The Christmas music that I absolutely love and enjoy is what would be termed old-fashioned. I'm not charmed by Granny getting run over by a reindeer and Rudy's red nose is a fun-sort of song with it's own fame, is not my #1 go-to for what I enjoy the most. The Church has Christmas music 24/7 on The Mormon Channel radio. I really appreciate that gift! hours and hours of a great assortment of Christmas music!!
This morning they played the wintry song of The Skaters Waltz. I sat down and relived a memory from long ago. My parents had made great effort to purchase figure skates for Dixie and I. In order for us to have skating lessons, and a place to skate on!, they would drive us from Spenard to Anchorage to the outdoor Hockey Rink. It had wood sides and we clung to the wood until we could venture out on our own. It was freezing cold and even the warm-up shack offered little warmth. Exhaling our breath into myriads of little puff clouds...it felt we were freezing, including our dripping noses.
We were unaware and therefore didn't appreciate the effort and expense that took on my parents part...but we did learn to skate and we enjoyed it so much.
Then came the big day that an ice-show was coming to Anchorage! A real one! With a headliner! To me this was like royalty was going to arrive and we would be in the presence of famous, surely world famous, people. My Mother did not remind me that the group was coming to perform at an outdoor hockey rink with scarce seating for hockey fans.
Our skating club got invited to skate!! We were going to skate with stars! Bliss!
My Mother needed to sew the costumes that Dixie and I would wear. This was real drama! A costume! 2 costumes each! All were different! Mother was a perfectionist on sewing and much like the disgruntled Father, in A Christmas Story, that forever fought his furnace, she would let fly with foul words about the pattern or the fabric or on and on. When she saw the other costumes performance night...she declared they were sloppy. Mother made no mistakes... ever.
It all felt so glamorous and so exciting and as we practiced I dreamed of skating to perfection. The instructor put me in as the last link on a spinning pinwheel. We were lined up as Policemen. (Mother hated making that costume almost as much as the Harem one) The last person to link arms, on that straight line really spinning around, had to be fast. And I was the shortest. They were counting on me! Confidence that I was the one to do the job! They buoyed me up to do the deed!
I stood straight and listened for my cue as to when to leave so that the timing was perfect for my arm grab. Suddenly I was sitting on the ice, legs extended out front, flying across the ice, right into the wooden fence! Horrors! I wanted to die. I knew I'd disgraced everyone by slamming into the fence, and wrecked the number, and destroyed the entire ice show!!!! what to do?
They were still spinning and I got up and started skating furiously and the snippy girl that was to put out her arm for me to link onto wasn't doing it. I yelled at her....give me your arm!!! Next circle...she did. The audience applauded.
Skating off and sobbing my heart out in the deepest embarrassed painful humiliation. I started planning how to never be seen in public for my entire life.
I wanted to take off my costume but was told I had to take a bow with the cast.
Then the Star of the show was at my side. The most beautiful person I'd ever seen-- in her dreamy costume. She hugged me as I sobbed and she confessed she had fallen before and she helped me to survive. In spite of my insisting I'd wrecked the entire show...she reassured me that I hadn't.
At the curtain call...I got an extra boost of applause.
Funny how a young girl can feel an entire ice show, that was definitely not a Holiday on Ice extravaganza, rests on her shoulders.
I don't remember what my parents said afterwards, on the drive home, except they kept trying to get me to look out the car window at snowy trees and snowy roads! Diversion tactics.
Obviously my Psyche is impacted, if at this age I still see the scene in my mind, with such clarity and detail! The memory is now tempered with humor and realism ... also great appreciation for my parents, doing their best, to give Dixie and I some fun!
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