For Mom, this has always been an ice time of year

My mother introduced us Schachter kids to ice skating when we were little. Sunday mornings in the winter found us at the outdoor Christopher Morley Park rink in Roslyn.

Only once a year did we go indoors, in the summer to Cantiague Park in Hicksville. For some reason, though, skating in July and August seemed sacrilegious.
I was never a great skater — I never learned to skate backward until I was 35 — but it was invigorating to be out in the cold, fresh air, and I loved it being a sport that anyone could enjoy and anyone could afford.

I wanted to spread the word about skating’s beauty. So each year I took my seventh grade social studies students from North Shore Middle School to Morley Park. Many of them had never skated before and were understandably nervous, holding onto the guardrails, but by the end of the session they were moving at a nice pace, happily vowing to return.

In my neighborhood, when the temperatures hit the teens, skaters would descend on the frozen Scudder’s Pond in Sea Cliff. After it was determined that the ice was indeed frozen, skaters would take to the ice. It was glorious. No rules! No time limits!

A hockey game would be organized — all ages participated — and 5- and 6-year-olds, who had so much padding that they were quite wide, were installed as the goalies. Few pucks got past them.

But, of all five Schachter skaters, the best one was my mother. Even into her mid-80s, Mom was a whiz on the ice, able to circle the rink in just a few strokes. Mom’s world was skating. Whereas other women’s wishes were for nice clothes and perhaps a fancy car, Mom’s desire was to ride on an ice-smoothing Zamboni. Alas, it never happened.

Mom was a regular at Morley Park, weather be damned. In January 2007, at 78, she arranged to meet my Uncle Charley, then 90, at the rink. It was about 12 degrees outside and, not surprisingly, they were the only ones who ventured out. A newspaper photographer happened to be on hand, snapped their picture, and…