Since I spent one third of my life at a Figure Skating Rink, wearing skating costumes that were so small underwear was NOT an option… I figure it’s time for me to come clean on what I think of the sport.

When I was 15, I discovered that my opportunity to live a normal teenage life, with sleepovers and spin-the-bottle games with boys, would conflict with my six-day-a-week skating practices. It was then that I knew the time had come. It was time to say goodbye to a sport that had taught me perseverance, determination, and that jealousy really is the root of all evil.

As the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships are held this year in my hometown, this very week, the memories and nightmares of my Figure Skating past are all coming back. I told my editor, Cristina, that I wanted to write about Figure Skating and my experience, but that it is virtually impossible for me to write about all my experiences in one blog post, therefore I will be dragging this out for a while.

Yes, therapy would spare you all the grave details, but admit it — you
all enjoy a good story that involves pretty people in pretty clothes, with a story line that would make a fantastic Lifetime Movie of the Week.

So, while you are watching in awe the unfolding of the National Figure
Skating Championships this weekend — wishing it was YOU wearing that beautiful little costume with your hair looking perfect after landing a triple toe (yes, I could land a triple toe loop) and getting a standing ovation from your audience — be glad you are NOT the one competing this weekend.

Before you continue, be forewarned: I must take my time developing this story if I am to remain completely forthcoming. I am going to need to go to the "Skating Spectacular" on Sunday to see, in person, those skaters who sacrificed their education, their childhood, and their innocence to go for the gold.

Come Monday, I will focus on My True Story: "My life as a competitive Figure Skater — I have a Gold Medal, but…"

I would like to tell you that my daughter and I spend quality time together watching the Masterpiece series of Jane Austen stories: pretty, bonneted heroines practicing archery and dropping calling cards and plotting to win the hearts of handsome young men. I would like to tell you that. But it’s just not true.

A few nights ago, in the interest of bonding, I sat down with her to watch (and I shudder, literally, as I type this) The Moment of Truth.

It’s a game show. . . .sort of. Also a reality program, I suppose, in the sense that humiliating people seems to be the staple of these shows. It involves a "contestant" who agrees to answer something like 50 questions — personal questions — while hooked up to a lie detector. Then he or she goes on FOX-TV (which I’m embarrassed to say, I was not aware prior to this was one of the 8 channels we receive) and must answer an assortment of the same questions in front of three people: a spouse or partner, parents, friends, in some cases a boss.

"You won’t believe it, Mom," my daughter said and invited me to sit next to her. (Do you know how rare this is??) So I did. And I didn’t. . . .believe it, that is.

The questions start off easy: Do you belong to the Hair Club for Men? Have you ever gone through a co-worker’s personal things? And by answering these "correctly" — meaning truthfully — the person in the chair wins something nominal, like ten grand.

Then they get weird, sick, and invasive. Also strangely banal. Have you ever had a sexual fantasy while in church? Have you ever touched a client more than was necessary? Have you put off having children because you’re worried that your marriage won’t last?

Now first of all, I’ve heard that men have something like 12-25 sexual fantasies a day. So how in the world could any guy be expected to make it through an entire hour-long church service without? Second, you need to define the word "necessary" before it’s possible to determine what touch is or isn’t. And finally, when on the brink of becoming a parent, isn’t it normal — healthy, even — to question whether or not your marriage will last. . . .especially if you’re the sort of person who will go on national television to talk about intensely personal things.

These questions strike me as tedious and rhetorical. I mean, do you walk up to strangers on the street and ask them if they masturbate? Or if they pick their nose while driving. No (I hope). You simply assume that they do. But it is not in your nature — certainly it is not in mine — to solicit the details.

And what have we come to if this is considered entertainment?

I’ll tell you what I came to: I came to the point where I needed to cleanse. Say you spent an evening eating cotton candy and drinking root beer (again, I shudder); you’d need to spend the next day ingesting nothing but raw carrots and hot tea in order to undo the damage you’d done.

The same goes when the damage is psychic. Watching Moment of Truth was so sullying, in fact, that I needed to spend the rest of the evening talking seriously to my daughter about dignity (she was thrilled); listening to Mozart; and drinking a $70 Burgundy.

