don't believe in wasting time. Are you in or are you out?"
My parents looked at each other. They looked at Richard. No one looked at me. I was in.
Once I began working with Richard, everything changed. He lived near us and given my parents' busy schedules teaching law classes at Stanford and defending people in court, they arranged for him to pick me up in the mornings and bring me along to the new rink where I would be training. Sometimes it was still dark out when his Cadillac rolled into our driveway.
My very first day, I overslept. He was, after all, picking me up for skating earlier than I used to get up for school!
Later I heard the phone ringing and my mother talking. "I see. No, I can't bring her. I have to teach a class in 20 minutes. I'll tell her. I understand."
I heard my mother's heels clicking across the linoleum and smelled her perfume as she entered the room. The weight on the bed shifted as she sat. She touched my shoulder and spoke my name.
"Hmm?" I pretended to still be asleep.
"Ariel, I have to go. That was Richard. You overslept. He's billing us for the day anyway. If you oversleep or miss another practice without forty-eight hours notice he won't work with you. Do you understand?"
I sat up. "Yes mom."
"Enjoy your day off," she said dryly.
I never overslept, again.
At the rink, Richard worked me hard. The day didn't end until I'd landed every jump cleanly and completed three clean run-throughs of the long and short programs a thickly accented Russian choreographer had created especially for me.
All jumps came easy except the Lutz. The blind take-off made me nervous and feel like I was going to crash into another skater. Richard, however, had little patience for my qualms.
"Ariel, jump, God damnit!" he'd scream whenever I hesitated.
So I jumped.
One day my timing was off; I'd waited too long and I crashed into the barrier. I felt the wind being knocked out of me as I slid backwards on my stomach. Girls gathered around me and with their matching ponytails, white skates, and practice dresses they looked like cut-outs of paper dolls.
I gasped for breathe. Tears blurred my vision as I saw Richard's black skates approaching. The blades dug into the ice and he abruptly stopped.
He knelt down beside me. Today, he was wearing his green jumpsuit, but I remembered he had also worn it yesterday. I found myself wondering if he had more than one green jumpsuit and if maybe green was his favorite color. He snapped his finger. "Ariel."
I looked into his gray eyes. "Huh?"
"Ariel, are you okay?"
I shrugged my shoulders but didn't say anything. "Did you lose your tongue in that fall?" he asked.
"No, sir," I said.
He got up and clapped his hands. "Okay then let's see it, again."
Why don't you do it for me, I thought.
As I grew older, I sometimes compared myself to a dog being trained for shows. I began my training as a naive, little puppy that yipped a lot and was playful but slowly these youthful mannerisms faded. I became quiet and obedient. I spoke when spoken to, jumped when told to jump, and I won competitions because that's what I was being instructed to do. With all the exercise and dietary restrictions, my body grew muscular and lean. On the outside I was a parent's dream. My photograph on their desks at work was similar to the trophies I kept on shelves in my room. Only, I wasn't a daughter; I was an award, something to show off. While I looked like the ideal child on the outside, on the inside I felt sad and confused and so terribly alone.
Camel spin, sit spin, layback spin, flying camel, flying sit—I mastered them all. Jumps—Axel, double-loop, double-toeloop, double-flip, double-Axel, some in combinations! And of course the dreaded double-Lutz. Now that I was landing it, Richard wanted a triple-Sal. Three rotations in the air. Wow. I knew it was humanly possible but would I ever be able to do it? Already I had competed as a Juvenile and Intermediate and last season I had even won Intermediate Nationals. Now I was a Novice and Regionals were again approaching. Richard expected nothing less than the gold in the Regionals so I would qualify for Sectionals, get another gold, and win the Nationals. Could I really do it?
One Sunday, I paced back and forth through our enormous den. "Mom, Dad, I have to tell you something. It's about skating... It's just not the same, anymore. I want to quit. I want to go back to school. I'm sick of Richard. I'm sick of it all. I don't want to do it anymore."
