With Lake Placid only three weeks away, I ponder my quiet mood and checkbook in the black. This is a unique phase for a skating mom.
 
I discount the eclipse that transpired yesterday. Of course, since my child is no longer competing, the expenses are reduced. No competition dresses, no choreography, coach, and music accounts rendered. My nerves are not stretched to the very ends and attached to the outer layer of skin at seemingly every pore.
 
This year I may actually be able to watch and mingle with other skating parents without displaying that “Red Bull twitch” and the “I-can’t-even-look-at-the-scores blink.” I might even check the weather ahead of time (and care!) in case I want to stroll Main Street to shop for things unrelated to skating.
 
I might even be able to laugh about the old times, as in “remember the time the zipper broke right before the free dance and you had to have your daughter sewn in her dress during warm up? Remember how calm you weren’t?” Or “remember the time you had an original dance costume made to look like an authentic Turkish outfit (well, if an authentic Turkish costume had imported sequins and crystals and would have been made of Lycra) and then a few of the judges said they didn’t like it so the coaches had you have another authentic Turkish costume made with even less/more features and then other judges said they liked the first costume better? Remember how happy you weren’t?”
 
Of course, it may be too soon.
 
So I am quietly anticipating my trip to Lake Placid. My checkbook suggests I might be able to stop at Woodbury Commons (AKA Gayle King and Adam Glassman in the current issue of “O Magazine”) and buy a yellow belt for $228.00 and not think it is frivolous. Even my lodging bill is less than a month of Caramel Macchiato Grandes at Starbucks as I am sharing a log home with the IDC team AND I will be able to pack for the trip in two Vera Bradley weekend bags. It all sounds so normal; it all sounds so calm.
 
And it will be. Until I walk into the arena and see the faces of dancers, and the faces of ice dancer moms and dads. And then I know all the feelings will return — the memories of the medals, the memories of the tears. I will remember the teams that have moved on: Adrienne K-Doddy, now a kindergarten teacher. Loren, now the reigning Miss Massachusetts. Chase going to dental/medical school. Clare a psychologist. Pilar deciding on law school and being the next Jerry McGuire.

Compulsory dances going the way of figures.

Life and ice dance are fluid, in a constant state of change, and although some of the faces are new, the looks on all of the faces remain the same: a blend of excitement and nervous anticipation, and the looks that declare “we are bringing it!!”

It is less than three weeks to the event, and all of us, whether frayed or not, are thinking close to the same thing: We are all bringing it — whether attitude or program contents or extra pillows and a case of Pepsi from Costco.
 
Mombo