by Lucinda Ruh
Upon arriving in Toronto, to our surprise my new coach greeted us at the airport and gave us a great welcome. We felt appreciated but this would be quite short-lived. Again, our place to stay was a hotel until we found our new home. Our first stop was to go to see the ice rink and unfortunately, to add to my mother’s angst, my new coach mentioned that there would be no ice for another two weeks! That infuriated my mother since she was used to my never, ever taking more than one day off. In Japan I used to go from airport to school to the ice rink and back and forth without wasting any time.
Ice rinks and ice time were always our first destination when we arrived somewhere. I remember my mother always saying, “Look, here is the ice rink. Don’t you want to go see the ice rink?” I really did not care to when I already was breathing, eating, living, and dreaming skating, but my parents would be so excited. I’ll see it later, I thought. For me the big white buildings with ice inside symbolized much more to me than just an ice rink. The moment I entered it seemed like I had a great big mountain on my shoulder. There was so much emotion attached to it and more would be added in the next few years — fear, anger, hurt, excitement, happiness, love for spinning, and being artistic all rolled into one. Another great sushi roll I was addicted to.
Skating was becoming a chore for me. It was work, a job, and I desperately needed a break from it but neither my parents nor I really understood my feelings. We were blind. But it wasn’t all filled with despair. When on the ice and spinning and doing my programs, expressing myself and being excited about the training that led up to a competition, were wonderful. The adrenaline rushed through my body and gave me great energy and determination. The constant training or rather addiction to it was enticing. It was exciting! Having constant goals and being able to train for them was amazing.
The spinning is what really did it for me. I felt I could morph myself into all sorts of positions and creations. It was my playtime and I would do it for hours and hours while it silently and unknowingly was killing my body. I really loved training as well, more than the competitions. I was addicted to over training. It felt great to push and push myself beyond my limits. It felt great to be in pain and have my bruises to show that I worked.
I had finished high school and attending university never crossed my mind. Skating was the only thing in my head. I lived for skating. I loved to study and when I was younger I wanted to be a scientist or an architect but skating had entirely engulfed every other aspect of my life and my parents never discussed my attending a university with me. It was as if there was no other choice but to skate since I was so successful at it, and my parents and even I thought we knew that’s all I wanted. Here, strangely and awkwardly for the first time in my life, I had a little more time to relax in between the training times. I went with my mother to the supermarket, or to window shop with a stroll in the city, which was almost a first for me. I really had trouble picking out what I wanted to buy since I never had to do that. Everything had been presented to me on a silver platter. My mother always wanted me not to have to do any chores other than school and skating. Here my mother didn’t like the fact that I had free time. It made her feel she wasn’t doing enough for me and wasn’t used to having me with her doing all those chores.
For me, too, it was a huge change. I wasn’t feeling useful, and felt like I wasn’t being productive enough all day even though I had a heavy schedule of skating and off-ice training. The level I was at was more intense than ever. When not training there really was only time to eat and sleep and then rest a little, which again I was not used to doing at all. I missed studying and I missed being super, super busy. Resting for me was so awkward. It was uncomfortable. It brought up more feelings that I was so trying to repress. What was I supposed to do? Just lay there? I was so accustomed to rushing everywhere and not having enough time that when I did have time for myself I had no idea what to do with it and my emotions were just getting in the way.
So I figured I would just train more. I would do sit-ups while watching television, vowing to myself I would never really just rest. I would feel too guilty to just lie there and read a book. I would do exercises all day. Now that was really not a good idea and I ended up inflicting bad things upon myself. I would in fact train so much that I became so injured that I would require even more time to rest, making me even more anxious and sad. It was a never-ending vicious cycle. But in the end, you really do get what you want. The injuries were voicing for my body what I wasn’t speaking in words. It and I wanted rest.
Everything was so different in Toronto when compared to Japan, that it took my mother and me a while to adjust. Some ordinary foods tasted different, especially essentials like milk and water, and my taste buds rejected them in the beginning. The streets, people, culture, and way of doing things were very different from what we were used to and we had a hard time getting accustomed. It was amusing because in Japan taxi doors opened and closed automatically, and so when we wanted a taxi in Toronto we would stupidly wait for the door to open. Or else we forgot to close the door when leaving until we were shouted at for our mistake and would suddenly remember we had to manually close it.
People were not as gracious and courteous as in Japan. Compared to Japan, of course, it was dirtier and the Canadian fashions seemed odd to us. We really felt like aliens this time, whereas in Japan we were considered aliens but felt more like one of them. Here we fit in more on the outside but on the inside we couldn’t have felt more disparate. The training, especially, with the new coach seemed completely absurd to me. Here there were very few skaters on the ice at one time. In Tokyo when I had skated during public sessions in the afternoons there would be sometimes fifty people on the ice. In the freestyle sessions there were usually about thirty people and no one would ever get in anyone’s way. We all knew where everyone went as well as their patterns so everything worked like clockwork as all else did in Japan. In Japan we had mothers of the skaters play our music and there was a list of those who wanted to do their programs. In military fashion music was played according to the list. The order was never changed and you would have to wait your turn. The list the next day would start off where it ended the day before. You had only one chance and if there wasn’t enough time you had to wait until the next day to do your program.
