Skating takes edge off germy January
By Amy van Aarem | January 31, 2008
Who among us here in the South Shore doesn’t love January? The Patriots hurtle toward another Super Bowl victory, and frozen ponds and backyard rinks dot our landscape. But add to that the cars that don’t start in the morning, sand (not the nice Florida kind) that gets in your shoes and house, and the inevitable chapped lips, windburn from icy blasts off the water.
And there is the matter of germs. January is made for germs – virus, bacteria, influenza, from bird to Asian.
In our house, strep is making its second tour. We’ve been through two sets of toothbrushes, a case of Clorox wipes, and enough Purell to fill a bathtub. Our hands are dry and chapped from rubbing and scrubbing, and yet somehow the bacteria still circle the house. It landed again this week, striking down the baby on Monday, me on Wednesday, and for the second time in two weeks, the eldest.
The other morning I packed the two antibiotically covered kids into the bus and carpool respectively. The 2-year-old, still contagious (a Martin Luther King Day diagnosis of strep and bonus infection: impetigo), was stuck home with me. We couldn’t go to preschool, we couldn’t go to the gym, we couldn’t go anywhere . . . but crazy. We needed to go out. She’d been on the medication for 24 hours and was feeling well, so I suggested: “Do you think we should go skating?”
As we rummaged through the bin for her skates and helmet, I thought back to early December when my husband spent a full Saturday in the backyard drilling holes into the ground with myriad trips to Lowes for more wood. When a neighbor wandered over to say hello, my husband recruited him to nail 2-by-4s around the perimeter of the yard. It was maybe 11 degrees.
But they worked diligently into dusk, pausing only to take sips of their frozen beers. Later when the neighbor’s wife beckoned him home (I think they devised a hand signal so he wouldn’t have to stay out any longer), I looked out from the warmth of the kitchen, hour 13, and there he was still fiddling around with the thing . . . Is he crazy?
No, but he’s Dutch and an engineer, and building, as well as skating, is in his genes. So every winter he builds an ice rink for us. And every year it gets bigger and more elaborate, like my complaining about it.
But then you get to the end of January, and you’re stuck inside with a sick child, and on top of strep, you’ve got a bad case of cabin fever. And so you strap on the skates and step out onto the ice.
I propped the radio in the open kitchen window so we’d have some music or morning news to skate to. It was one of those glorious winter mornings: brisk and sunny, when 20 feels balmy.
Our rink backs up to the Greenbush line, so as the train rambled down the track, my little one dropped her stick and started to wave, “The train, the train!” (like Tattoo from “Fantasy Island” announcing the arrival of the plane! The plane!)
As the train passed, it slowed, gave a toot, and I noticed the conductor’s window was open. He leaned out and said, “Woo hoo!”
I gave him the old fist pump and a Dorothy Hamill twirl for good measure. Woo hoo! indeed. To January, to January.
Amy van Aarem can be reached at amyvanaarem@hotmail.com.
Tags: Fantasy Island, Germs, Kids, Skating, Sports
