Free Skate

Every winter, Harvard Law School sets up a tiny, free ice rink on an old volleyball court behind the law library.  Two bed-sized bins beside the rink hold dozens of pairs of figure and racing skates, ripe for the borrowing.  Unencumbered by anything resembling pride or shame, Lea, Jonah and I jerked, wobbled, and skidded like true champions until thoroughly and happily exhausted.

Ice skating is by no means in my blood, but that’s one of the reasons I love the (rare) opportunity to do it.  It makes me feel like a child learning to walk.  I’m so delighted by the sheer novelty of the movement, the foreignness and faint danger, and the potential — always enticing, seldom realized — for graceful speed, that I never worry about the fact that I look foolish.  I just smile and laugh a lot.  Of course, good-natured company helps, too.