I Skate

It was a cold and brisk December morning. A blanket of snow was on the ground covering the grass and the sidewalks. Tree branches were weighed down by the snow sitting on top of them. It was the best time of the year. The time of the year to be happy and thankful for your family. And that’s what the man and the woman were: thankful.

The man and the woman were walking through the Boston Common. They had a child between them. The boy was holding one of the woman’s hands and one of the man’s hands. He was being swung back and forth in the gap between the man and the woman. He was giggling loudly and looked like the happiest child on the planet. They looked like a family, except that the woman and the man were young. They looked almost too young to have a son who seemed about five years old. Maybe they had had him when they were teenagers. We didn’t know much information about the parents. All we really knew was that they had been through a lot in the past year, and that this was an extraordinary opportunity for them and their son. We came bearing gifts and signs with phrases like “We’re rooting for you Max!” on them.

They continued through the Boston Common, dragging their loudly giggling boy with them until they reached the Frog Pond. It had been turned into a skating rink for the winter, but there were no people skating on the ice. We were all gathered along the boards of the rink, cheering and clapping, brought together by one cause. Not one person stepped on the ice. The ice was for the boy.

I watched as the man, the woman, and the boy were greeted at the gate of the frog pond by an older man. He was beaming and clapping. The little boy looked up at him and smiled.

“Thank you, Mr. Burke, for giving us this opportunity,” said the man holding a hand of the child. The woman was crying and smiling.

The old man simply smiled and said, “Now let’s get to it, shall we?”

The man and woman sat the boy down on a green bench, and the woman took off his shoes. His feet were covered in black wool socks that looked very warm. The old man came back with two small hockey skates and put them on the boy’s little feet while the man and the woman watched.

The man and the woman lifted him up by the arms again and swung him back and forth until they reached the door of the ice skating rink. The old man, who also had skates on, brought a stack of two crates over for the boy to hold on to keep his balance. We all held our breath.

When the boy got on the ice, the man and the woman were cheering him on and said, “You can do it, Max. You can do it.”

The boy was still giggling. It was as if this whole event was some hilarious joke to him. The old man held the crates with one hand and the boy’s back with his other. Every time the boy moved his left foot forward, the old man would bend down and push his right foot forward. The woman was crying. “He’s skating!” she said to the man who had his arm around her. “He’s walking!”

The boy moved about five right leg pushes until he finally collapsed to the ground. We stopped cheering. His right leg gave out on him. It wasn’t until he was lying on the ice that we saw what had happened. His right leg had come off, but the boy wasn’t in pain. We had all heard about it for a long time now, but none of us had actually seen it. We had all been feeding off of the information we were given and rounding up supporters based on that same information, but now we got to see it for ourselves: a small boy with cancer that had taken his leg. The woman rushed onto the ice, picked up the boy’s leg, and strapped it back on. “You are a brave boy, Max,” she said as she and the old man help him stand up.

The boy kept giggling and started to move again. It truly looked like the happiest time of the year for the boy, the man, and the woman. The happiness radiated through all of us and through all of the spectators, all due to this one boy, Max.