After Sunday's ice skating debacle, where we sashayed off to the rink to enjoy an hour or two of FUN! only to find (how dare they?!) a hockey game in process, I was nervous about having the same thing happen Wednesday night.

So as we drove to the rink after school/work, I kept slipping "if the rink is open" into my descriptions of the delight to come.

Mirabile dictu, the rink was open.  We got out on the ice, and OmegaDotter was more daring, letting go of the wall and merely holding on to me (with a death-like grip) as we slowly skated around.

As we came along the back wall towards the row of orange construction cones that walled off the area where the lessons were going on, we were greeted by a vision of pink--a little slip of a girl, just the same size as the dotter, sporting a fuschia helmet over her pink sweat outfit, and skating (by herself!) all around the open ice.

"Oooooh!" quoth dotter.  "Mommy, look at her!  She's skating all by herself!"

I murmured some platitudes about how dotter, too, would be able to do that soon, and we skated on around.  When we got to the doors to the rink (what are they called?  I'm sure there's some special word for it...), dotter asked to rest, so we stopped.  I glanced out to the non-rink area, where various parental types were standing around, and my glance swept over a woman who I was sure I recognized.

She came over to us with a great big smile.

OmegaDotter screeched happily, "Mommy!  It's K's mom!"

Some backstory.  K. and dotter were inseparable for a while at preschool; then, horror of horrors, K. moved on to kindergarten.  OmegaDotter was devastated.  Having K.'s mom's phone number, I kept meaning to make an arrangement to get the girls together, but life got in the way (aka:  I kept forgetting).

K.'s mom pointed to the vision in pink:  "That's K. over there!"  The vision in pink skated over (all by herself!).  OmegaDotter and K. fell all over themselves giggling and hugging each other and pushing each other and giggling and doing their trademark "So, so, SO!"* with their heads bobbing in unison and giggling and hugging...

Then, while I socialized, the dotter and K. were off on the ice together, and dotter, with K.'s example, did some skating all by herself!  Woohoo!

It turns out K. is taking skating lessons there.

It just so happens that I've been thinking of having dotter take skating lessons there.

Now dotter is signed up, and has the Ultimate Joy of knowing she'll be skating with K. every week.

Ballet on Tuesday nights.  Ice skating on Wednesday nights.  I swear, swear, swear there is no intention of becoming One of Those Moms, who have kids who are scheduled out the wazoo with no time to just be kids.

But when you've got a Best Friend Forever who is doing something, something that you have been wanting to do anyway, and you're practically wriggling with delight at the thought of being able to do that thing with BFF...what's a mother to do?

When her parents wanted to go, K. was so overwhelmed with misery that she just hunched her shoulder at OmegaDotter as she clung to her father's legs, and wouldn't accept a hug.  But she kept dashing back into the rink area to hug dotter, and dotter kept dashing out into the dressing area to tell K. something Very Important, and all ended well.

*The "So, so, SO!" is not an "Ah, so" kind of thing.  Just sayin'.

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