The spring and summer leading up to my first program test were filled with activities outside figure skating’s frozen microcosm. I took two psychology classes during the spring semester and accepted a part-time summer position on campus assisting a professor with an animal behavior project. I had asked around for a summer job, not expecting to make much money but hoping to try something different in the field of psychology. This led me to a professor who studied the behavior of mice. He was interested in the animal mind and animal thought, rather than using rodents as models for humans. So I spent a couple of mornings each week instrumentally listening for the ultrasonic vocalizations mouse pups make as signals to their mother. I found the work fascinating and seriously began to contemplate earning a master’s degree in psychology, though I still did not know what I might do with said degree.

As much as I enjoyed the work, work that allowed plenty of time to skate and prepare for skating tests, I felt somewhat out of place in the laboratory. I was obviously ten years older than most every other student and could have passed more easily as an assistant professor. In fact, some staff members introduced themselves, confusing me with a new hire. This embarrassed me because I was just fooling around over the summer preventing brain rot while trying to figure out what the hell to do with the rest of my professional life.

I had been a student for so many years, sliding back into the graduate school mindset felt comfortable. I knew how to be a student. I knew how to study and how to learn. Furthermore, I wanted to learn. However, during those few months, I realized it was time for me to become the teacher rather than remain the student. While academic people are always “students” in a figurative sense, I no longer belonged in this role. My love of learning would be more appropriately used to inspire others.

For a major part of my life, school had given me goals. I always worked toward something. Once I graduated and moved on to a regular job, those goals evaporated. I lived a day-to-day existence where one day blended into the next, performing the same routine, often tedious, tasks over and over. I became agonizingly bored. Since I did not want to contend for a management position, I felt stymied in a repetitive dull situation. Taking a couple of psychology courses satisfied the need to achieve and better myself intellectually. I was also working in a different aspect of psychology. When people asked me about transitioning between consumers and rodents, I shrugged my shoulders sarcastically and reported no significant difference. This always got a laugh.

The role of “student” may have appealed on one level, but made me feel confused and misplaced. I had pre-enrolled in an animal behavior course for the fall and told the professor (who was also my summer supervisor) that I might drop the course. He looked surprised and asked what I planned to take instead. I thought I might simply stop going to school and look for a job. I felt guilty about languishing at this university and needed to collect myself. He volunteered to provide me with a reference but insisted I at least finish the two remaining courses I needed, at night if necessary. I had begun to feel silly taking post-doctoral classes with no real direction. After all, I really just wanted to pass my adult skating tests and start coaching.

A few days after this conversation, Professor Fitzmaurice found me in the laboratory placing baby mice on a platform and switching on the ultrasonic detector. “Kate,” he began. Then he saw the tiny mice and told me to finish this trial and come to his office.

I replaced the mice in their cages and went to meet Fitzmaurice. I sat down in the cramped space and smiled at the man who had been impressed with my background and ashamed to offer me student wages to work on his research. He handed me a sheet of paper that was still warm from the photocopy machine. The college needed adjunct professors for the fall semester. Dr. Fitzmaurice told me several faculty members had received grants and one was on sabbatical. This left a surplus of courses without instructors. He asked if I would be interested in teaching a couple of experimental psychology labs. I would not be doing this for the minimal pay but for experience and to close the widening gap on my resume. He recommended me to the department chairman, and before I left the building to visit my sister-in-law, I had been hired for an adjunct professorship.

During the spring, Felicia Svenssen and I had met by accident in the shopping mall one afternoon when my psychology class was cancelled. With her son in school, she had free daytime hours for shopping, tennis, and other dalliances. I arrived at the campus to find a flyer posted on the classroom door stating the professor was ill and his classes were cancelled for the day. I decided to drive to the mall and shop for a new pair of blue jeans. I found Felicia engaged in similar activity. We strolled to a café and sat down to enjoy coffee, a dessert item, and pleasant conversation.

Felicia and I had been friendly since we first met early in my relationship with Maxwell. However, we did not get together outside of family occasions, which were not many. I knew something about Felicia’s background, but I did not know her well enough to hear her views on personal issues. My sister-in-law held a Master of Science degree in environmental chemistry. Before giving birth to Matthew, she worked for an environmental management company that required her to travel to client sites. As a single woman, Felicia welcomed the travel. She met interesting people and visited all corners of the country. She met her husband, Mitchell Svenssen, this way. Felicia came to Connecticut regularly, where her firm had a satellite office. She stayed in a nearby hotel, which was managed by none other than the elder Svenssen brother. During Felicia’s many sojourns, she became friendly with the handsome and pleasant general manager who was always well groomed and polite. He finally asked her to join him for dinner one night when she did not have a business meeting. Felicia agreed and looked forward to Connecticut assignments from that day forward.

