Skating

Nothing sparks Russophilia like an afternoon of ice skating. I've laced up maybe 3 or 4 times in my entire life--I'm a little awkward on the ice--but whenever I pass a rink I am riveted. I think of my first fumbling attempts, wearing my mom's old skates, to glide across a 10 foot frozen puddle in our yard when I was 9 years old. Or the impromptu one-on-one hockey game I played with a friend a few years later, before litigation fears led the high school to stop flooding its practice fields in winter. Or Levin bumping into Kitty and trying to impress her with his moves in Anna Karenina. Or Ekaterina Gordeeva at the 1988 Olympics.



So the other day I took my son to a local indoor rink. He hated it. He said it was the worst sport of all time. He held onto my arm for dear life for an hour straight. By the time we were done my ankles were wobbly with pain and I'm sure I pulled something in my hip. They say you grow nostalgic with age, but I seem to have been born nostalgic and getting older just destroys one illusion after another.