- parental guilt

Sometimes at the rink when I'm not otherwise engrossed in my reading or my writing, I'll watch my daughter skate and she'll surprise me with a move that is particularly artistic or technically difficult. This opens up my eyes to the possibility that if she really stays resolute to her practice she has the potential to actually be world class some day; when she gets off the ice I'll compliment her on the quality of her expressiveness.

Thinking of this makes me almost as equally anxious however as I am proud. Hers is an artist's striving, and to the extent that it satisfies her needs for expression or attention then it's fine. It is such a drain on her time and energies though that, unless (by some quirk of fate and luck) she reaches a level of fame achieved by only one or two skaters a year, in the long run I wonder if it is a liability rather than an asset. What if the accomplishment doesn't pay off in any tangible form that benefits her life overall?

I worry that she risks great disappointment should she not advance as far as she could be capable, either due to her own circumstances or my hobbled financial resources. This final possibility is particularly poignant for me... the last thing that I would want would be to get in the way of something that my daughter loves.

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- I'm just humbly filming

The most peculiar part of my involvement (once my daughter is fairly accomplished) is that she actually does moves on the ice that are too fast for my vision to discern. She is beyond my ability to perceive what is happening and my understanding of the physics involved. She spins and jumps in her own world of expertise, that small and specialized group of people who understand their moves by feel, and who have their own language that they share amongst themselves to describe their craft.

Now I can only lend a hunch, be a sounding board, and operate the camera. This is actually rather humbling. Okay, it is extremely humbling. I tape her, keep her centered in the frame and zoomed in appropriately, but when I'm done she comes by, watches, presses the pause button, and takes her own comments seriously. She knows what she is expecting to see -- her archetypes are beyond my gut feel, sense of style, or sense of managing a torquing center of gravity.

And yet she knows what she sees, and I can tell as she watches herself that she is critical and making small mental adjustments and annotations. The most flabbergasting part of watching a good skater practice is that their feelings now innately understand their physics.

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- soakers

I wrote an earlier post about an item that only insiders see (shooting the duck). Here's another little morsel of inside fun. Naturally skaters lug around their skates and costumes. But surprise, there's more inside that wheelie bag.

Hidden next to the skates is the young lady's alter ego, that little spark of her personality that shines through her program. If you want to view her alter ago in it's full unadulterated concentration -- a hundred per cent full strength -- just watch her unpack her skates.

As she removes them from her bag, hey what's that colorful cloth thingy at the bottom where the blade should be? Soakers. She'll remove the soakers immediately and replace them with hard plastic skateguards, tossing the soakers back into her bag (where they will patiently await until the very end of her practice).

Did you see them? Did you happen to catch a glimpse? Perhaps because they are at heart simply utilitarian (a soft terrycloth loopy interior to absorb stray moisture) this allows the outer facing the freedom to be whatever the skater can imagine.

I've seen florescent orange and black tiger-striped soakers. Shiny sparkly snakeskin soakers. Psychedelic tie die soaker. Fluffy fuzzy caterpillar soakers. You name it; there's no end to soaker craziness.

The next best thing to watching a skating competition is peeking at the soakers.

- first performance

A shout-out to Sarah for her first performance skate at an exhibition!

- ether

Practice ice has an interesting dynamic -- I don't mean the mental tete-a-tete between the skaters nor the telekinetics between a coach, her student, and the parent (those are also intriguing though).

The deeply intense dynamic is between a skater and her art and craft. Does she skate the physics, or does she skate the ether of the crowd? Perhaps she sways between one and the other.

A skater has a few different ways to practice stylistically. In one mode she expounds a physical tenor; although she can't see herself in real time she "feels" the moves deductively. Another method is to play to the love of her rink friends: how does this look? You see a lot of this interplay (and politics) during a practice session.

The most interesting method though plays to the ether of the program music and the love from a future audience. When you observe a skater practicing in this mode it's almost like watching somebody who has lost touch with their present world and surroundings. She is somewhere out in a world of her own imagination.

This may be somewhat more difficult to accomplish, yet the gals that can pull off this practice modality achieve a higher level of artistic expression.