rack
08-12-2002, 01:47 PM
Everyone in the world knows how to do links except me, but this article was in my local paper yesterday and I feel it would be selfish of me not to share it. So I'm dedicating my typing to Yazmeen and Manleywoman and everyone else here who skates.
Through Pitfalls, Skates Delivered
by Steve Israel
Monticello, NY- She awoke in the hospital after her breast was removed. She raised her right arm over her head.
"OK," said the 57-year-old woman. "The arm works. I can skate."
She suffered through chemotherapy, wore wigs and ice skated. No matter that the wigs flew off her head and onto the ice. Celia Duffy skated.
After all she'd been through-the body cast for her curved back and a body pouch for her body waste; the eating binge that had ballooned her 4-foot-11-inch body to 250 pounds-it may seem surprising that she skated.
If may also seem surprising that at 68, Celia Duffy is still skating in an ice arena at Kutsher's Country Club. The arena's a cool 58 degrees on an August day when the outdoor pool glistens and the air smells of sweet suntan lotion.
Surprising, that is, unless you know what skating means to Celia Duffy.
In the back yard of a two-family house in Brooklyn, Celia Duffy slipped on her red galoshes and, on a cold winter's day, made believe that she was ice skating on the packed snow.
Oh how she liked that feeling of gliding.
Still, who ice skated? Maybe Sonja Henie. But not, her parents told her, a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn.
That's why, when she took the subway to Manhattan and saw the skaters at Rockefeller Center, she couldn't understand that they were real. She thought they were make believe, like characters in a movie. Still, she longed to ice skate.
Then, when she was 10, a doctor told her that her curved spine meant she had scoliosis.
Celia had to stand as straight as she could, hold her arms up high and grip rings so her tiny body could be strapped in a 20 pound body cast. After three years of that body cast, she had to wear a steel body brace.
She wondered if she could ever skate.
Turned out she could. She could take off that brace and glide across the ice, away from the kids who taunted her. She felt so good on the ice, all she wanted to do was skate.
She took the trolley home from school and rushed through her homework so she could skate into the night at the Brooklyn Ice Palace. She skated at camps and competitions. She skated in the summer, when she had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to make it a Manhattan rink at 7.
Her parents thought this was too much, so they made her cut down skating to once a week.
Celia Duffy cried. She yelled. Her stomach churned. She ached to skate so much, she developed ulcerative colitis.
The doctor told her parents that if they wanted a healthy daughter they better let her skate. So she skated- every day for the next five years.
Then she married and moved to Long Island. When she had her first baby she hung her skates in the closet. They stayed there when she had her second, third, and fourth baby. She raised her kids, play Mah Jong and ate- ballooning to 250 pounds.
She decided she had to fit into the little black skating skirt that hung in her closet, a reminder of her old skating self.
So she skated- in the back yard she flooded to make her own rink, at any rink she could find on Long Island.
She skated through a divorce. She skated at singles weekends in Catskill resorts like the Concord and Grossinger's.
When she heard one of those resorts, Kutsher's, needed a skating instructor, she drove there so fast she got her first speeding ticket. That was 32 years ago.
So it may come as a surprise to find this 68-year-old woman still gliding, jumping and spinning on the ice on a hot day in August.
Unless, of course, you're Celia Duffy. Then it's no surprise at all.
Through Pitfalls, Skates Delivered
by Steve Israel
Monticello, NY- She awoke in the hospital after her breast was removed. She raised her right arm over her head.
"OK," said the 57-year-old woman. "The arm works. I can skate."
She suffered through chemotherapy, wore wigs and ice skated. No matter that the wigs flew off her head and onto the ice. Celia Duffy skated.
After all she'd been through-the body cast for her curved back and a body pouch for her body waste; the eating binge that had ballooned her 4-foot-11-inch body to 250 pounds-it may seem surprising that she skated.
If may also seem surprising that at 68, Celia Duffy is still skating in an ice arena at Kutsher's Country Club. The arena's a cool 58 degrees on an August day when the outdoor pool glistens and the air smells of sweet suntan lotion.
Surprising, that is, unless you know what skating means to Celia Duffy.
In the back yard of a two-family house in Brooklyn, Celia Duffy slipped on her red galoshes and, on a cold winter's day, made believe that she was ice skating on the packed snow.
Oh how she liked that feeling of gliding.
Still, who ice skated? Maybe Sonja Henie. But not, her parents told her, a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn.
That's why, when she took the subway to Manhattan and saw the skaters at Rockefeller Center, she couldn't understand that they were real. She thought they were make believe, like characters in a movie. Still, she longed to ice skate.
Then, when she was 10, a doctor told her that her curved spine meant she had scoliosis.
Celia had to stand as straight as she could, hold her arms up high and grip rings so her tiny body could be strapped in a 20 pound body cast. After three years of that body cast, she had to wear a steel body brace.
She wondered if she could ever skate.
Turned out she could. She could take off that brace and glide across the ice, away from the kids who taunted her. She felt so good on the ice, all she wanted to do was skate.
She took the trolley home from school and rushed through her homework so she could skate into the night at the Brooklyn Ice Palace. She skated at camps and competitions. She skated in the summer, when she had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to make it a Manhattan rink at 7.
Her parents thought this was too much, so they made her cut down skating to once a week.
Celia Duffy cried. She yelled. Her stomach churned. She ached to skate so much, she developed ulcerative colitis.
The doctor told her parents that if they wanted a healthy daughter they better let her skate. So she skated- every day for the next five years.
Then she married and moved to Long Island. When she had her first baby she hung her skates in the closet. They stayed there when she had her second, third, and fourth baby. She raised her kids, play Mah Jong and ate- ballooning to 250 pounds.
She decided she had to fit into the little black skating skirt that hung in her closet, a reminder of her old skating self.
So she skated- in the back yard she flooded to make her own rink, at any rink she could find on Long Island.
She skated through a divorce. She skated at singles weekends in Catskill resorts like the Concord and Grossinger's.
When she heard one of those resorts, Kutsher's, needed a skating instructor, she drove there so fast she got her first speeding ticket. That was 32 years ago.
So it may come as a surprise to find this 68-year-old woman still gliding, jumping and spinning on the ice on a hot day in August.
Unless, of course, you're Celia Duffy. Then it's no surprise at all.