When I awoke in the hospital, Maxwell was by my side conversing with a doctor. I had been hauled out of the rink on a stretcher, taken to the emergency room in an ambulance, and admitted immediately. Setting the break in my lower leg did not require surgery, but I was still groggy from pain medication and anesthetics. A trim, form-fitting plaster cast encased my lower leg. Under the expression of concern on my husband’s features, I recognized an unfamiliar emotion, one I had never seen him display. His eyes viewed me with a sternness that made me uncomfortable. He was not exactly angry (and Max was not the type of person to say ‘I told you so’), but he was not pleased. Of course the fall happened accidentally, although I had willingly invited this disaster with my eagerness to pass the gold test. Max had been supportive of my skating, as he believed purging it from my system would allow me to settle into a responsible adult lifestyle. However, I only became more obsessed with the sport and increasingly reluctant to adopt a conventional profession.

“She has numerous stress fractures of the left tibia. Virtually no damage to the right tibia,” the doctor informed my husband.

Max had begun to shake his head. He knew I skated clockwise.

“My landing leg,” I muttered.

“She ice skates,” my husband clarified. “Kate has been doing advanced jumps to qualify for coaching. She completes the jumps on her left leg.”

The doctor nodded. In his opinion, the break resulted from an awkward fall shattering an already vulnerable bone along one of the stress fractures. I might have argued that I had not broken my leg doing an axel, but hard axel landings were indirectly responsible for the damage. All of those flat landings that caused pain in my shins gradually resulted in cracks and fault lines in the affected bone.

Still disconnected from sedatives, I remembered my old flame, Howard Millbank, and his career-ending automobile accident, the accident that terminated his competitive swimming scholarship, left steel pins in his leg, and caused him to limp for the rest of his life. Panic swept over me in sickening waves. Would I ever skate again? My boots certainly would not. My lower leg had swollen so fiercely that a technician had cut the constricting leather to free my foot. Trying to pull a broken leg free of a custom made skating shoe would cause unnecessary trauma. Skates are expensive, but they can be replaced.

My doctor assured me I would skate again, but the bone had to heal completely and I would need physical therapy to regain lost mobility and muscle tone. I would have to return to the ice wisely and reconsider the importance of those destructive jumps. He recommended I avoid advanced jumping and focus on lower-impact skating.

From my demented perspective this meant starting over with the dance tests, eventually passing the adult gold dances, like the woman at Chestnut Valley who coached adult ice dance. This was certainly an achievable goal, since I knew someone about twenty years older than myself who currently earned money teaching with those credentials. I had no experience with ice dance except for the disjointed dance movements Orville substituted for moves in the field. As I drifted off to sleep, corny ice dance tunes played in my mind assuring me my dream was not dead.

Max took me to Maple Terrace that Christmas, packed in the back of the car with my leg stretched out across the seat. I did not want to go. All I wanted to do was sit on the couch watching television and feeling sorry for myself. I despised walking on crutches and the snow did not make the matter more palatable. But Max preferred dragging me out of the house and instilling a sense of celebration in our holiday season. He did not want to spend his vacation watching me wallow in self-pity while avoiding the temptation to analyze my skating priorities.

The peacefulness of Maple Terrace always comforted me. I enjoyed sitting at the breakfast table drinking a cup of flavored coffee and watching the shoreline of Lake Champlain turn icy. The monochromatic world outside our cozy little cottage blended white snow into gray landscape, black foreboding water, and back to gray and white clouds. Sometimes the sun shined, igniting frozen tree limbs with crystalline sparkles of ice. Max puttered around in his new garage and drove me to Burlington for lunch and shopping. I spent afternoons reading or working at my sewing machine on clothing for my own wardrobe. My skating dress business had dwindled due to my personal lack of interest, and I rarely designed a costume for anyone, usually only honoring requests from desperate regulars.

Maxwell sat beside me at the table one evening. The sun was setting over the lake and disappearing behind fluffy clouds. It had been a beautiful winter day, not especially cold, but not warm enough to turn the light blanket of accumulated snow into a sloppy, muddy mess. Max poured a cup of coffee and handed it to me. I pushed my fabric out of the way to welcome his company.

“I think you should enroll in classes fulltime this semester. Find out if counseling is really what you want,” he suggested. “What else are you going to do?” he added rhetorically.

With skating an impossibility, I wondered the same thing, but returning to the university as a fulltime graduate student justifiably never occurred to me. “I’ll look into it,” I replied ambiguously. Although I had been accepted into the masters program in counseling, I had not made a personal commitment to the idea. I submitted the application out of a sense of guilt, a socially programmed urge to do something practical with my life. I planned to enroll in one course and continue working on the axel with the immediate ambition of passing the gold test. That plan was obviously defunct now.

Max did not elaborate on his suggestion, assuming I understood his position on the subject. My husband never objected to my pursuit of a coaching career. Coaching was a lucrative part-time business for those who could handle it and recruit students. Max recognized my ability on the ice and thought I could become a good instructor, particularly for adult skaters. I would be doing something I enjoyed and could earn a respectable sum of extra money, once I established a clientele. Maintaining a flexible schedule would allow me to continue to care for our home. Coaching had been acceptable to Maxwell, but he did not realize what had happened to my leg as a result, how I had beaten my body with effort and failure.

