Beneath a layer of gray dust from years spent in our attic, the metal suitcase is actually white, with royal-blue trim. Putting down the dust rag, I slide the button of the case’s tarnished steel lock to the right; the clasp sticks for a second, then flies open. Once this case contained treasure, but now I see only a pair of badly scuffed white skates. “Inside skates,” with wooden wheels.
If I think a minute, I might remember what Christmas I received the case--was it 1963, 1964? I need no time, though, to remember how I felt when I tried on the skates:
“They look a little big,” said Mom.
“They’ll be fine,” I said. “I can wear socks over my tights.”
“Make sure you try on this, too,” Mom added, handing me a shirt box. “Your Aunt Kas worked hard on it.”
“A skating skirt!” I said, as I lifted the tissue paper. “I love the color of the lining.”
“Magenta,” said my mother, who knew such things.
The outside of the skirt was soft gray wool, but the lining was a shiny deep-pink material (silk? polyester?) Standing there, I pictured how the skirt would flare out as I sped up, crossed one leg in front of the over, and glided around the bend at the roller skating rink. Wearing the skirt would bring me as close to “Ice Capades” glamour as a bony-kneed 11-year-old on roller skates could get.
Many a new outfit since has disappointed me, but those skates and skirt never did. Maybe the inches added by the wheels gave me, the perennial shortest in line, a novel sense of power? Was it that I felt beautiful in that beautiful skirt, as I whirled around the rink in time to the organ music played at the Concord Rolling Rink? Or that skating was the one semi-athletic thing I could do well? (Never did master backward skating, though.) Or was it the magic created by the dancing lights from the revolving ball in the center of Concord’s ceiling? (Those were disco lights long before anyone ever said “disco.”)
All of the above?
I must have fallen once or twice in those skates and skirt, but who remembers that? I remember how it felt to fly, even if at least one skate always remained on the rink’s floor. The last time I skated was about eight years ago, when my daughters attended their grade-school’s skating party at another rink. Wearing helmets and knee pads, and sporting plastic inline skates, they seemed to enjoy themselves. But could they fly, with all that padding holding them down? Or was it just I who felt weighed down, afraid I would fall, or worse, inadvertently knock over some tiny skater? I stopped after a few turns around the floor.
Back to the task at hand: I put the suitcase and skates in the give-away bag I’ve started to fill as I try to clear out this cluttered attic. Far from bony-kneed, I’m not about to use the skates again; besides, plastic, not wooden, wheels rule now. Of course, the gray and magenta skirt is as long-gone as the 20-inch waist it once encircled.
Sighing, I think, So many boxes to go through! Still I’m grateful for the mini-break the skating case gave me—the chance to remember when opening boxes was fun, and little girls could fly amid dancing lights.
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