During my first semester of study at Carolina Tech, I stayed alone in a three-bedroom apartment that Neil would share with me after he earned his baccalaureate degree in Virginia. We had lived together so blissfully the previous fall that neither of us looked forward to being apart. However, I did enjoy the peacefulness of my own company in the spacious apartment. Without Neil’s contribution, I could not have afforded to live by myself. After several roommate situations, I did not view solitude as a reason for loneliness. Residing in a town about fifteen miles from campus, I met people who were not students and whose lives differed considerably from mine. I readily made friends with my downstairs neighbors. A young married couple, she worked as a waitress and he operated heavy equipment. They often invited me into their home for coffee on Saturday mornings. A kind and charitable woman, Charlene volunteered at the local animal shelter and made a mission of rescuing stray cats. From her, I adopted a small gray kitten that I named Platinum, and who became commonly known as “Platty”.

At school, I filled my docket with meaningful classes, as Dr. Perez recommended. I regularly consulted with her over the telephone during my first semesters of doctoral study. Since I had no new academic confidants on the Carolina Tech faculty, I trusted my former mentor to guide me in a productive direction. For my first assistantship position, I was assigned to a professor who barely utilized half of my salaried hours to grade papers, proctor exams and set up audio-visual equipment. Now a master of coursework, I studied efficiently and rarely deviated from proven learning habits. I found myself with time on my hands and not a rink in sight.

I lived in Lawrence, South Carolina; a seedy town that was home to several strip malls and discount centers, a modern galleria, two factories, a textile mill, three large grocery stores, and countless bars and home cooking slop houses. But the nearest ice and roller rinks were over two hours away. Fortunately, I had Charlene and her husband, Elliot, and little Platty to keep me company. I bought an exercise bicycle and rode it faithfully in front of the television. While riding, I did not contemplate the day when my finely honed muscles would take to the ice. Although I skated upon returning to Northern Virginia after Neil’s graduation, I did not intentionally keep myself in shape for figure skating. I had yet to commit to the sport and did not consider myself “a skater”. I merely preferred not to gain weight or develop cellulite. Living alone with insufficient funds to indulge myself with restaurant meals and walking regularly on campus, I was at little actual risk of doing either. However, I had always exercised and thought the bike would be a convenient way to get a workout while watching my favorite television shows.

Always a casual fan of competitive figure skating, I never followed it obsessively. Of course, television coverage of skating was more limited in the era prior to the infamous Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan spectacle. If I missed a competition, I may have been disappointed, but did not ask all of my neighbors and classmates if they happened to videotape it. Having to share the television with no one, I treated myself to all of the available skating coverage. Charlene and I often watched it together. Like many women, Charlene also liked skating, though she had no desire to skate more than once a year at Christmastime. “Oh, it’s so pretty!” she would exclaim with the wonder of a little girl -- like me watching Peggy Ann Fleming. A true layman, she called spinning “twirling” and jumping “twirling in the air”. Even I could not recognize the subtle distinctions between jumps, but began to learn them with the help of a book I borrowed from the university library. If I had not read the novelization of the classic skating movie, Ice Castles, as a thirteen-year-old; I would not have known compulsory school figures, the original foundation of figure skating, existed. Charlene and I watched televised skating from the perspective of fans, without in-depth understanding or reason for criticism. We appreciated everything we saw and chose favorites based on overall appeal rather than side-by-side comparison of technical content. In the following years, I departed from this naďve viewpoint, and skating lost some of its fantasy quality. However, I grew to comprehend the difficulty of seemingly insignificant steps that are transparent to non-skating spectators.