I didn't have to search my parents' faces for a reaction. They were in Lake Tahoe. My mother's mother had come up from L.A. to stay with me but all she seemed to do was watch television and eat ice cream. Some role model.
I paused in front of the hallway mirror and studied my reflection. I would be a teenager in a couple more years. My blonde hair was for once not pulled back in a ponytail or bun and fell in waves just past my shoulders. My skin was flawless, something Mother warned me wouldn't last much longer, and my eyes were a sparkling ocean blue. I looked like the typical California girl, minus the tan. I sighed, for I was far from a surfer girl—I was an ice princess and I was sick of it.
I was tired of the stress of competing. Even if I technically won, I still lost. Everyone expected me to win and when I did, the other girls just hated me more. I skated fast, very fast, and could stop in less than an instant. My jumps were high, my landings clean, and these elements of my skating brought me many looks of disgust from the other girls in my club. Whenever some of them fell, they'd glare at me as if it were my fault. So I had no friends at the rink and because I didn't go to school, I had no friends from school. The closest thing I had to friends was my books.
I glanced over at my copy of Lord of the Flies, lying facedown on the glass table. I had just finished it and had liked it immensely. But while I enjoyed the story, I had found it very sad. Even at eleven, I realized how cruel human beings could be to one another. It made me angry the way the other boys treated Piggy just because he didn't fit their ideal. It made me sick to think of it—they killed him.
I looked down at my baggy jeans and sweatshirt. Sunday was the only day of the week I actually got to dress in normal clothes. The den had soft beige carpeting and I suddenly felt like practicing the move I had learned in gymnastics. I went to the gym once a week and my coach there was really nice. Cartwheels and one-hand cartwheels had been a cinch to master but now I was learning an aerial and that was hard. I figured since it was my name I should be able to do it right away but doing a cartwheel with no hands had proved to be hard. I took a running start and tried the move. I fell but thankfully not on my head.
The girls at the gym were nicer to me than the ones in my skating club. I was hardly going to be an Olympic gymnast so they had no reason to be jealous and feel competitive. I marveled at how tiny the gymnasts were. One girl my age named Tracy was only 4'2" tall! She made me feel like a giant at 4'10". There were also a few nice girls at my dance school but the teachers didn't let us talk much so we only became acquaintances.
I lay down on the carpet and let my mind travel back to the first time I had ever skated. I remember how nice that girl Meg had been to me and watching in awe as she demonstrated a scratch spin. Skating had been so much fun in the beginning. I used to love it. Used to be was the operative word. I thought about it for a while, the smell of the ice, the excitement of winning competitions, and realized I did still love skating, it was the endless pressure and expectations I disliked. And more than anything, I was afraid if I didn't win my family would stop loving me.
I made a decision. I found my grandmother dozing in front of some stupid TV show and woke her up to drive me to the local ice rink.
I arrived in the middle of a public session. I paid my admission fee, and sat down on a bench to lace up my skates. I breathed in the smell of hot dogs from the snack bar and remembered back to the first time I had been here with my mother and the many years I had trained here with Nancy. If only Richard had never come into my life to make me travel two hours a day to some stupid Olympic-sized arena, I could've stayed here forever.
All around me, people were balancing unsteadily on the blue rental skates my mother had once worn. I laced up my $1,100 custom leather boots with blades that cut like butcher knives.
I stepped out onto the choppy ice. It was crowded and there were girls in the middle practicing simple moves like two-foot spins and lunges. I skated around, trying to avoid colliding with the people who kept falling. I did sharp front crossovers around the circle in the center of the rink and a mohawk into backward crossovers, leaning into the edge as I had been trained. I wound up and went into a tight headless spin. When I came out of it, I noticed people staring at me in amazement. I was surprised, for it was only a headless spin, such a simple move.
I skated around some more. "Excuse me," I heard a little voice say. I turned around to face a pair of twin girls, around seven. "Could you please teach us how to stop?" one of the blonde twins requested.
I smiled, "Sure."
The twins, whose named I learned to be Amie and Mandy, were so adorable I just wanted to take them in my arms and hug them. I taught them the easiest stop—a snow plow and they sort of got the hang of it. Throughout the session kids and adults approached me for skating tips. It felt great, just helping people—no pressure, no pain, no fear.
