Song of the day:
Video of the day:
National Poetry Month
Ice by Gail Mazur
In the warming house, children lace their skates,
bending, choked, over their thick jackets.A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy
it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,clumping across the frozen beach to the river.
December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,the first sheer ice, black, then white
and deep until the city sends trucks of menwith wooden barriers to put up the boys’
hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,of trying wobbly figure-8’s, an hour
of distances moved backwards without falling,then—twilight, the warming house steamy
with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legsaching. Outside, the hockey players keep
playing, slamming the round black puckuntil it’s dark, until supper. At night,
a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.Although there isn’t music, they glide
arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never
be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,find her perfect, skate with her
in circles outside the emptied rink forever?
The Sharks didn’t win the game, and Patty didn’t get a goal, but what an incredible gift to be able to watch him take the ice for the record-breaking game - 1,768. Not gonna lie, I was emotional during the pre-game and until they stopped the game to honor him. And I was emotional through that, too. Kudos to the Vegas Knights - who y’all know I do not care for. They did a great job honoring him, showing a video message from the commissioner of the league, giving his family a suite, and giving him the time to be the center of attention.
As the game progressed I read all kinds of tweets honoring him, watched a lot of little videos, and was completely swept up in the beauty of the moment. And then they talked to the captain between periods, and he got emotional about it which made me emotional all over again.
I ignored the game for the most part, especially after Vegas tied it and sent it to overtime then the shootout, where they beat us, as they have in every other matchup this year. But then they interviewed Patrick Marleau and good grief, the emotions were all over the place. He was crying, the interviewers were tearing up, I was crying…but then, because this is the life we lead, there was a technical difficulty and they couldn’t even finish the interview. Really? So disappointing. But wow. This moment right here is really all we needed…