Skaters' Waltz

With her usual artistic sensibilities, my good friend Kitty decorated the exterior of her home for the holidays this year with evergreen and red berry-bedecked ice skates.  Her beautiful decorations made me think of how much I love to watch ice skaters on television.  Their elegance on ice is true beauty and precision.  Admittedly, I am not an ice skater.  For a period of time in the mid-1970s, I wore my hair like Olympic figure skating sensation Dorothy Hamill, but that was as close as I ever got.  As a little girl, I recall getting the surprise of my young life when I first saw my mom ice skate.  She could do figure-eights.  She could ice skate backwards.  I could barely stand up, let alone move my wiggly ankles enough to propel me forward on slim silver blades.  Mom had perfected her form while ice skating as a child.  I just never caught onto it, so I eventually gave my skates to a young girl who enjoyed the sport.  Seeing as it's unlikely I'll get my skating form perfected, I'll just put my feet up, watch the skaters on TV and happily hum a few bars of "Skaters' Waltz."  Maybe I'll even grow my hair into a Dorothy Hamill "do" again, just for kicks.