Let's Talk Hockey

I have a story in the Best in Game AmberPax collection. Therapy is about a hockey player. I'm not much of a sports fan, but hockey and I go a ways back. My son was on the ice by the time he was four. I went back and found a little something I wrote while I was shiver in the stands waiting for him to get done. Definitely a "Best in Game" moment. I'll post an excerpt from Therapy on the Amber Heat list a bit later, but here's just a little person reflection from...gosh, it's more than ten years ago. How times flies. My son just turned twenty-seven in January. Holy Cow!

Hockey Practice

White ice–little round black puck–racing from one end to the other. As I watch them practice, shivering with cold, the music seems most appropriate as I listen, watch and write. They skate and play almost in time to the music only I can hear. The music is called "Future Primitive" – some connotation to the game of ice hockey perhaps?

The coach stops their dance and draws them to the center for instructions. Across the way is the snack bar where the fathers are huddled, talking of past games or maybe just things that fathers talk of and share.

I sit on the bleacher, a lone mother–a bystander to the scene below me. The skaters glide–no glide is not appropriate here–race down the ice 1-2-3, 1-2-3, not 1–2–3. Hurry, hurry, hurry, how fast can they go?

To the center again they go to sit on the cold ice–these tough little guys who haven’t yet reached high school.

And the fathers huddled together drinking their coffee and watching the play. What are they thinking I wonder?

Do I feel like an outsider sitting by myself on this bleacher? No. Alone–yes.

Is the little black puck what its about? Sometimes I don’t think so. My son when he started figure skating said to me "I want to skate fast, mom. I want to play hockey." He was five years old–now eleven. He’s doing what he wanted to do–skate fast. Push himself to the ultimate.
And maybe that’s what I see and feel as I watch him on the ice below. Maybe I don’t feel like an outsider in a room full of men and boys, because a real part of me is out on that ice. I’m not just a lonely spectator as might appear to some, but am in the game.

Yes, I spent a bit of time on those benches. Stop in to the Amber Heat Reader's list to read an excerpt from my erotic story, Therapy.

Adrianna