"How long have you been skating?" one woman asked me.
I replied, "Forever, simply forever." I decided not to mention I was National champion on the Intermediate level. Somehow I felt it would have spoiled what was turning out to be the most fun I had had in ages.
That afternoon helped a lot. I decided that I wanted to continue skating but I didn't want Richard as a coach.
"Mom, Dad, I've been thinking," I told them once they had returned from their vacation.
"About what, Ariel?" Dad asked, tugging on my ponytail. I brushed his hand away. This was serious.
"About skating and competing and... I don't want to quit skating but I have to have a different coach. I hate Richard! He's an asshole and I just can't deal with him." There, I had said it. The perfect daughter who had never uttered a word of profanity in her parents' presence had called the biggest influence in her life an asshole.
"Ariel!" my mother snapped.
"I'm sorry," I whimpered and then I did something else I never did in their presence—I began to cry. Mom put her arms around me.
"Oh Ariel, why are you so upset?"
"Has Richard done something inappropriate?" Dad growled.
"No!" I exclaimed turning red. "God, no, nothing like that. It's just I can't deal with his yelling and pushing and... I know he's been great for my skating technically but he's making me not want to skate. Look, if I can't have another coach, I want to quit."
The last thing they wanted was for me to quit. After all, they wanted their daughter to be an Olympic champion and that couldn't happen if she weren't training. "Okay Ariel. You can have another coach. It's just that he's worked with you for so long and right before Regionals," Mom murmured.
"I don't care about Regionals. I hate him," I whispered, wiping tears on the sleeve of my leotard. "I hate him."
I got what I wanted. My parents fired Richard. It took a long time finding a new coach so I didn't compete in Regionals that year. We decided on Elizabeth Praile for my coach. Not only did she coach the winner of last year's Senior Nationals but she was a terrific person.
When we first met she said, "Well I heard through the grapevine Ariel Summers was beautiful and for once it was right." I could tell from her tone of voice she meant the compliment. My lessons with her were fun, something I had never experienced with Richard.
"Dahling, your shoulders are too tense when you spin," she'd say with a fake Russian accent, "You're only twelve but you look like you need a cane."
I giggled and corrected the position of my arms. See Richard I can learn without screaming.
Elizabeth and I spent hours together, on and off the ice. We talked about everything from cosmetics to the failure of her marriage. I began to love her as much as I hated Richard.
A year passed and I got ready for Centrals, still a Novice. I came in third, went onto Coasts but didn't make nationals. The following year, again on the novice level, I made it to Nationals and I won. I was Novice National Champion.
Another year. Now I was thirteen and competing on the Junior level. My body was changing. I had begun developing breasts and while I now wore a bra, I had yet to get my period, something I was grateful for. From what I gathered, the cramps hurt like hell. My hair had grown waist length and I got pimples from time to time, like my mother had predicted.
Elizabeth was gorgeous. At the age of thirty-two, she looked twenty-five and had wavy light brown hair. She had a perfect body, according to my mother, and violet eyes. She often fretted that her nose was crooked and I was amused to no end when she was off the ice a week, to get a nose job. I sent her a very funny get well card, which she loved.
My skating got better and better. Elizabeth used a jump harness, a funny looking contraption which hung from a beam on the ceiling and then was strapped around my waist, to teach me triples. It's complicated to explain how jump harnesses work, but with it I learned to do triple jumps. The harness kept me from getting hurt when I fell and I would have used it forever except Elizabeth decided I was becoming too dependent on it.
She was right, for when I tried triples without the harness, they were only doubles. But months passed and with practice, the triples came—loop, toe loop, flip, etc. My problem was the triple-Lutz. I still had an immense dislike for Lutzes; singles, doubles, and especially triples. They were a necessary move in competition but I didn't want to do them. I much preferred flying camels, butterflies, and Russian split jumps. Too bad that wasn't what the judges preferred.