The Givry 1er Cru 2005 is made by Domaine Joblot. It has 13% alcohol and is a deceptive wine: so smooth at first it seems simple, like a single, ripe, ruby fruit. But if you pay attention, you’ll find hints of lavender, rose, and nutmeg within the soft cherry base. As you drink and the wine breathes, it seems almost to wink: elements of orange zest, allspice, and just a breath of musk come zinging through. This is a vintage that was made for age: experts say the Givry 1er Cru may be cellared — and will continue to improve — for up to 15 years.

Still, I’m not sorry I drank it all, rather than waiting for 2023. I needed it as an antidote to the sleazy stream of "truths" I heard the other night. I’m hoping in 15 years the reality TV craze will have died down, and that when my daughter and I sit down together — she at 28 and I at 56 — it will be over a bottle of something equally as nice.

I was definitely feeling something at the end of Blue Door, but it wasn’t necessarily satisfaction. I was left with a lingering something: a desire to probe the questions asked by the play, but also the need to challenge some of its core ideas. Perhaps it was Tanya Barfield’s intention to make her audience squirm a little, to make us slightly uncomfortable about the way we view race and race relations. However, when the play concluded and the protagonist, Lewis, finally seemed to embrace his heritage, I wasn’t ready to embrace it with him.

In Blue Door, Lewis (who is played by David Eulus Wiles), is an African American math professor who has found himself unsettlingly alone after his white wife divorced him because he refused to participate in the Million Man March. As he paces around his house, trying to resist the insomnia that plagues him, he is visited by the spirits of his ancestors (all played by Eric Avery). These ancestors try to get Lewis to acknowledge his roots and embrace his "blackness."

My main beef with the play is that education, success, and productivity seemed to be equated with "denying one’s blackness." It made me uncomfortable to see Lewis’ ancestors admonishing him for being involved in "white academia." Yes, Lewis took his pursuit of excellence to an extreme, but I did not think he deserved such harsh abuse. I was left wondering, "Where is the middle ground? Can’t a person be both black and successful?"

To be fair, as a white woman I can never exactly see the world in the same way that an African-American man might see it. I cannot relate to the experience Lewis had when a fellow professor stared at his hands as if afraid that he might strike her with them. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be burdened with a history of whippings, lynchings, and back-breaking labor. I do not, however, think it is wrong for Lewis to study mathematics and read Herman Melville. Furthermore, Melville hailed from a time when women were oppressed as well. Why can women today read literature from male-dominated time periods and dabble in the traditional spaces of white men without feeling guilty?

Don’t get me wrong. I think it is important to acknowledge who you are and to remember your roots and family history. I also think we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and we should not be afraid to reach for bigger and better things. I do not honestly believe that Tanya Barfield meant to say that African Americans should not be successful, but I think she was simply too hard on Lewis. There was a schism between her characters that was much too sharp. One the one hand, there was Lewis, a hard working, intelligent, very successful math professor who refused to acknowledge his blackness. On the other hand, there was Rex, Lewis’ not-so-successful brother who died of a drug overdose. Where was the character that was both black and successful? In the end, Lewis seemed to finally "get it" and stopped repressing his past. At this point, however, he had already messed up his teaching career because paranoia about his blackness in a white world provoked him to yell at an innocent student.

Although I didn’t necessarily agree with some of its assertions, Blue Door did have some heart-wrenching, conscience-jerking moments. Lewis’ ancestors spun poignant tales about struggling in a cruel and overwhelmingly white world. Avery did an excellent job portraying the hardships of Lewis’ ancestors and the unjust treatment of African Americans as slaves and as "free" men. His performance was most haunting when he sang in a stunning, clear voice the Ancestor’s Song. "Baba agba, iya agba,mo pe o." Grandfather, Grandmother, I call on you.

Despite its pessimistic tone, Blue Door ended on a somewhat positive note. Lewis finally manages to acknowledge and make peace with the ancestors that haunted him throughout the play. Instead of struggling against his inner voices, Lewis gives in and starts working in cadence with his ancestors as they paint a door together, singing with each stroke. Lewis finally grasped the importance of his heritage, but I left hoping that he would also not deny his own success-filled past. A blue door is said to keep the night terrors out, but you have to leave the house sometime.