This Is a Little Spark
By Sarah Bahiraei
@sarahbahiraei
I lug open a big metal door, and a blast of icy air hits my face. My daughter and I wobble forward on shaky legs, laughing and holding onto each other to keep from falling. Someone has mercifully changed the ambient club music playing over the speaker to classical piano. The opening notes of “Clair de Lune” fill the rink, blending with the sound of metal blades slicing across the ice.
It all started with a book from the library about a girl who feels nervous about ice skating for the first time but tries it and loves it. We read it multiple times from beginning to end before the book was due back. My three-and-a-half-year-old's curiosity was piqued even more when she watched a video of Elsa on ice, gracefully jumping and spinning, her thick yellow braid wrapped around her shimmering dress as the crowd cheered.
And so, every week since the new year began, my daughter and I take a bus to the community center ice rink, fasten cobalt blue rented skates to our feet and helmets onto our heads, and skate.
Earlier this morning, between wiping dried oatmeal out of breakfast bowls and cajoling my daughter to get her jacket on before we missed the bus, I quickly scrolled through my phone. Headlines of cities under siege met me as well as images of bombed-out apartment buildings, a message from a loved one walking through shadows of grief, and an email impassively stating there was no update on our family’s immigration case. A lump the size of a marble formed in my throat, and I second-guessed whether it was even worth it to go skating. The terrifying speed at which the events of the world were unfolding and my own family’s teetering uncertainty sat on my shoulders as I shoved wipes and crackers into my backpack and shimmied shoes onto a squirrely child’s feet.
I only understood every third word or so, but two older gentlemen on the bus grumbled together over the state of their country’s economy, its skyrocketing inflation, and an upcoming election with worry etched in lines around their eyes. I felt a familiar sense of intruding while watching. Still, after so many years, I am a foreigner in Western Asia—always on the outside looking in.
A little girl sprouting three ponytails sat in the seat in front of us, shoelaces untied, drawing hearts on the foggy windows. A woman crocheted the beginnings of a lace doily and hummed a meandering tune across the aisle.
The bus moaned and screeched to a halt at each stop, and a complicated mix of the ordinary and the unimaginable made its way onto my lap.
***
A friend once asked me to name some “little sparks” in my life. We were sitting over cups of coffee in my rented flat in a foreign city while both of our children, still small enough to toddle along the couch, tried to swipe at our hot mugs.
I was expressing my sadness about our current life circumstances—how I just wanted things to change for our family, how I had all these hopes and dreams, but everything felt so shattered. I was tired of enduring years of unanswered prayers. All I wanted was for our family to leave this part of the world and for my husband to be granted the right papers, so we could live together in my home country.
I laid out all the broken pieces, naming each one, worrying we would never see these shards put back together: the anguish of raising a child abroad and away from family, worry over the state of the world, and the uncertainty of what the future held.
“Everything feels so fragile,” I remember telling her. I imagined scooping up all those shattered pieces in my arms and attempting to press them back together to keep them from splintering and floating further away.
Her question about the little sparks took me by surprise. I asked her to clarify what she meant as I moved a bowl of chocolates out of my daughter’s reach.
“The big sparks are nice,” she gently explained, taking the bowl from my hands. But for her, it was the little sparks that kept her going: her two dogs back home, weekend walks with her husband, and her current favorite book. Despite the private brokenness I knew she carried, she listed off the small joys in her life.
These little sparks effortlessly rolled off her tongue and landed on the couch, the embers between us like the beginnings of a fire. She laid these small joys over the dark and fractured parts the way one might offer a steadying hand over a chasm.
Don’t miss out, her question implied.
A children’s nursery song started playing from the Bluetooth speaker causing both of our toddlers to rise from their collection of blocks and board books on the living room floor. We watched as they danced to the music in that funny toddler way, with their knees bent, diapered bottoms bouncing, and chubby arms raised in the air.
“This,” I answered her, turning up the music. “This is a little spark.”
***
Each Monday at the ice rink starts much the same. Armed with the determination and iron will intrinsic to all preschoolers, my daughter grips the plastic skating aid with both hands. Muscle memory from an elementary gym class twenty-five years earlier works in my favor as I help her over the threshold, and we step out onto the rink.
The frustrated tears and exasperated growls come first when my daughter’s blades chop clumsily at the ice. I come along behind her, guiding the aid slowly around the rink. I point out a big kid taking his first lesson, his legs wobbling like a baby deer's, and the girl, who was spinning moments ago, now fallen, laughing as she brushes ice crystals off her skirt.
We skate in tandem, and my daughter’s frustration soon gives way to wide-eyed excitement and squeals of glee. I catch our reflection in the glass and tell her to keep her eyes forward, keep her head up, and keep looking ahead. Her joy is unrestrained as she figures out how to move herself forward. I let the vicarious delight wash over me too.
We skate around and around, and my mind soon quiets. The lump in my throat softens. While I let go of all that weighs heavy on my heart, everything else melts away. I don’t think about my struggles or the world’s weariness. I think about keeping the two of us upright. I think about not falling. I think about getting ourselves back up when we do fall. I think about flying.
As I trudge through extended uncertainty over my family’s future and the pains of a hurting world, I find solace in this rhythmic glide around a sheet of ice with strangers each week and the countless stories of hopes and fears as knotted as mine, all bundled together in one place every Monday morning. Copying the practice from my friend, this is a little spark, an ember of light flickering through darkness.
Once the forty minutes of ice skating are over, we leave the rink and step outside. The bright sunlight reflects off the windows, making us squint and shield our eyes. We chuckle at our unsteady steps on the ground, still adjusting to the absence of ice beneath our feet. We pretend to ice skate, dragging the soles of our shoes across the sidewalk.
A woman from the rink emerges behind us, her skate bag slung over one shoulder. She removes her puffy white earmuffs from her head and crouches down to my daughter's level. “You did so great in there,” she tells her, using the ear muffs to point at her. “Keep going.”
When we get to the bus stop, my daughter finds wildflowers sprouting up against the bench, their bobbing yellow heads standing in sharp contrast to the city's gray concrete. They’re the first we’ve seen this season, and she pulls up every stem from the ground. She clutches the bouquet of shaggy weeds and their roots caked with dirt the entire bus ride home. The flowers are sweaty and squished by the time we walk through the door.
When not much else in life is clear, gathering little sparks of goodness pulled up from the dirt is enough to peel my eyes from the horizon. It's enough to keep me going.
The world still burns and brims with hurt, but I refuse to parent from a place of hopelessness. Instead, I want to make joy a centerpiece in our family, filling our home with laughter, warmth, and togetherness. As I navigate my child through these uncertain times, taking shaky step after shaky step, I point out a burst of joy whenever I notice it.
It takes a lot to face this monster head-on and shout that the beautiful and the good are happening right now. But I can spot a sliver of beauty now while still honoring the grief I carry for our unfulfilled dreams. My hope for a life beyond this one still clings to me, like a child to his mother’s hem, but joy tags along too.
Ice skating on Mondays, coffee with a friend, or the way the morning sun slants through my kitchen window might seem like small things, but rest assured, they hold back a storm.
While yearning for a world that does not yet exist, I’ll be over here, making room for joy to shine through.
Guest essay written by Sarah Bahiraei. Sarah is a writer, wife, and mother abroad. She is inspired by cafe lattes, the sky, and the thread weaving all our stories together. She hopes her words stir readers to look for the bits of magic tucked away in the ordinary—for it is there that hope lives. Her writing can be found on Instagram and Substack.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.