The fall I was fourteen, my skating came together, or so I thought. I won Central Pacifics on the Junior level! My program music was beautiful and I had flowed right into the triple-Lutz. Now I was onto Sectionals and if I qualified for Nationals, I would be eligible for international competitions, like the Olympic festival and World Junior Championships. Should I do well in those, my career would take off!
For Coasts, my seamstress made me a beautiful white dress with pearl sequins. It almost looked like a wedding gown and I wore my mother's pearl earrings and matching necklace.
Before I had to go on for warm up, Elizabeth helped me with my make-up and played a CD of new age music. Indeed the sounds from a tropical rain forest relaxed me. I stretched, touching my nose to my knee and doing plies.
"Are you sure I look all right?" I asked, fidgeting with the strand of pearls.
"Ariel, you have never looked more beautiful but I've never seen you this nervous before a competition. Is anything bothering you?"
I sat down on a bench. "Richard's here," I blurted out.
"Well that's to be expected, honey. He does have students competing," she said, putting an arm around me.
"I know, I know." I tightened my ponytail. "It's just I feel I have to prove something. I can't lose, I have to win! I need to show him, my family, even you that I matter. I want to be special. I have to make Nationals, win Nationals! I—"
"Ariel, I want you to take deep breaths. Just do it," she insisted when I gave her a funny look. "Ariel, you are a beautiful, talented young girl. Stop putting so much pressure on yourself. If you get all worked up you won't win. Just go out there and skate. Skate because you love it."
My group was called for warm-up. Because we were only given five minutes, I went straight into my triples. I landed the Sal okay but the rest of my triples were a mess, especially the Lutz. And I was the first one skating!
I got off the ice a minute before warm-up ended and sat down next to Elizabeth.
I put my hands and in my face and cried, "You'd think I never skated before! I suck!"
"You do not suck, Ariel," she soothed me. "You don't need me to tell you that because you already know it. The problem is you can't want to win this for your parents, or for Richard, or for me—you have to want it for yourself and I don't think this is what you really want. Ariel, to win you'd have to skate with every ounce of your soul. You have to love skating... and love yourself."
I listened very carefully to what she said, agreeing with every word.
I came in tenth.
When I thought about it later on, I realized Elizabeth was right. I didn't want to win for me. I wanted to win for Richard and for my parents and that was no way to win.
I felt listless and lonely. The realization that there would be no nationals for me, that the season was over, kept ringing in my ears. I sat at home and stared at an empty TV screen. I didn't even care about reading anymore.
I wouldn't go near the ice for a couple weeks and when I did it was to the rink in Palo Alto. I didn't go to skate. I went to think, reevaluate my life, make decisions.
I sat in the stands by myself. I closed my eyes and breathed in the special scent of the ice and felt the cool air on my face. I felt my mind drift back in time, to when I was younger, back when Richard was still my coach. I remembered how I used to watch as the zamboni cleaned the ice after a session. I had this weird idea that the zamboni was cathartic, for it washed away not only the scratch marks made by my blades, but also any mishaps or triumphs that had taken place.
It was like painting white over a canvas. Whiting out the picture, making it disappear, would also make whatever had been there invisible to the average beholder. Only I wasn't the average beholder and I could never forget. I knew what was real and what wasn't, even when I didn't want to.
What would come next? I didn't know. So I sat there, in the stands, repeating to myself a Longfellow poem I knew by heart..
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night;
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor,
And tonight I long for rest
Read from some humble poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start.
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
So as silently as I came, I left. I went home and called Elizabeth. We talked for a long time and I told her something I had felt since I first met her but had never had the courage to say aloud. I told her I loved her.
In gymnastics, I eventually did master the aerial but I realized it would be awhile before I would master my skating. I learned to love Elizabeth but that was just the first step. I had other steps to take. But just because you know something in your head doesn't mean you can magically make it happen. I still needed to learn to love myself.
That's right. Love myself. Ariel Summers said that.
Copyright © 2005 N. Carrie Cohen. All Rights Reserved.
The poem "The Day is Done" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is in the public domain.
