Nora, I'm sorry it was so fraught. But it's good to be home and able to relax.
Sumi, heat goes up, not down, so I wouldn't worry about heating the basement. But if you can cover the radiator holes with cardboard or meat tray styrofoam and a rug or something, you'll stop the basement cold from leaking into your space.
My favorite skating music? Anything by Miklos Rozsa. No, seriously.
Our rink was a member of the big federation of American competitive skating rinks (roller), and hosted competitions at least twice a year, with our skaters traveling to other rinks several more times a year to compete.
I took dance and beginning school figures, but never had the physical ability for figures, neither singles, pairs, nor fours.
But that's what I always wanted to skate--fours. Two men, two women, with routines that were not simply mirroring pairs, but with moves and tricks that required four skaters to complete. Never got to do it, though.
My best memories are actually of things like finding the girl's room too full to change, and swapping my shoes for skates, latching my case and using it for a stool to put my skates on. Or using the funeral-home freebie sewing kit from my purse to baste an unmoored string of sequins on someone's costume back into place, or providing a spare pair of tights or boot covers in an emergency, or cutting the broken lace out of a skater's boot and relacing it between their free style routine and their dance number.
I remember holding my breath when Alice went for her double loop, or cheering when Fred and Ann's tango blew everyone else off the floor. It was a family, a small, quirky circus family in the middle of my church-and-school-going life, and it was marvelous for me.
I also remember mastering the dance turn, the shift from forwards on the right foot to backwards on the left, and back again. And the break at the hip and ankle in the lean that Fred and Ann did, and no one else seemed able to learn. The sensation of flying, of speed, of perfect balance and a kind of invisibility--the problems and life-difficulties I carried in my short, chubby little body fallen away in grace and speed. I was so rarely graceful, skating was like magic for me.