I went out skating again this morning. I got a late start with it this year, because I was worried about a repeat of last year�s knee injury. When I was a kid, our next door neighbors had a pond in their yard and they used to let us skate on it. When I was 12, I saved up my allowance and bought a pair of used men�s figure skates from a local resale shop. They were black, which suited my fashion sense at the time � I was never very fond of the girlie white boots � and they were lined with plaid flannel, perfect for outdoors. My little brother and I would usually haul our sheepdog along with us. Sometimes he�d pull us around the ice, but mostly he�d chase squirrels as we played broom hockey and several games of our own invention.

I was still using those skates until last year when, toward the end of the skating season, the leather finally split down the back of one ankle. I was forced to find a new pair, which meant stiff new white boots with higher heels. In trying to break them in, I fell over and over and over again. Inevitably I landed on my left knee � I�m very consistent that way. Finally, one day in March, my knee swelled up so much I couldn�t take my jeans off until it had been thoroughly iced. I smashed my CD player and fractured my knee-cap. I decided to hang up my skates for a while.

I never used to be afraid of things like skating. I was not afraid to fall, to injure myself. I�ve never been reckless. It�s not like I have a death wish. I have never had a desire to bungie jump or throw myself out of an airplane. The closest I�ve come to that kind of danger was probably rock climbing in Colorado or a couple of horrifying ski slopes in the Alps. But what makes those activities enjoyable for me is not spitting in the face of death but my sense of my own strength, skill and control. I am not afraid because I know I can handle it. Getting back on my skates this year was tough. I did not like that I was afraid to do it. Fear is what ages you and I am not ready to accept that. But it is no longer fear for myself.

Having a kid changes everything. When I get out on the ice it is no longer a question of me doing something stupid and hurting myself. It is a question of me doing something stupid and being unable to take care of AJ. I find with activities like skating, the dangers of which I had never given much thought, if they had even occurred to me, I have to weigh the relative virtues against any potentially catastrophic outcomes.

So these tentative ventures onto the ice once more have felt, in part, like a response to my fear of fear, my fear of getting old. But I also feel a responsibility to maintain my youth for AJ, so he is present in my mind even as a hurl myself onto the slippery pond, possibly against my better judgment. When I was AJ�s age, my mom was twelve years younger than I am now and my grandparents were in their mid 40s. My great-grandmother was younger than my mother is now. We grew up doing all kinds of outdoor activities with my grandparents � skiing, skating, tobogganing, swimming � and we loved it. My grandmother married early because of World War II. My parents did the same because of Viet Nam. With no pressures of external danger, my generation hasn�t felt the need to settle down early. Rather than look for a respite from danger in the comfort of the vision of a stable home and family, the home itself became a symbol of danger � entrapment, abuse, disillusionment. Instead many of us chose to stay single and add control the inevitable danger and uncertainty in our lives by inviting it in, through an active pursuit of unpredictability and instability.

I didn�t really give much thought about how my marriage might necessitate a change in my approach to such things. My husband and I had been involved for seven years before we got married and had been living together for a year. I didn�t really expect anything to change after the wedding, and in some ways they didn�t. But there is an expectation of togetherness that makes you think a little more about what you do. But having a kid changed everything. Now I don�t even think about these liminal activities. I just don�t do them.

I often wonder what it�s like to adopt a child, for it was crucial to me to have the time to process the change. The nine months of pregnancy and then the months of infanthood where all AJ did was sleep and eat and we could take him anywhere, those helped us adjust. AJ toured downtown galleries, went to work with me and went out to dinner where he spent the evening under the table. But gradually we became less comfortable with the whole thing, we were exhausted by the hauling of the gear, by the lack of sleep, by our own nervousness about a potentially disturbing baby outburst that never actually occurred. Like millions of urban parents before us, we moved to the suburbs. We relaxed (a little). We were less afraid. We could postpone trying to explain why the man in front of our building slept on the sidewalk. We could postpone trying to explain the man covered in billboards who marches west on the north side of Washington Street every weekday morning at five minutes to nine. We could postpone explaining why we did nothing about any of this. We could postpone the nervous attempts to shield our child from danger in the world and focus on child-proofing � shielding him from danger at home. Because really, that is not about danger. It is about our own skill and control. Just like skating.

Parenting manuals seem to want you to think about danger all the time. As one who has a tendency to rely on books for information, I read a lot about babies when I was pregnant. For the most part, even the best of the books seem to desire that parents live in fear of imminent disaster. I was often reminded of a sign we used to see rather frequently when we lived in London. Inevitably it was tacked up on a rather innocuous-looking wall or gate. It was a triangular yellow sign with a black border. In its center was a silhouette of a figure lying with limbs askew being struck with a lightning bolt ending in an arrow pointing directly at his heart. Below the sign was usually a small rectangular sign reading �Danger of death: Keep out.� The proposed mode of death seemed rather alarming � a moral transgression that resulted in an apocalyptic act of God. We began to envision these signs on every surface of our home.

This morning was clear and sunny, still cold, but with a heartening fresh smell that suggested spring might be coming soon. As always, I was alone on the pond, listening to the newly returned robins and the scratching of my skates digging into the ice. I skittered around in circles and back the other way. I tried to jump. I fell. I got up and skated away.

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