by Karlyn Coleman

The Zamboni slides around the curves in the rink. The smell of propane lingers in the air. The gate opens. Skate blades scratch against the ice. I watch my son skate around the rink, crossing one foot over the other, so effortlessly. Gliding. Flying. Long legs pushing him forward. A blur of blue and orange. Number 14. I wave to him behind the glass, and just as the game begins, I head out of the arena doors.

Out in the lobby, I find a table by the confession stand. I can’t help but call it anything else. When my son was six, the year he first started playing hockey, he came off the ice thirsty and asked if he could have a dollar for the confession stand. I laughed and gave him two. Bring me back some absolution, I said. A dollar’s worth of grace. He bought a blue Gatorade instead.

Now it’s my turn to confess, seven years and eight pairs of skates later: I’ve never liked watching his games. I’m a bad hockey mom. Three-day tournaments terrify me. Instead of cheering in the stands, I join the rink rats out in the lobby and read or write until the horn sounds and the Zamboni comes back out to make the ice all shiny and new.

“Go after the puck. Go. Go. Go. Shoot. Score!” the good hockey moms shout and cheer. It is as if they are behind the wheel of their SUVs, driving their kids to skate harder, move faster, score. They make things happen. They manage and coordinate and organize banquets and hotel rooms. They wear buttons with photographs of their hockey player pinned to their fleece-lined team jackets. They watch the puck drop, scream during a breakaway, and monitor the line change. They know the score.

I, on the other hand, have been known to peek in and cheer for the wrong kid, the wrong team. I don’t have a button on my jacket, because I forgot to fill out the form on picture day. I don’t drive an SUV. I’ve gotten stuck on a snow-covered hill, my wheels spinning, the hockey arena at the top, and watched my kid trudge through the ice and slush, his big black bag on his back, so he’d make it to his game on time. Good hockey moms, I’ve learned, have four-wheel drive.

I want to be a supportive-rah-rah-hockey mom, for my kid’s sake, I do. But I can’t. I’m a writer. My imagination is naturally dark and pessimistically tuned. Instead of cheering, I imagine broken necks and pucks to the head. I wonder if the air is toxic, if the Zamboni fumes aren’t slowly killing everyone in the arena. I’m happiest when my kid is off the ice, sitting quietly at home, a book in his hands.

Wouldn’t it be amazing, I once said to a bunch of parents huddling together after hockey practice one day, if our kids spent 90 minutes, five days a week, doing extracurricular math, or writing, or reading, or science?      

A few of them laughed. Most of them just looked away.    

I’ve signed my son up for tennis and chess, baseball and math masters, but my kid loves hockey, so I’ve tried to embrace the sport the only way an English teacher can—I went to the library and checked out books. Gretzky’s Tears, Warriors of Winter, The Year of the Penguins. I watched Miracle on Ice, but I still couldn’t understand the game, or my son’s passion for something that is so competitive and brutal and insane, but perhaps that’s why I really dislike the sport so much—it’s too much like the real world. I can’t control my son out there. I can’t protect him. I can’t make him win. There’s nothing I can do but watch and worry in the stands. It’s his game, not mine.    

A part of me knows that hockey is preparing my son for the adult world, the world I fear. All that practice has given him stamina. He’s learned dedication and focus. He’s learned how to balance and stand strong. Most important, he’s learned how to get back up on his feet, and how to do it quickly. 

Maybe I’m the one who needs to take up the sport. There’s a mom hockey league. They play Thursday nights. Perhaps if I played hockey, I’d learn to balance, learn how to skate on the edge of things, learn to love the game, but for right now I’ll write to the sound of popcorn popping in the confession stand, and say a little prayer that my kid comes off the ice unscathed.

Karlyn Coleman is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a winner of the 2009–2010 Loft’s Mentor Series Program in fiction. Her stories have been published in McSweeney’s, Canvas, and The Novelette; she has a new piece, titled “Writer’s Porn (Your Fantasy Critique),” coming out in Paper Darts soon. She lives in south Minneapolis with her husband, two boys, and a dog named Happy.