Now in Canada there were perhaps only ten people on the ice and everyone seemed to be in everyone’s way. You had to play your own music and you could repeat and repeat sections of the programs. Everyone seemed to be pushing for their rights and want their way. Here skaters had water and tissue paper on skating boards that they frequently went to. In Japan we also had tissue paper because the ice rinks are cold and our noses ran a lot, but in Japan it was forbidden to take a tissue during a lesson. We would be allowed only one tissue a session. If the coach or your mother saw you taking more than one you would be yelled at. Even when we did take a tissue we couldn’t just stand there and blow our noses. You would take it while you were skating by the boards and blow your nose while continuing to skate and then throw it conveniently in the garbage can placed off the ice. In Canada, the skater stayed in one place and blew and blew and blew till you thought their whole nose would come off!
Oh, and the skaters actually smiled and talked to each other and they even talked to their coaches! Wow, it seemed like everyone was just playing and it was some sort of a game. My mother and I definitely didn’t like it and we thought we were being taken advantage of. How could skaters be having fun on the ice? It wasn’t playtime. It was working on the ice. No resting, no talking, no smiling. That was skating. What was happening? We missed the dedication, the beautiful respect skaters had for coaches, the determination and the order in which all was done in Tokyo.
We moved into an apartment a few months into our stay in Toronto. I hated staying at hotels since they did not feel like my home and this just added to the fact that I was not HOME. But I see now that my aggravation about not getting a home more quickly was only the natural emotion of a girl fee
ling lost. But this was definitely the wrong reaction to our situation because we had to move again only a few months after moving to our new apartment. This would happen quite often to us. As it had happened in Japan when we had moved closer to the rink and it closed down, again in Canada as soon as we tried to cling to what we wanted we would lose it.
I befriended a young man who was an admirer of mine. We met at the ice rink. We were both seventeen years old and he was handicapped, but oddly enough it seemed to disturb him more than me. He would sit with my mother and watch me skate for hours. He would join me when I ate lunch in between my skating sessions and he later sometimes came over to our new home. He took me out to the movies, a first for me since I was so used to doing things only with my mother that even just going to the movies without her gave me anxiety. I feared for my mother, that something would happen to her when I was gone.
I felt I was responsible for my mother to my father, since it was because of me that they were apart, and it would be my fault if anything happened to her. It was a huge undertaking for me and I felt the pressure nonstop. The young man and I had a great friendship, not anything else, although he might have liked more. But although I was seventeen I was so sheltered that I wasn’t even thinking of relationships with boys. I had gone to an all-girls’ school all my life and had never had interaction with boys except at the ice rink where there was only time for skating. I was so very shy around them.
My friend also managed to hurt me very much. Although he was quite handicapped physically, mentally he was as sharp as anyone and very determined. He somehow managed to play tennis, swim, and even drive a car that was made especially for him. He was remarkable and I looked up to him. I made sure that I treated him just like I would anybody else, and I think because he was not used to that he loved it. But he also then took great advantage of this and would be very mean to me with hurtful words, actions, doing things behind my back and complaining to my mother about things I never did. He used my mother as his crutch. I realized it came from his frustration from his disabilities and his feelings that he never would be considered normal, or in his mind have a chance to really date me so I always forgave him. But alas it makes me think that wouldn’t it be so nice if we all just could love ourselves so much that we could just be who we are and not have to hide under so many blankets of denial? I wished that for him.
My skating was not proceeding as we had thought it would. I loved, however, finally being allowed to be more artistic and expressing my emotions from the heart through my new programs. A couple of new opportunities opened up to me as well, such as skating with a Canadian skating star in a television movie he made. I was skating with more freedom. My coach was a person of intensity in whatever he did, mixing it with humor and passion, but he could be extremely strict as well making him totally unpredictable.
It was quite a shock for me after the subdued teacher I had in Japan whose every day training method would be exactly the same and in an almost meditative state. Here I never knew what to expect. It threw me off guard and I felt I couldn’t focus on my actual skating. My jumps were a little steadier but my Canadian coach was clearly having his own skating career through me. He was finishing his career by coaching my skating and I started to have his nuances throughout my skating style. I am not sure if that was truly a positive thing or not, but again I was skating for others.
My new coach was an incredible artist filled with imagination and intelligence, extravagant in all areas of life such as food and clothing, and making the English language as eventful as can be. He was living a colorful and interesting life, a true artist dwelling on his paintings, but unfortunately he also dwelled on many other intense interests far from the skating world. It wouldn’t have mattered if this hadn’t affected me and, more importantly, my skating, but it did. I was clueless about what was going on since my mother always kept all problems other than what was happening on the ice to herself. I was getting annoyed, however, at the fact that we never knew if he was actually coming to the rink as we planned for him to teach me. Sometimes he would and sometimes he would not show up for days. I would just train by myself. It baffled us that a coach could be so irresponsible.
