Frozen Teardrop (13 page)

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 program 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.

On boarding the plane my father offered my coach his first class seat back to Zurich. He arrogantly barked back that he could not be bribed and he sat in the back with a pout on his face. We were taking care of the coach once again instead of the coach taking care of me. He did not look or speak to my mother or me for the next couple of days.

On arrival in Zurich my coach said he would not stay with us at our home (I'm not sure where he was thinking of going to go but drama was definitely his middle name and he proudly lived up to it). However, my glamorous sister greeted us with a beautiful big bunch of flowers and the minute he saw her he quickly changed his mind and said, “Now I'll come to your house.” In Zurich he lavishly enjoyed the dinners at my parents' and our friends' houses and at beautiful restaurants, and he enjoyed my sister's company as well, but again not even once did he look or speak to me or my mother during the whole time.

On the morning of our flight back to Toronto my mother, wanting for me to be friendly, pushed me to play a game of chess with my coach at our home. I lost. I did not really care but he proudly held his head high. As the plane took off, my mother, wanting to gain my coach's forgiveness, presented him with a huge box of truffle chocolates from Switzerland. He gobbled the whole box at once as if he hadn't eaten for days! On the plane before we landed my coach wanted to play another game of chess with me, and this time, I won. He, for some reason unknown to me, suddenly started talking to me again. Now he respected me, since I won? It was a game for him but to me it was over. For me when someone toys with me, my skating, my intentions, or takes advantage of me, it's over fairly quickly. I forgive, but do not forget and really don't want that person in my life anymore. I knew inside I would not want to train with him anymore.

On our return to Toronto my training continued as my coach appeared at times and did not appear at other times, and I started feeling very uncomfortable with him on the ice. I didn't know how to have a discussion with my coach because I never had one before, so instead of talking I just wouldn't really do what he told me to do. One practice he sat me down on the bench and asked me if I wanted him to represent me at the next competition. It was a big Grand Prix event. For the first time in my life I had the courage to just bluntly say, “NO, I would not.” He again, as he had at the airport, stormed off the ice with his fur coat swaying in the wind shouting all sorts of things that were quite incomprehensible. He threw his skates off in the lounge area, and then passed by my mother to scream at her that no one had ever spoken to him like I had in his whole life, and that he would be flying off to Mexico the next day. That was it. I was to never see him again. I think he longed for us to run after him, call him, and drop down on our knees to plead him to come back, but we did not. I could not trust him anymore but as time has passed we have become friends once more, and although he still blames my mother for not having pushed me to stay with him, he and I have wondrous and intriguing conversations over the phone. He has been a brilliant education for me.

A mere six months after we moved to Toronto my mother started searching for a new coach for me. The Swiss federation suggested a quite famous lady coach in San Francisco and we took a trip there for a few days to see if I liked it there. Of course this was the absolutely wrong thing to do. During a trial period of a few days the adrenaline is rushing through you and the new coach is on her or his best behavior since they want the business. So of course everything goes nicely and smoothly. It's a new environment, it is exciting, and it persuades you to think, “Yes, this is it. This is perfect.”

Then, when you do move and he or she is sure you are staying and paying them well, the coach suddenly changes and the whole saga starts all over again. My mother now says she would never again do a national sport like skating outside of their country because you end up with no support, no one really caring, and pretty much struggling alone to make things happen. It has been said it takes a village to make a champion. I had only my mother with me and my father far, far away.