WINTER SKATE
Backwoods Blog;
in the woods and on the road…
Winter Skate (1968)
Childhood memories are a long look back in the rear-view mirror of life (and these days the look back is getting longer all the time). These photos were all taken on the same day ice skating on the pond across the road from our house, which you can see in the background. Memory is an ethereal, highly selective (and sometime unreliable) tool to reconstruct what you think may have, or may not have, happened to you and other people who share the same memory. In this case, I’m not sure how much I would have remembered about this day ice skating without the aid of a few of these photos. Someone once said, “Did it really happen if you don’t have a photo of it?”
I remember this day because it was the day my twin sister (Debbie) and I learned how to skate (or at least make our first attempt). We are both wearing a pair of beginner’s figure skates with double blades, which make it easier to get used to having blades under your boot. Like anything new you’re trying, the first impression and sensations associated with it get locked into long-term memory. I can still feel the new and awkward and tippy sensation of the skate even now. I remember how hard it was to keep my ankles from buckling sideways and trying to skate in a straight line while staying upright. I also remember looking at my feet all the time, as if that would help, which also made it harder to see where you are going. If you look at picture #3 (learning the basics…), it verifies that remembered experience. I can still “hear” the sound of blade on hard ice, “see” the spray of ice shaved by steel, “feel” the cold, frozen surface of pond.
Whenever I want to fact-check a memory in question, I call my sister. If I can’t remember something, perhaps she might. If I remember something one way, she might remember it in another. After exchanging information, this is what we came up with. This was the only time we ever skated on Porter’s Pond. That in itself, establishes a stand-alone memory so it isn’t overlapping with multiple memories. Also, there are no dates on the back of the photos which makes pinpointing the year challenging. Since we both got our glasses in the second grade, that would place this photo no later than the winter of 1968, which is what I have chosen. Both of us remember my grandmother, Laura Stitham, being there in her orange hat (and we have a photograph to verify that). My sister remembers asking my mother who lived in the Porter house, which was abandoned at the time, and I remember her asking that. Neither of us remember my father being there, but once again, we have a photograph indicating that he was. My theory is that he wasn’t there initially, but joined us later to see how we were doing and ended up in the photo. Humorously enough, my grandmother must have volunteered to take a family photograph of the occasion and did a rather poor job. Our mother gets cut out of the shot!
These are just fragments of an afternoon spent together as a family over fifty years ago. Bits and pieces are often all we have from the collective memories of life experience. Yet, each of these are an important imprint that we carry with us in the living days ahead.
Make memories each day.
In the woods,
Dave
February 13, 2025
On Porter’s Pond
Learning the basics….
Family photo (well almost…)