In what are probably the last races of Apolo’s Olympic career (sniff, sniff), he earned a team bronze and a personal DQ (in exchange for the silver medal which he enjoyed for a almost a full minute).  And now, it’s time for him to make out with someone other than an ice rink.  I only ask that it’s not Lindsey Lohan.  Yes, Apolo Anton Ohno is sending  the golden years of his career  (marked also by a silver rush and a Bronze Age) back on the plane for home.  They will be forever parted.  They will remember their time together fondly, but the years of training, fouling, and triumph will be summed up in one confusing, unsatisfying statement:  Here’s looking at you kid.

At a time like this, the only option is to quote Robert Frost (just ask S.E. Hinton or the writers of daytime television drama).

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Okay that felt good.  No matter how much this poem has been exploited and abused by bad writers (not you S.E. Hinton), you can’t argue with these words.  And you can’t argue with the fact that short track is about to become boring again.

When I first saw Apolo skate in the Olympics, I was  three months pregnant with our first child.  That was when she was still a boy and dangerously close to being named Apolo, though we would have honored the Greeks with a correct spelling.  (We could have name her Apolla, I suppose.  Apolla Antonia Ohnoyoudidn’t Koenigin.)   I was on Winter Break from my job as a high school teacher, and in a lasting bout of pregnancy nausea, I endured the hours of the week on the couch that felt much more like a boat.  Apolo eased my pain.

Well since that time, our baby Apolla has grown to be seven years old.  My child can be used as a unit of measurement for Apolo’s career.  Judging by her height and her ability to sing harmony, Apolo’s done well for himself in Olympic racing.  Perhaps that’s why I find his decline or exit so sad.  When I became a mom, he became an Olympian.  I suppose it’s good that he’s retiring.  I don’t want to have a fourth child at the age of 42, though it’s certainly possible…hmmmmnn.

Though in the end, we must all kiss certain things good-bye.  Our youth, our reproductive years, the ability to unload groceries without saying ‘ouch’.  And there is a very fleeting period of perfection in the pieces of our lives.  Perfection that is so easy, delicate, sumptuous.  Like the time during which our children are old enough to watch Sponge Bob so we can sleep in, but young enough to still want hugs all the time.  Or when you are young enough to look good, but old enough to not be so dumb.  Or when you directed that wonderful high school theater production, with that magic minute-and-a-half where the meaning of the play flooded the audience with inspiration and emotion.  And your mother-in-law was there watching.  And now she isn’t anywhere.

That’s not to say old people don’t have fun.  When Apolo is 58 he’s going to be happily drinking margaritas and eating chips and salsa with Kate Hudson, and he will be much happier than he was when he was courting the ice.  Talk about cold.  Lifeless.  Just lays there.  But those moments of brilliance or triumph can’t be canned, jarred, preserved or even tape-delayed.  Unless you’re a visual artist, but they dress weird.  And even then, the triumph is not on the canvas that hangs in wanna-be permanence before the crowds that don’t get it.  Or think it’s nice or love it.  The triumph is in the moment that the tube of ochre screamed to be squirted on the otherwise cool palette, and threatened to destroy the comfort of blue fading to gray, and did and was.  perfect.  Those moments can’t be frozen in canvas or on ice or in archives.  Those moments exist for a fractions of minutes of our days.

At the risk of sounding more Ohno-centric this Olympics, I would like to thank Apolo for enlivening our spirits for the past eight years.  I wish him well as he begins the next phase of his life.  And I wish all of us well as we find a new hero or heroine on which our hopes can hitch a ride.  Lindsey Vonn has crashed way too many times for this honor.  It’s scary riding in her fannypack.  And if I cry with her about any more of her victories, I won’t be able to respect myself.

Here’s looking at you, kid.