Actually it happened this way: The potato version

Donny has it right. Almost. (Remember those opening vignettes in the movie When Harry Met Sally ? Couples seldom agree on the exact version of events.)

I recall a fateful day at the rink in 1997. A young girl approached me and asked that I demonstrate a “camel,” a skating spin executed in a ballet dancer’s arabesque position. Without a second thought, I stepped into the camel and felt a sickening sensation in my left hamstring. It was as if a huge rubber band in my leg had snapped and balled up behind my knee, quivering. And then came an excruciating pain like nothing I’d ever known. I limped off the ice, knowing that whatever had happened was not going to be fixed by a bath in Epsom salts and a few days off. Soon after, a sports physician confirmed my fears: a portion of the biceps femoris muscle of my hamstring had “avulsed,” torn completely off of its attachment on my pelvis, and in his opinion was inoperable. At the time his diagnosis seemed an appropriate punishment, and I didn’t bother to seek a second opinion: I was out of shape. I hadn’t warmed up properly. I deserved what I’d gotten.

I was forty-one years old. For the first time in three decades I was being forced to consider my identity as something other than an ice skater. In spite of many other professional achievements, I realized how much I still counted on that one ability as a validation of my self-worth. Although I couldn’t appreciate it at the time, I had been handed the opportunity to start re-conceiving my sense of who I was.

Six years would pass, though, before I even thought about retrieving my ice skates from the back of the closet; six years during which I stopped all physical activity, other than an occasional game of golf; six years of unrelieved depression over what I perceived as an irreparable loss.

It was my husband who first suggested that I try to skate again. We were going to Sun Valley, Idaho, for a getaway weekend. He reminded me how much I’d loved skating on the outdoor ice rink there, and I countered with excuses. By then, I was suffering from chronic neck and back pain. As it had been explained to me by a massage therapist I’d been seeing, my condition was analogous to an old telephone cord that been twisted out of shape and had become progressively kinked and knotted. My illeopsoas muscles cramped constantly; I could hardly bear to bend my knees to put on a pair of socks. Reluctantly, though, I agreed to take my skates to Sun Valley. Lacing them as I had thousands of times, I was filled with dread. When I stepped on the ice I found I could barely stroke around the rink much less try a spin. After ten minutes I pulled my boots off and sank even farther into depression. I had been dreaming about skating nearly nonstop for months; it seemed that when I slept my body campaigned for itself, begging for movement to be restored to it. I’d awaken still feeling the familiar and delightful sensations that skating produced. Now I knew that I’d never enjoy them again, except in my dreams.

But later that night, sleepless in our Sun Valley condo, I had a sudden impulse to check my blades. Balancing a coin flat on the inverted left blade—a means of assessing the integrity of its edges—I could distinctly see an aberration, a place where the blade was nearly imperceptibly bent. Whether the damage had occurred before or after the hamstring tear, I couldn’t be sure. But for the first time since the injury, I had reason for optimism. A bent blade could be replaced. Perhaps my bent body might be healed.

Back home in Salt Lake City I consulted a physical therapist who evaluated the old hamstring injury and the related distortions caused as my body tried to compensate for it. My range of motion was still good, in her opinion, but my core strength was negligible.

“Pilates,” she said. “If you want to skate again, start doing Pilates.”

Inwardly I groaned. I’d already experimented with and rejected several forms of structured exercise. Swimming laps was mind-numbing. Weightlifting with an inexperienced trainer had caused more harm than good. Yoga was soothing, but, as a skating friend of mine put it, “How interesting is holding a triangle pose when you’ve been doing axels on ice since you were a kid?” Jogging made my knees hurt. And none of these options targeted the imbalances caused by the damaged hamstring and the rehabilitation it required.

I was desperate, though. On the way home from shopping one day, I stopped by Streamline Bodyworks for a brochure. Just a few mat classes, I told myself. No sense in going overboard.
Well. I went overboard. And nearly three years later, a few hundred hours of Pilates later, I'm off to my first, yes first, skating competition. (More on that later.)

Oh, and about the potatoes. On the way home from Sun Valley, back in 2005, Don and I talked a lot about skating, the bent blade, and my grief. Meanwhile, it was harvest time in Idaho. On the backroads that Don likes to take, we found ourselves following truckbed after truckbed loaded with pototoes. And every couple of miles, we stopped to make our own harvest of spuds--those that had toppled from the trucks. We came home with a plan (for my skating swan song) and with a peck of taters to boot. Lucky us!