There's No Ice in Florida

Summer greetings from Mile 12,445...

The Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup.

(Stick with me...)

With the Flyers well into their summer break, I didn't even follow the Stanley Cup Playoffs this year.  And anyway, it's mid-June.

In my mind, too hot for hockey.

In fact, if I hadn't heard that one-liner on the morning news, I wouldn't have even known who was playing.  

But it's true.  

The Florida Panthers beat the Edmonton Oilers last night. 

And they didn't just win.  They did it in historic fashion.

The announcement comes on NPR as I'm putting in my contact lenses at the bathroom counter.

Wait, I think.  How could this happen?

There's no ice in Florida!

It's funny how things stick with us.  

My dad imparted this simple truth to me when, around age 7, I asked him why Florida didn't have a hockey team.  

It was the 1970's, and I was decked out in Flyers gear.

Orange and black yarn ties on my pigtails,
a pint-sized Bobby Clarke jersey,
and a hockey-sized gap between my front teeth.  

At the Flyers game that day, we stopped at the souvenir stand, and Dad bought me a sheet of shiny vinyl stickers with the emblems of every team in the NHL.  That's when I noticed Florida was missing.

I knew about Florida.  My grandparents lived there.   

It was hot down there.  Of course they couldn't play hockey.

(Even at home, we only went ice skating in the winter!)

There was no ice in Florida!

So when I hear the news about the Panthers, it stops me in my tracks.  

I mean, I knew they were a team now.  But in that one moment, I'm gobsmacked by the complexity of the world.  

If Florida beats Edmonton in hockey, does that mean anything is possible?

At Mile 12,445 I am walking again.  Pretty well, actually.  

To that end, I'm glad anything is possible.  I'm thankful for the life-saving advances that have carried me this far and the modern technology that encompasses each of my steps.

(When there was no ice in Florida, bionic legs weren't around either!)

But also... this complex world is overwhelming.

I could jump to catastrophe here.  I could talk about disappearing glaciers and climate change that's happening because of... well... everything... including ice rinks in Florida.

But I won't go there.

I'll just say that putting on my prosthesis, day after day, in a world where anything is possible -- for better or worse -- is equal parts exhilarating and exhausting.  

Sometimes, I yearn for those simpler days when I followed Dad's footsteps up a thousand concrete stairs and settled into his lap at the very top row of The Spectrum.  

It was the middle of winter (of course), and we were cheering on our favorite team.  

As an adult, I'm sure he carried the weight of a complicated world on his shoulders. 

But if he did, he never let on.

Instead, he kept it pint-sized.  My-sized.

And handed it to me in manageable pieces -- one simple truth at a time.

There's no ice in Florida.

Apologies to Panthers fans. :)

Walk on,
Rebecca