Unexpected gift

My ex-Step Father was born in Germany and moved to Canada as a young boy which meant that English was his second language but he speaks it without an accent at all. Sometimes in families the reasons behind what happens in the past lives of your family members get muddied or lost; thus, I am not sure why he left Germany, other than I know that it was during a very turbulent time in history since he is now in his sixties.

He was and I suppose still is, a very brilliant man. I remember him being on the edge of my life and not as an essential element of it, like my mother is...But he gave me some gifts that are forever ingrained into my being. Some things that shape who I am today.

Canada is a country that does winter sports very well, perhaps because it is cold there. Think of hockey and one thinks of Canada. Right? So this man naturally played hockey and naturally introduced me to the sport of ice skating at the age of eight. (This was to be his biggest gift to me besides the ocean but that is a story for another day.) There is nothing remarkable about a man taking his soon-to-be step daughter ice skating, until you realize that I lived in Arizona and it would become my passion.

I became a competitive ice skater, skating from 3:45 am to 8:30 am before school and from 3:30 pm to 8:00 pm after school Monday to Friday every week for years and years, right up until I discovered the love of boys around the age of 14 and half. Ice skating gave me a sense of self worth that nothing else I did ever gave me and it gave me a sense of belonging, which is ironic because it is a solitary sport, like writing.

Every four years I get to breath into my old dreams as I watch the female skaters perform and I have the muscle memory of doing some of those movements. (I never did triple anythings...but I did do doubles of almost all the jumps except axels and I could do all the spins.) I know what is like to glide across the ice in an arena with your music pulsing threw your veins and what flying feels like. My body remembers that spirals are actually great liberating fun and spins are much easier that they look. My dreams are still littered with ice skating. I regret giving up the sport more than any other choice I have ever made and yet, I realize that life is a series of choices. If I had stayed doing it I would be someone else today and perhaps I would not like that woman.

Graciously I extend thanks to the man who gave me a gift as a little girl, a gift of self worth, even though he did not intend to.