Spring came early in South Carolina, though the climate was generally mild most of the year, and inline skaters traversed the campus’s pathways with knapsacks on their backs filled with textbooks. Having never inline skated, I watched them suspiciously, admiring the ingenious linear arrangement of four wheels on a skating shoe. The large cumbersome plastic boots appeared unyielding like shoes to be worn by an astronaut rather than a skater. A veteran of soft pliable boots, I could not imaging skating in something that would not budge with the flexing of my ankles. Yet, I craved skating around the university and considered buying a pair of the curious skates. Walking along the campus paths on my way to the library, student union or computer labs; I observed an endless variety of debris ranging from garbage and abandoned event fliers to more natural materials including pebbles, twigs and dirt. The indigenous trees seemed to constantly shed leaves, seedpods, flowers or nuts. None of these obstacles existed in an ice or roller rink. Of course, the persistent foot traffic of students rushing to class and loitering in talkative groups resembled crowds of kids hanging out in any skating facility.

In spite of my misgivings, I slipped my feet into a pair of hard plastic inline skates and secured the Velcro straps. Cautiously, I glided around the discount store’s sporting goods aisle wearing the bizarre things. They felt nothing like ice or roller skates, although people had assured me that inline skating was just like ice skating and much simpler than traditional quad roller skating. Maybe from the perspective of someone who could do neither, the inlines were the same. However, I considered myself a decent public session ice skater and had been a competent freestyle roller skater. I could have afforded the sidewalk quality inlines, but extracted my feet from their synthetic grasp and returned them to the cardboard box.

Other than those few strokes in clumsy foreign boots, I did not skate again until Neil’s graduation. My new environment distracted me from any painful longing I might have felt to skate. For the second time in less than two years, I had to start over in a new state, new school, with new people and friends. The promise of Neil’s arrival at our apartment before the beginning of the fall semester was the only constant from my previous life at Virginia University. Living away from campus in a small Southern town, I basically entered a different culture. Life followed a slower, friendlier pace. The commute allowed me to enjoy my new car and offered time alone to unwind after a day of classes and assistantship duties. It reminded me of driving home to Cambridge Hills during the pleasant months after my parents’ separation.

I spent much of the summer alone in South Carolina. Following Neil’s graduation, he stayed at the apartment with me for a week setting up his computer equipment before we went to Myrtle Beach together. I returned to summer employment performing mundane data processing for a couple of professors, and Neil accompanied his family to the Caribbean. This time, I did not resent them for taking him away. I had grown accustomed to solitude and did not mind Neil’s absence. When Elliot worked late, Charlene and I took turns making dinner for each other and sat up talking into the nighttime hours. I spent weekend mornings in their apartment sipping flavored coffees that we bought by the quarter pound as a special treat. Now that my work would not be evaluated for an academic grade, I renewed my interest in sewing and made a summer wardrobe of comfortable shorts and cute girlish tops.

By mid-August, Neil arrived in Lawrence for the fall semester to begin his graduate studies. While I had doubts about readjusting to his constant companionship, we got along superbly. Both of us filled the daytime hours with classes, but returned home to leisurely late afternoons and evenings. Neil decided to accept a partial assistantship and taught a general physics laboratory that he considered good experience if he ever decided to pursue an academic career. He became friendly with Charlene and Elliot, joining our morning coffee klatches.

We also enjoyed exploring the surrounding vicinity, discovering a few good places to eat and stores to buy books, music and other junk that he could afford more readily than me. However, I always managed to a have a few extra dollars to buy a length of fabric or an ornament for my hair. Neil fostered his interest in photography seeking new equipment that he often used to stage modeling sessions of me. While I found this flattering, I had never seen a student burn through so much money. To his credit, Neil spent a healthy amount of his wealth taking me to dinner, movies and for other entertainment. He never asked me to pay for any of our outings.

I spent that Christmas in Northern Virginia and returned to Lawrence to begin my second year of doctoral study in early January. Waiting in the mailbox, I found a computer generated grade report and tore it open anxiously. For the first time in my considerable academic career, I received straight “A”s. Neil and I were happy, I got along with his family over the holidays, my grades were excellent, and I had wonderful new friends and a sweet healthy cat. Now all I needed was place to skate.

The content of this site is copyright by K. J. N., 1999 - 2002