I decided long ago that I’m not the kind of person who has a house for a home. My real home is far more fluid than a couple of walls could ever contain.
My home is wherever I am with my favorite people, where I feel that inner peace that is usually accompanied by comfortable silence and some newfound inside joke.
My home is the passenger seat of my best friend’s car. My home is a booth at Culver’s. My home is the green chair I’m writing to you from.
For 18 years, I have called Patterson Ice Center one of my homes.
Through repaintings of the bricks, additions of TVs, and rearranging of the couches, I’ve watched it change like any other building. I’ve watched the ice be redone, and the lobby morph from a yoga studio to an off-ice class space to a conditioning area.
But, undoubtedly and undeniably, it has watched me change more.
From going through many, many pairs of skates to the pair I’ve had for several years now. From a toddler gripping a red walker, terrified to let go, to a young adult, now begging the toddlers I teach to let go. From gold medals to low-place ribbons. From jumping for joy to tripping over air. From minor anxieties to full-blown panic attacks. From Halloween skates to daily practice to early summer morning skates to games of sardines at late-night dress rehearsals.
The rink is the start and end of half my stories. Every debrief, every rambling, every rant has been had there. Incredible friendships have started there. My longest friendship started there. Skating has been my “thing,” my niche, my dominating personality trait for my whole life. And now that I’m beginning to stray away, I don’t know what will fill that void.
If you count home by how long you’ve “lived” there, the rink wins uncontested.
But that won’t always be true.
Chances are, I’ll land somewhere else, put roots in the ground, and let life drift by without the rink in my rotation of homes. Maybe I’ll even find a new place to be my source of icy memories.
Or maybe I won’t, and my skates will collect dust in a closet.
When I remember skating, I hope to remember 7-year-old me. In her bubblegum pink, rhinestoned dress, skating to “Lollipop” by The Chordettes, winning gold at her first-ever competition. Trading Shopkins and crafting between sessions. 11-year-old me, going to Detroit to watch her favorite skaters compete at Nationals. 13-year-old me, saying goodbye to her old coach. 17-year-old me, passing my Senior Moves-in-the-Field test. Me now, skating in my final ice show in a few short weeks.
I’ve been thinking about this column for four years. Skating is so much of me that it had to be a muse eventually.
If the walls of the rink could talk, they could tell you everything about me.
They could tell you about how I made them my home, about how I grew from an impassioned little girl to a burnt-out young adult. They could tell you about my highs and lows and landings and falls.
And I hope they don’t mind that I returned the favor by telling you about them.
