Picture taken on Sunday after another skate at the lake. Passage below recorded on Wednesday, January 25, 2017.Eight o’clock at night, and I’m feeling glorious. I skated today on my town’s lake as part of my job working at a local school. Yes, my job involved going with a bunch of kids on a sunny day, just a few degrees below zero and no wind—weather doesn’t get better than that in January in Alberta--and skating with them. Feeling uplifted began even before I hit the ice when a mom showed me how to lace my skates like a pro. Quite literally. Some NHL guy apparently ties his skates the way I now tie mine. I wished I’d known this tip sooner because had I known this thirty-five years ago, I’m sure the scouts would’ve picked me up. Oh right, I’m still a female, even if I'm in men’s skates, so maybe not.But today, I tell ya, I felt like I could’ve been a contender. My not totally dull blades cut across the ice, making that unique cutting sound. You can’t replicate that winter audio. Maybe a saw drawn lightly over wood. Maybe. Anyway, I circled and swooped, spun and glided like someone wearing a Russian-style hat with ear flaps and a bulky parka can only pull off.And the kids. Wow. You know those time lapse videos of a flower blooming or snow melting on green grass or some such other unveiling of spring? That was what it was like watching the kids take to skating. To see the young ones wobble and windmill their arms, fall and stand and fall and stand, clutch a leg or the back of a chair and then—and then!—in the space of a half-hour push off and away, spin and turn and not fall, glide and stop and glide again, that, my friends, was a true blossoming.Then, if that wasn’t enough, after my “work” was done, I took my son skating. Learning how to skate has been slow for him. Each season it has become easier but he could never get the hang of it. This year, his sense of balance seemed to kick in and when I last took him skating, he played a game with himself of standing one skate and then the other. Progress. Today, I got him laced up like a NHL pro and he set off, while I bent my head over my skates. Putting on skates is another example of trying to press something solid through a pliable but limited opening. By the time I was ready to go, I turned to see my son actually skating. Gliding, turning, scritching across the ice. And he knew it, too. I could see it in the tilt of his body and the confident speed of his movements. He was finally experiencing the joy of skating.Another blossoming in January. Another day down at the lake.