#4 Skating

My Dad as a Kid

There’s a creek in Wisconsin near where my dad grew up, and when he was about 12, they got a hard freeze with no snow. The creek looked like glass. He put on his ice skates and skated for miles up and down that creek all alone. He went daily until the snow finally came and covered it up.

I often think about the disconnect between the kid who skated alone for hours through the forest in the deadly chill and the dad I grew up with. The isolation wouldn’t have bothered him, but as far as I knew, he hated expending excess energy. It would’ve been annoying—too much trouble for too little reward, but that year, he loved it. He told us over and over again about how much he loved it.

Inspired by a prompt by Wake Lloire.