Finally

The Big Day dawned bright and sunny and a suitably filling breakfast was ordered to prepare us all for the next American Adventure. The morning was planned down to the last minute and, for once, the whole family was packed and in the car dead on time.
Having arrived (unusually) early, I spent the time psyching myself up. The half hour of pacing and mumbling flew by. It could not be put off any longer and it was with damp palms, a cold sweat, churning stomach and a general all round paling of skin that I prepared myself to.......


...watch Finn take to the ice for the first time.


My heart was in my mouth, I couldn't speak, I nearly left Meg in the foyer.

Finn was fine.

Really excited in fact, as he padded up and proudly pulled on his number 50 jersey. (I didn't see any of this, having been banished from the changing room due to exuding excessive levels of fear - Jodi thought this might put Finn off, for some reason.)

The first I saw was him tottering on unfamiliar blades down the hallway, clutching onto Dad for dear life, then finding himself being unceremoniously propped against a wall while Jodi shared a joke with the other hockey parents. (Obviously some of the other Mums were doing a much better job of keeping themselves under control than I was).

The word was given and the thirty or so teeny tiny, helmeted, padded and skated hockey tots were led one by one onto the ice.

It was instantly clear who had hockey parents, as some of the little girls and boys made a passable effort at skating over to some padded benches placed on the ice and sat down. Then there were those who had never before set foot on the ice and were given personal escorts to support them over to their places. Then there was the small Australian boy who wasn't really sure what ice was and looked more than a little surprised at discovering that it was actually quite cold.

I won't go  into too much detail as we have video, lots and lots of video, but progress was definitely made. The coaches were fabulous and let the kids find out a lot of things on their own but leaped in at speed if it looked as though despondency was setting in. One of them spent five individual minutes with Finn and he re-joined his group smiling - upright and smiling. He had started to move his feet and get up by himself and he was loving it.

Suffice it to say that the little boy who stepped off the ice practically skipped back to the locker room in his skates with not so much as a held hand and didn't stop talking about his hour on the ice all day. If that is not a roaring success then I don't know what is.