I hadn’t seen them in ages, but I decided to pull the box out and open it up.
My mom loved to roller-skate. The two of us used to skate up and down our block, listening to Top 40 on her little portable radio, and singing along, and waving to the neighbors. My mom could skate backward, do the moonwalk, spin around on one foot, and do the grapevine. Plus a million other things. She used to pull me with a rope behind her and call it water skiing. It was our favorite thing to do on weekends.
She had her own skates—white leather with pink pom-poms on the toes. And she’d bought me a matching pair when I was little. This was the nineties, and most of the world had shifted to Rollerblades. But not my mom.
After she died, I inherited them.
By inherited, I mean, I took them out of her closet before Lucinda donated everything to Goodwill.
I never wore them. After I lost her, I never roller-skated again. And my kid-sized skates got lost somewhere along the way, like things do.
Wherever I went, though, I kept my mom’s skates close—in that box under my bed. Not to wear. Just to have. Just because holding on to them felt like holding on to a piece of her. Just because, even though I never even looked at them, if I could save one thing in a fire—besides Peanut, of course—I wouldn’t even think about it.
One hundred percent those skates.
I wondered if they would fit me now. What size had my mom’s feet been? It bugged me that I didn’t know.
And I didn’t have anyone to ask. I could almost hear my father saying, What the hell kind of question is that?
And then, as soon as that thought popped into my head, I was on my way to find out.
Was roller skating on my list of approved postsurgical activities?
Hard no.
But to be fair: it wasn’t on my list of forbidden ones, either.
More important: Did the skates fit?
They did.
And now I knew something new about her. We were both eight and a halfs.
I grabbed a pair of tube socks—from Sue on my birthday last year—sat on a kitchen chair, and slid my foot into the leather boot of the skate with a satisfying shoonk as my heel landed in place. A perfect fit. It felt like a sign. I leaned forward and tightened the laces and made double knots. And then with a stubborn optimism that I still marvel at to this day, I thought, It’s perfectly safe if I just go slow, and then I stood and rose to my feet.
My mom loved Diana Ross and Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor. She was in her teens in the late seventies and imprinted fully on disco music and all its perky optimism. I had a whole disco playlist I listened to when I wanted to feel close to her: KC and the Sunshine Band, the Bee Gees, ABBA. I grabbed my earbuds and turned on the playlist I’d made of her favorites. And then I made my way to the door, opened it, and felt the rooftop breeze cross my face like silk just as “I Love the Nightlife” started up.
Was I a little bit shaky at first?
For sure.
But there are things you know in your body that you just never forget.
Here’s the great news: The roof of the warehouse was smooth concrete. And so other than a few seams to watch out for, it was a perfect, buttery-smooth, breezy, sunshiny space for roller skating. I swear, it felt like fate. Like this was where my entire life had been leading—to this glorious, windy rooftop moment.
Was I going to bother the tenants below? Unknown. Maybe the roof was thick enough to mask the sound. Or maybe it would just amplify it.
Either way, I got started—pushed off with one foot and rolled forward on the other.
For a while, I just pushed along jerkily, my arms out wide like a tightrope walker, feeling like I’d really left my youth somewhere back in the mists of time.
But the view from the rooftop was gorgeous—and also something I didn’t stop to appreciate often enough. To the east were historic buildings and more old brick warehouses. To the west was the greenscape of Buffalo Bayou—and its walking trails and kayakers.
I was glad they couldn’t see me, squeaking along like a tin man who needed oiling.
But then I could feel things start to shift as the muscle memory kicked in. The more I did it, the more I could do it.
I made big circles, sinking into the comforting rhythm of right, then left, then right, then left. Then, without overthinking it, I spun in a circle. The jerky motion faded away. I found a smooth rhythm. The rooftop was a wide open space with nothing to run into.
Minute by minute, my childhood know-how drifted back.
And then I remembered what I already knew: I could do this.
I let myself relax. Then I did a half-spin and started skating backward. Then I did a figure eight. Then I squatted down, roller derby style. Then I started grapevining and spinning and just generally grooving like a person who had just been reminded what fun felt like.
Which is about right.
How much time went by? I have no idea. I was utterly lost—in the best way. It was the exact opposite of the grueling hours I’d spent trying to paint before. That had been work, and this was just play. Who needed art when you had roller skating?
Did it make me miss my mom?
You bet.
But the delight of it—the absolute, blissful, embodied pleasure of it—made it okay somehow. I felt that familiar ache of longing, but now mixed with something new. Joy, maybe. The sunshine and the breeze and the music and the motion and the rhythm. An awareness of the glorious, impossible miracle of being alive.
Huh.
So weird to think that this feeling had been there all along—hibernating in a box under my bed, just waiting for me to wake it up.
Maybe I should have tried these skates on sooner.
I swear, at one point, I decided I could just keep skating there, round and round, lost in bliss, all day and night.
But of course that’s not what happened.
In fact, not long after I had that thought, while I was skating backward in a slalom, the sound of someone shouting my name pierced my disco playlist—and I spun around to see Joe just a few feet away, calling to me.
He wasn’t wearing his vintage jacket today—just a T-shirt—but by now I knew those glasses. And that floppy hair blowing in the rooftop wind. Also—process of elimination. Who else would he have been?
He wasn’t Mr. Kim, and that was just about the only other option.
Recognizing him was surprising, but seeing him at all was even more surprising—especially since the door to the rooftop stairs was self-locking and nobody had the code but me.
Suddenly finding an uninvited man standing on your roof watching your roller-skating jam can add up to a heck of a surprise—and I guess I must have frozen still for a second while still gliding forward on my wheels because, next, I hit one of those seams in the roof concrete I’d been so careful to avoid, which pitched me forward—and right into Joe’s arms as he tried to catch me, even though I had far too much momentum for that to work. He wound up falling back as I landed right on top of him … and we went skidding along the concrete.