I’m partial to the smell of air at night.  I know, that sounds weird, but there’s something about how the air cools and yet the scent of the day lingers in it, almost heightening it.  Last night as I left a competition practice, there was a scent in the air that made me nostalgic.  It caught me totally of guard.  Something about the scent of spring blooming, which when I was little, meant a sad end to my favorite season of the year.

I quit figure skating when I graduated high school.  I was too old to go much farther competitively and I didn’t have the time.  It’s not a sport that favors those growing older.  And even when I put my skates on randomly after that, it didn’t feel the same.  The grace and ease that comes with practicing five days a week was gone.  The familiarity and comfort wasn’t there the way it used to be.  The ice was where I lost myself at one point in time, where I went with my emotion and frustration and let it all out.  I’ve been missing that same outlet lately.

When I think about skating for myself, and leaving all of my emotion out on the ice, I think about this performance.  It wasn’t in competition.  It wasn’t the best choreographed routine ever or the most perfect performance.  It was skating from the heart.  I pulled it up this morning, and ten years later it still stirred in my soul.

There are a lot of things in my life I never could have imagined ten years ago.  My life without skating… I couldn’t have imagined it them.  My life without certain people in it?  Never.  Except they’re not anymore.  I had a lot to learn.  The path I’m on isn’t the path I imagined back then.

But maybe, there are thing I can learn from the person I was too.  She was confident and independent and ridiculously creative.  She had so many dreams she didn’t know which to pursue first.  She sought to prove everyone wrong.  She made no apologizes for who she was or what she believed.  She was stronger than I am now.  More reckless.  More fearless.  And she put her whole heart into everything, never holding back.  And she knew how to let it all out.  She knew what she wanted.

Maybe her inspirations still have some inspiration for me.