Wisdom in the Rafters

My parents' barn is a an American timeline. Two hundred years ago, our Pennsylvania ancestors felled and hewed pine trees that were still seedlings when Christopher Columbus was a baby. A hundred years ago, somebody bought a tractor and started storing it in the back right corner, where it still sits, long abandoned.

Now, the barn is used to store inflatable Christmas decorations and the relics of my childhood in big, clear plastic storage boxes from Target.

Today, I'm here searching the sea of plastic bins for the one that says 'ICE SKATES'. My daughter, Lani, is inside with my mom, talking about the ice skating party she was invited to this weekend. I know my old white leather skates are in the box, and I want to find them so I don't have to buy her new skates or force her the humiliation of wearing rental.

She is fifteen, which means I haven't worn ice skates for fifteen years and nine months.

I'm thirty now, but standing here in the barn, it feels like I the last time I skated was just a few days ago. When I pause and close my eyes for a second, I can almost remember what it felt like to be so young, and expectant, gliding along under a full, fat moon.

It was before my dad died, when my parents used to invite friends to our house to skate on our pond. Mom made brownies and we would heat up an old kettle over a fire in the field to make hot chocolate.

On the night I'm remembering, our neighbors came over and brought their grandson Xavier with them. We saw each other a lot when we kids, but his parents moved away and I hadn't seen him for a long time. He was two years older than me and had showed up wearing a long wool coat that made him look more like someone who worked at a bank than my buddy who cried when he fell off his bike and broke his walkie-talkie.

I didn't have much to say to him and he wasn't interested in talking to me so we sat on a bench at the edge of the ice in silence. His grandfather came over with a pair of old skates and convinced him to put them on. I laughed to see his ankles collapse as he took his first few awkward steps on the ice.

My skates were already on, and I was still young enough that I loved to show off, so I bounced out ahead of him, looping big, curly swirls on the ice with my shoulders high and my hands behind my back. When I approached him from behind, he got startled and grabbed at my shoulder, desperate not to fall.

There's a strange thing about skating that makes it okay to touch people in ways that you wouldn't normally touch them. I took Xavier's hands in mine and skated backward so I could help him inch along. We were both looking down, watching our feet move across the ice, his forwards, mine backward.

At the same moment, we looked up and our faces were closer than either of us had expected. I dropped his hands and backed away and he wobbled, but managed to stay on his feet.

It was a beautiful night, but the light from the moon wasn't bright enough for me to notice a stick that had fallen onto the ice near the edge of the pond. In a second, I tripped and fell to the ice, catching myself hard with my hands. My right wrist stung with pain.

I held back a sob, but Xavier had seen me fall and he shuffled my way. This time, I clung to him as he helped me up and guided me back to the bench.

"That was a hard fall," he said. "I'll walk you up to the barn and we can see how bad it looks. "

I nodded and fumbled at trying to untie my skates. Xavier brushed my hands away and knelt in front of me, untying my laces, sliding one skate off and then the other. I wriggled my feet into my boots and waited for him put his loafers back on. We were old enough that the adults could ignore us, so we started our walk up the hill unnoticed.

We entered the barn and I pulled the string that usually turned on the lights. One dim bulb glowed down at us, casting only the faintest yellow light. I took my jacket off and held my wrist out for inspection.

He took my arm in one hand and touched it with the fingertips of his other hand, naming the bones as he went. I didn't know them then, but I do now since I'm finally finishing my degree in radiology.

"Radius...ulna...humerus...clavicle..."

Then instead of dropping his his hand, he paused, two fingers on the collar of my shirt and two fingers touching the skin at the base of my neck.

I realized he was about to lean even closer and kiss me. Between the moon, my wrist, and his warm hands on my skin, I felt like I was spinning.

But then he didn't kiss me. Instead, the moment was broken by a shriek coming from the rafters above us.

He jumped, but I was calm. An owl swooped from its perch, its white face reflecting the evening's low light as it headed out for a night of hunting.

"A snowy owl!" Xavier whispered.

"No," I whispered back. "It's not a snowy owl, it's a barn owl. Tyto alba." I didn't know bones, but I did know birds, especially this one since we'd practically grown up together.

"Oh," he said as he released my arm. He stepped back and picked up my coat and handed it to me. Instead of kissing, we turned and walked back down to the pond in silence. His grandparents left and I took some Advil for my wrist before going to bed.

The next weekend, I did kiss someone, but it wasn't Xavier. It was a guy from school who handed me a styrofoam cup of beer and put one of his earbuds in my ear so we could listen early Pearl Jam songs together. Listening was easier than talking, anyway.

The next month, I got pregnant. I didn't mean to, but then I didn't really try not to get pregnant either. I zipped my jacked over my stomach for as long as I could and then in the fall, I became a mom. A fifteen year old mom on a dirt-road Pennsylvania farm.

That was half my life ago.

Since then, I learned how to fold a stroller into the trunk of a Honda Civic, register a kid for kindergarten and make small talk at birthday parties and playgrounds. I learned how to dress myself for custody hearings and how to dress my daughter in dark colored clothes that could withstand a hundred trips through the washing machine without getting dingy.

I stopped going to school for a while but then started again. I stopped one more time, but now I'm finally finishing my degree. I moved to the city for better opportunities for me and then to the suburbs for better opportunities for my daughter. I did not get married--not even close. But maybe someday.

Since then, Xavier's grandfather died, followed by his grandmother a year later. Xavier went to college and then grad school. He moved into their old house, right next to my parents, after he graduated. He learned how to build a deck, or at least how to pay someone else to build a deck for him. He married a woman from Ohio and they had a baby. She doesn't have to fold a stroller into the trunk because she drives an enormous Chevy Tahoe. They fly holiday themed flags from a flagpole on their porch.

Since then, my dad died, but the barn still stands, full of plastic bins labeled with his left-handed Sharpie scrawl. The owls still nest, high in the rafters, unaffected by kisses or strollers. They're still barn owls, not snowy owls, and they probably are still doing the same things now that they were doing fifteen years ago. Hunting, resting, mating, nesting. They probably haven't learned anything new at all. But then, they were already pretty wise to begin with.

It's a dead end thought, but I wonder for a second if Xavier's wife ever pretends not to know things so that he will kiss her.

I find the skates, and the blades have rust on them, but the leather is still supple and smooth. The lining is candy cane striped, just like I remembered.

Next weekend, my daughter's feet will fill them. Now that she's a teenager, time feels like it's speeding up and she skates a little further from me every day.

I'd give her advice if I could, but I wouldn't even know where to begin. I want her to be happy and I want her to be wise. But most of all, I want her to live a life where happiness and wisdom can coexist.

I do want her to know this though: most owls hoot, but barn owls shriek. I tuck a downy feather from the floor in between the laces of one skate to remind her and head inside the house.