Injuries in my knees started creeping up because I was always over-training and my body was trying to grow at the same time. It would be painful to walk but I would force myself to skate. I was frequently at the physical therapy office to be packaged with ice, then heat, and back and forth. It was like going into a refrigerator and then a sauna! I felt like I was being electrocuted with all the instruments hooked up to me and constantly being prodded here and there.
The problems with my coach actually did relieve me a bit from my beatings though. My mother had so much to deal with that I was released from the harshness of my deep fear towards my mother for a little while, but not for long. We had no choice but to keep my new coach for a while longer since I was having an important competition coming up in September. There was no way of showing up at a competition without a coach. It would lead to more catastrophes.
The competition was in Austria and it would be the first competition of the season where judges sized you up. Especially the federation would be checking to see if you were in form. After leaving Japan I needed to prove that the move had turned out to be the right choice. We kept our problems to ourselves.
My mother and I were relieved to see my coach at the airport after fearing he would be on one of his travels again and not even appear. It was as if he was a magician appearing and disappearing whenever he liked and we were to play along with him. On arriving in Austria, my coach, as an artistic devil and angel mixed into one, rather than having us go right to the rink, took us to see the museums. Practicing and the competition seemed secondary to him while enjoying life coming first. Unfortunately my mother and I were so deep in skating drama that we didn’t see the very valuable lesson presented to us here. It’s only understandable that we were confused about this since we were in Austria for skating, not for museums but we did not see that life is more than that.
We did as my coach said, and in between every practice that we seemed to be late to every single time, we were at the museums. He lectured us about every painting and showed us every corner of Vienna that he knew in his majestic way as if he were a knight roaming the streets in the 17th century. He was in love with life and wanted us to enjoy life, too, but we were too scared of everything. We were frightened of not doing everything in military style as we had learned to do in Japan. That had been our life.
This freedom was so scary to us. It was unknown to us and we liked a strict diet of sorrow, work, sweat, and tears, and then maybe a dollop of happiness plopped on top that we would take off quickly so we would not feel guilty about our happiness. I actually skated quite well on the first day of competition, but totally fell apart on the next. The problem was that he had choreographed my long program in such a peculiar way as if I had the strength of superwoman, the power of fireworks, the speed of a gazelle, and the grace of a crane, all demonstrated by me in four minutes!
My program was like this: Perform all four spins, connective moves, spirals and steps in the first three minutes of the program, and then do eight jumps (triples and double axels) in the last minute. It was a wonderful and absurd idea with disastrous conclusions. At practice we had already tried to influence my coach to change the order of elements but there was no way of changing his painting he had created of me on the ice. How dare I change his work of art!
So you can only imagine the faces on the judges as they sat there mesmerized by my three minutes of really beautiful, graceful skating, and glorious spins to suddenly be awakened from their comatose state to find their beautiful butterfly turning into an elephant who fell eight times with every single jump. It was definitely fireworks on the ice I must say! We decided to have a dinner meeting that evening with my coach, my mother, my father (he had come to see me compete), the judges and members of the Swiss delegation, and me so that we could talk my progra
m over together.
Judges told us and my coach how although they even had tears in their eyes as I skated because it was so beautifully done, it would be just impossible for me to do all those jumps at the end of the program when I was already so exhausted and dizzy from the spinning. They suggested to my coach that he change the order of elements in my program. My coach, as an artist in the extreme, could not digest these words of guidance in any way, shape, or form, and in his flamboyant style got up and without uttering a world, he left. We had no idea where he went.
The next morning we were supposed to fly to Zurich to see my sister and spend some time there before heading back to Toronto and we were worried he had just vanished. He was known to be very erratic and as far as we were concerned he might have even left the country already. We tried knocking on his hotel room door for hours, to no avail. We tried calling him in the room but received no answer. We even wrote little notes and put them under the door. They may have been read but we had no reply. My mother told me to write on them that I was sorry that I didn’t skate well and couldn’t make him proud of me and that I had ruined his painting. To this day I still have no idea where he was or what he was really upset about other than our wanting him to repaint his painting. I guess that was not to be told to an artist of such a stature.
Luckily he appeared the next morning at the airport, but he was frantic. He wanted to change his flight then and there to go immediately home to Toronto, claiming he was too upset to come with us to our home in Switzerland. He ran back and forth through the airport halls with his fur coat and lavish scarves moving in the wind he produced while racing past all the people. It was a sight to be seen, and although it was quite dramatic at the time I can’t help laughing at it now. We were not going to pay for another ticket for him and to his great disappointment he had no choice but to come with us.
