By INGRID MCCLEARY
I spent my early childhood in Holland, where it snowed every winter. After I moved to America, my Dutch memories grew dim, though some memories have remained as pure and crystalline as winter's first snowfall.
I remember the frozen pond across the road from my home and the little chair I brought with me--not to sit on, but to hold me up as I struggled to balance on twin metal blades.
But my memory isn't clear about the day I plopped my chair down hard on the thin ice, cracking it and plunging me waist-deep into the freezing water. No one in my family recalls the incident, and without corroboration, the memory is suspect.
Yet the "memory" haunts me. I can still feel the numbing water, the soaked leggings, the chattering teeth, the crying, the fear, and later, the body pain as blood coursed through my veins like needles. It's disconcerting to think that something so vivid could simply be the product of an overactive imagination.
I left my skates and trusty chair in Holland. And while I adored the California sun, I did miss that winter pond the first few years.
I soothed the ache by skating at the Sunnyvale Ice Rink on Reed Avenue. There, I learned to skate sans chair. I even managed cross-overs around the curves with a modicum of grace. But, as I grew older, skating lost its appeal. There are few things more humiliating to a 12-year-old than skating with a big wet stain on her bottom.
By the time I hit my teens, I gave up ice skating altogether and moved onto the next phase--I watched the winter Olympics on television. I watched in awe as nymph-like figure skaters landed triple axels. But what really garnered my admiration was how these same nymphs could land on their butts in full view of thousands of viewers, get up with a smile... and continue their routine!
While other teens soaked up the romance in Barbara Cartland's novels, I sighed over the figure skating pairs. What grace! What stamina! What guts! I learned what it meant to place your trust in a man the first time I witnessed the death swing. How many of us would willingly place our hands behind our backs and let a man swing us by our ankles, first high then low--so low your hair brushes the unforgiving ice?
I learned many things about relationships watching the pairs competition. The most important? Timing. Miss... and you crash. Wait for the proper moment... and you have magic.
Some figure skaters find trust, then love in their pairings. And once in a while, audiences witness that love personified on ice. Such was the case of 28-year-old Sergie Grinkov and 24-year-old Ekaterina Gordeeva, who captured the Olympic gold in 1988 and again 1994. Watching them skate was like watching love in motion--a love so gentle, it took my breath away.
Thus, it was all the more shocking to hear of Grinko's sudden death. He died on the ice, practicing for a show which included a performance on Dec. 28 at the San Jose Arena.
What a loss for us all, but how devastating for Ekaterina, who'd known Sergei for half her life and who is now alone with their 3-year-old daughter.
I see her skating now, but only in my imagination; a silken maiden gliding over a pond, searching for her mate and finding only echoes in the shaving of ice.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, Wed., December 6, 1995.
©1995 Metro Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.