For John.
I was a French major in college. I was also a Music major. I don't recommend double majoring to anyone; I'm not sure I got really good at either thing. That's a story for another time ... And I digress. Again.
One of the classics we read, of course, was Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, or In Search of Lost Time. It's not the easiest book to tackle in English, let alone in French. I'm pretty sure there were Cliff Notes involved back then. About the only thing I remember is the iconic passage of the book, that sets the stage for the rest of the storytelling, when the narrator indulges in the simple act of enjoying a madeleine (a cake-like cookie) and tea. This prompts a flood of memories that unfold in the rest of the book. Or something like that. The madeleine was the trigger for a cascade of memories for him.
It was Saturday and I went for a walk in the cold but brilliant afternoon. It was really a beautiful day and I opted for a slightly longer route than I'd been doing lately. I headed over to Cedar Lake. As the road turned toward the water, I could see boys skating behind the houses. One sat on a dock, donning his skates. There were nets and hockey sticks. That was my "madeleine."
I grew up in Canada in a typical post-war subdivision neighborhood of mostly small ranch houses. They were good times with lots of children and our most immediate neighbors were all families with similarly aged kids. We grew up together until my family moved to New Jersey. We played complicated games outside, using our imaginations to act out stories and we had lots of traditional outdoor toys. We'd jump rope for hours. There was a cherry tree in our back yard and in the summer, we'd move the jungle gym to beneath it and sit up high and eat enough cherries to spoil our dinners. And in the winter, we skated.
It would have to snow enough and stay cold enough but if the conditions were right, our parents would bank up the snow in our backyards and use the hose to spray the area. It took several night of spraying to build up ice thick enough to skate on.
As I walked along with my thoughts shooting back over the decades, I came upon another space on the ice, cleared for skating. I would pass by several more on my long walk through the lake. It occurred to me how easy these parents had it. The lakes here in town are small. Many are man-made so not very deep. They freeze pretty well all the way across. We threw a fun skating party one New Year's Day when my ex-husband and I lived on one of them, many moons ago, before kids. When the conditions are right, the ice is smooth and glassy without the need for hoses.Now I wonder ... how did our parents stand out there, in the freezing cold, many nights in a row tending to those little rinks. Because after a half a dozen or so kids skate on the little ovals, they'd need to sprayed down again. No such thing as a backyard Zamboni. Just dads in boots and hats with the hose in their gloved hands. I think my mom took a lot of those shifts too and I'm sure it was she who shoveled the lawn into the shape of an ice rink and banked up the sides while my dad was at work.
I walked along, remembering all the fun we had. I can recall playing "crack the whip" with the strongest skater at the front of the line, pulling the rest of us behind. He'd take a sudden, sharp turn and we'd all let go and let the force of the turn send us flying across the ice. There must have been some hockey going on but I can't picture it. But hockey was played year 'round, ice or no ice, so there must have been.Our parents took turns hosting these skating evenings. That way, the ice that wasn't being used could be undergoing the respraying process. The moms would make pitchers and pitchers of hot chocolate. They would sit together in conversation, watching us whirl around. I'm sure we must have been out there on school nights. You wouldn't know how long the ice would last. A huge snowfall or a couple warmish days in a row would doom your smooth sheets of glassiness to pocked and cracked messes that were really impossible to bring back to their former usefulness. You had to skate while the skating was good.
I bet we were actually not out there all that long--especially if it was a school night. Our moms bundled us up to the enth degree, laced up our skates tightly, put mittens over mittens and tied our scarves in the back. Then they'd make the hot chocolate. It seems in my childhood memories as if we were out under the stars for a long time. But I bet it was only an hour (or maybe even less). What a lot of work it must have been for our folks.
How idyllic were those winters ... Where I lived in southern Ontario, there could be a lot of snow ... or not. My lakes (Erie and St. Clair) didn't really freeze--maybe in patches along the shoreline. But those are lakes. Real lakes. The Detroit River used to freeze all the way across back when my parents were children. That was before the river was deepened for the freighters that carry every sort of cargo you can imagine from Lake Superior all the way out through the St. Lawrence River. I remember skating to school on one day after it rained and froze over the snow. We skated there in the morning but walked home for lunch after the sun warmed up the lawns. There was no such thing as a "snow day." We went to school in every kind of weather. One year, there was so much snow on the roof of the gym that it collapsed under the weight. No one was in it at the time, thank goodness. But no one closed the school either. We didn't have gym class while we waited for the repairs to be made. We just went along with whatever the weather dealt us.
All these thoughts came rushing up from some deep well as I walked along under the brilliant blue sky. How lucky we were ... simpler times with simple pleasures that our parents made happen. We were blissfully secure in our neighborhood of families who were up for hours of frozen fun in the winter and porch sitting and catching fire flies in the summer. Talk about being privileged. It was pretty close to perfect.The ice. Those rinks. Madeleines.