My spirits improved during that holiday. I needed a break from skating. I needed to explore this counseling opportunity that I had only reluctantly acknowledged while engrossed in the axel challenge. I planned to be back on the ice that summer, possibly working on the axel again by September, when the crowds cleared for the beginning of another season. I had pushed ice dance to the back of my mind.

Although I dreaded hobbling around campus, I received a medical permit for a parking space next to the psychology building. Once in the building, I rarely had to leave except for an occasional jaunt to the library or student center. I made new friends, stimulated my mind, and challenged myself with a new professional endeavor. In addition to a fulltime course load, I worked twenty hours per week in the counseling center, for which I earned a modest salary and paid reduced tuition, much like my situation at Carolina Tech. I served as a peer counselor helping fellow students with problems as diverse as career choice to romantic troubles to academic stress management. As a mature adult, I had more experience in these areas than the average twenty-four year old graduate student. Yet, no one at my new job called me doctor, and only the administrative staff and my mentor knew my background. Since I was not a licensed counselor or a board certified psychologist, my title did not apply in this context and using it would have been misleading.

The compassionate soul who had expressed sympathy to grieving pet owners at Maxwell’s veterinary clinic resurfaced at the university counseling center. I listened intently to the situations described by student patients, some of my fascination stemming from the novelty of this occupation. People who I did not know had never spilled their guts to me before. Hearing these problems made me feel less unique in some of the circumstances that punctuated my life over the years. Although patients often found their own solutions through discussion with a student counselor, these solutions seemed far more obvious from a comfortable distance. However, I did present concepts for my clients to ponder, guiding them toward resolution. I occasionally described my own experiences in general terms always presenting the information in a productive fashion.

My counseling duties made this return to graduate student life tolerable and interesting. Had I only been taking classes, I think I would have dropped out and stayed home in front of the television. I could no longer accept a fulltime student existence. My time for that had long passed. However, peer counseling gave me a renewed sense of purpose and direction. As an unexpected benefit, listening to other people vent allowed me to put some of my own concerns into perspective, particularly the coaching obsession that indirectly led to my injury.

I felt torn by a need for a skating vocation, to make my childhood dreams come true in whatever fashion was still available. I would not admit that the moment had evaporated forever and there was no room for me in the world of ice skating other than breaking my back sewing practice dresses for spoiled kids who rarely appreciated them. My costumes paralleled back-to-school clothes for these girls: exciting and fun to wear initially but boring and familiar after one laundering. Concurrently, I felt guilty about pursuing this fantasy after investing in my education and subsequently abandoning it. My husband assured me that people make career changes and often have to explore alternatives before finding contentment in a professional environment.

I liked counseling and looked forward to my shifts in the counseling center. Although my classes were interesting, and I was more receptive to learning than I had been as a younger person, I preferred the practical experience of working with student patients. My mentor was a well-centered woman, not much older than I was. I estimate her age to have been about forty. She spoke softly but clearly, always certain of every word and idea that left her lips. I imagined my friend, Melissa Kowalchuk, professor of mathematics, carried herself much like my counseling mentor, Charlotte Greenwood, Ph.D. Dr. Greenwood ran a small part-time practice out of her home, in an office extension built over her garage. She worked primarily in counselor training at the university. If Charlotte suffered from personal problems, she leaked no evidence beyond her peacefully composed exterior.

Whenever I left the center, if Dr. Greenwood was still on duty, she always asked about my day and what I had accomplished. We scheduled meetings once per week, but this routine question was meant as friendly conversation among professionals. I knew Charlotte respected me. She respected my maturity and education as well as the outside interests that made me a well-rounded person. “Did you have a good afternoon, Kate?” she would ask with a calm smile.

“Yes, I did. I believe I helped someone today.”

My mentor’s tranquil smile subtly sparkled with the passion that drew her to this calling as a focused young college student. “Me too,” the woman would respond. Originally, I found this reply patronizing. Did she believe she had helped poor confused Kate today? Was I so obviously adrift in the world without my ice skates? As we became acquainted, I realized Dr. Greenwood gained such thorough satisfaction from working with her apprentices and patients that she apparently left the building every day feeling fulfilled. And I had begun to experience the same phenomenon, something that had never stricken me before in an occupational situation, except maybe in the bridal shop where I could not earn much more than pocket change for my efforts.

Nobody celebrates an injury. Injuries mean discomfort, inconvenience, and negative progress. However, in my case, a broken leg gave me time to regroup, allowed my body to heal; and, most importantly, freed mental resources for other stimuli. Had I been able to skate daily, maintaining the same rigorous schedule, I never would have dove into counseling. I might have dabbled with one class as a diversion and, if a slot were offered, spent one afternoon working on campus. While limited exposure would have given me a taste of counseling, I could not have devoted the attention necessary to fully appreciate it. That broken tibia and my introduction to the counseling profession were genuine turning points in my life.

Chapter 90 posted 4/3/04
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