I was in my forties and more past my prime than I knew when I decided to become a figure skater. I’d never done more than slide across a pond in a pair of borrowed hockey skates, but I’d taken on physical challenges before with little trouble. So I was surprised, well into my third group class, to still be occasionally finding myself flat on my back with an instructor leaning over me and asking “How many fingers do you see?”

I wouldn’t call myself delusional but I’ve always been dogged. Sometimes those two things aren’t as different as you’d think. I learned the schedules of every rink within a twenty-mile radius and I always traveled with skates, bunga pads and skating clothes. If I had a long break during the workday, I’d sneak onto the nearest open rink. I followed hockey schedules, because when Boston College was doing well, they kept the rink open a month or more longer than usual. The public rink just down the road from Boston College was easy to pop onto when I had enough time to lace up. That’s where I was the afternoon a lump of uneven, unzambonied ice caught my blade mid-turn on a solchow. My body kept revolving but the ankle didn’t. When I got out of the cast and through with physical therapy, back I went. Now I had a new thought: I was getting old. I was running out of time. I doubled up on group classes and started hiring a coach.

There were ripped hamstrings and whacks on the head, the knees, the whole-body octopus slides down the ice when I completely lost control.

It was the shoulder that finally drove me off the ice. I managed to rip the bicep where it threads through the shoulder joint. You didn’t know it did that, did you? The shoulder is an amazing joint, much more elegant than the knee or hip, and like many things, you don’t appreciate it until it’s gone. The surgeon told me that the only thing I’d have to deal with would be a sling which would be off in a month. The sling indeed was off, but not the three-times-a-week physical therapy or the three months it took to lift a cup of coffee with that arm.

But there was also the clean feel of a brisk fifteen-miles-per-hour sweep of a large rink, the way your chest feels like it’s suddenly full of carbonated something when you do manage a graceful landing, the way a hot late-August rink can fill with steam rising off the ice and you get to pop in and out of it like a cloud hiding the thirteen year olds from you as they polish their routines.

If I’d know what I’d be breaking and ripping and clonking before I started, I might not have started. But now since my future is mostly behind me, skating wise, I can honestly say that I am glad that in life, we almost never know, and if we did, we’d lie down and wait for death. I might have learned nothing at all through the whole experience, but this I know: I don’t care. I still do figure eights in my head to get to sleep at night. And they feel good.