When Felicia and Mitchell married, the company generously agreed to transfer her to the Connecticut office. They liked Felicia and knew she would not maintain a long distance marriage and could easily find employment elsewhere. However, the job itself did not change. Felicia continued to travel, this time in reverse, spending ample time at the Atlanta office, where she had been previously stationed. This was the nature of Felicia’s profession; it could not be molded to suit her personal circumstances. Within a year of marriage, Felicia and Mitchell Svenssen were expecting their first (and only) child. Married as mature adults, they were eager to start a family. During her pregnancy and maternity leave, the new mother contemplated her career as an environmental chemist. She did not want to travel regularly anymore leaving her baby alone to be raised by someone else in a daycare center. She preferred not to leave her husband with sole responsibility for the child when he also had to work long (and sometimes odd) hours. Felicia resigned her position and never returned from maternity leave.

That was twelve years ago. Matthew had attended school for several years, but my sister-in-law still had not returned to her profession. She thought she might someday work as a consultant, making her own schedule and accepting only the assignments she could handle. So far, Felicia had not committed to anything other than being a fulltime mom and an avid tennis player. A few years before, Felicia enjoyed a dubious flirtation with figure skating. An involved parent, Mrs. Svenssen wanted her child to have athletic opportunities as well as academic and social ones. She took her son to the Chestnut Valley Arena for a group hockey lesson. During public sessions while Matthew practiced, Felicia often rented a pair of skates and circled the ice. She had to shuttle her little boy to the rink anyway. She might as well get some exercise instead of just sitting around on the benches with the other skating parents whose backsides widened by the minute. Before long, Felicia took a private lesson and bought a pair of high-quality recreational ice skates. She seemed to be hooked.

Of course, Matthew progressed much faster than his mother, though they were involved in different skating disciplines. While Felicia was still stumbling through a three-turn, Matt was tearing up the ice with speed drills and power skating. Soon her son graduated to hockey league practices and skipped public skating. However, Felicia could attend the morning open sessions at Chestnut Valley, the very same ones I ultimately discovered by myself. By the time we became acquainted, Felicia was so far removed from the world of adult skating, she no longer wasted mental storage capacity on trivia like freestyle skating schedules. Her agenda included tennis games and a plethora of chauffeuring duties. By her own admission, Felicia never spent more than two sessions per week on the ice, and very often she was lucky to squeeze in a solitary trip to the rink. When she became frustrated by lack of improvement, Felicia’s coach suggested more practice, at least more regular practice. “Sessions skated last month do not help you this month,” the pro had warned. If pressed, skating fell lower on Felicia’s priorities roster than tennis, a sport she enjoyed since childhood, a sport at which she was respectably good and capable of holding her own against most people she might encounter.

As a training tool, Felicia submitted to videotaping and was horrified with what it revealed. She skated slowly, stiffly, and her arms flailed. She looked pathetic and foolish. Felicia hated being a stereotypical adult skater. The level of commitment required to transform herself into a respectable skater would have been enormous, beyond Felicia’s willingness, assuming she possessed the inherent ability. Under those conditions, she saw no realistic alternative, no shining promise of profound development. Felicia’s skating passion sputtered and died.

I could sympathize with my sister-in-law’s repulsion to the adult skating stereotype. More than anything else, I did not want to skate like an adult. The finest compliment I could receive would be for someone knowledgeable to ask if I competed as a child. This did happen occasionally, but was generally associated with a spinning demonstration. Although I invited Felicia to come to the rink with me, she never accepted, usually saying she had given away her skates and did not feel comfortable anymore in rentals. Maybe she was afraid of re-igniting a latent addiction. Maybe she just did not want to see how good or bad a skater I may have been. Felicia would have been embarrassed for me if I plodded around the rink like an old lady. She would have had trouble smiling politely and voicing kind words. On the other hand, if I looked decent according to her standards, she might have regretted abandoning the sport.

After that happenstance encounter in the mall, Felicia and I arranged to meet every other week. She became a very close friend and confidant. She understood my reluctance to return to a consumer science career and supported my search for something else. When I mentioned coaching adult skaters, Felicia said very little. During the five-year stint she spent as a regular at Chestnut Valley, she never met an adult-trained skater who, in her opinion, could possibly coach freestyle. Her negativity was not entirely misplaced. Felicia knew something about skating. As a former adult skater, she could readily distinguish amorphous adult axels from quality axels learned in youth. She presented her opinion not to discourage me, but to be realistic. Obviously, I never introduced my sister-in-law to Georgeanne.

Chapter 83 posted 11/6/03
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