It's been forty years since I saw my mother ice skate. I don't know if people in my hometown still skate on the lagoon. I only go back to Evanston once a year. There's never any water in the lagoon. Even if there were, it seems too warm out for it to freeze. Winters seem milder now, not like the winters of my childhood where it was so cold my mittens stuck to everything and my nose was always running.

When I was a child I thought, in that self-centered way of thinking kids have, that it was my fault my mother retreated into her dark room. I thought if I could make her sick, I could make her well too. I invented rituals and spells to heal her and I prayed that winter would last all year long.

My mother loved winter. Her mood changed when the decorations went up in Marshall Fields. She smiled when the ground got white with snow and the trees down by the lake grew their own decorations, silver icicles and red berries.

My mother taught me to skate when I was three. For five years we skated together in matching blue jackets. We were twins, except that she wore sleek white stretch pants and I wore snow pants, she wore gloves and I had mittens attached to my sleeves with metal clips.

If it was a really cold day, my mother carried a white fur muff. As a child, I thought the sign of being a grown up was carrying a muff. But by the time I grew up, muffs were history. Women wear leather gloves, or special ones made for driving. Muffs are from an era where women walked.

My mother used to tell me stories about her childhood in a frozen, far-off country. She told me about skating to school, about making syrup out of tree sap, about getting lost in the forest one day, and following a wolf who led her back to her home.

That last winter we skated together, it snowed all through the holidays. The lagoon was covered with snow. We couldn't skate at Christmas or New Years. I don't know if not being able to skate made her headaches worse, or if was some grown up thing a kid couldn't possibly fathom. I was only eight years old.

"Is it shoveled yet, Hannah?" she would ask me, when she felt up to talking.

I knew she didn't mean the back yard. She meant the lagoon. I went over there every day after school to check.

"Why don't they shovel?" she'd say over and over.

I knew who "they" were. Elves. They lived in the warming shack by the lagoon. Their only job was to shovel the snow off the lagoon but they were lazy elves and sneaky too. I'd always look for them when I went to check the ice. If the shack at the end of the lagoon was unlocked, I'd quick peek my head in but they were too fast for me. Once I thought I saw an edge of a hat disappear under a bench but when I looked underneath, the elf was gone.

A few days after New Years, when I went to check, the lagoon was shoveled.

"About time, you lazy creeps," I said out loud. I ran all the way home, checking over my shoulder to see if the elves were chasing me.

"It's shoveled!" I yelled as I bolted up the stairs.

Mom opened the door a crack.

"Let's go, let's go, let's go," I said, bouncing up and down on one foot nine times to make sure she said yes.

Getting ready to skate always took a long time. My mom made me put on scratchy long underwear. Over that went soft corduroy pants. Once I tried putting the layers on in reverse, the way I thought they should go. First the soft pants, then the scratchy underwear. My mom came into the room and fell on the bed laughing. I hardly ever saw my mom laughing like that, shaking and almost crying.

I pulled on my skating sweater and went into her room. The sweat trickled down my undershirt. I pressed my face to the cool glass while she dressed. She put on her white pants and a fuzzy sweater that left little hairs on me when I hugged her. She smoothed moisturizer on her face and rubbed the extra on mine. We went downstairs, put on our jackets and boots and walked to the lagoon three blocks away, carrying our skates in their special bags.

It was bitter cold. My mom had gloves on under her mitt. My scarf was tied tight around my mouth. The scarf was wet and starting to freeze. I could feel the cold prick of its edge against my nose. It was already dark over the lake. It was late, time to be home drinking cocoa in the kitchen. The last two kids on the ice were leaving when we got there.

The first thing mom did was skate around and inspect the ice. Her yellow hair streamed out of her hat. She glowed against the darkness. She looked like a summer day when she passed under a streetlight, all blue and yellow and white.

"The ice is bumpy today, Hannah," she said in her quiet voice. "Be careful when you spin you don't catch an edge." She smiled at me. "We'll be beautiful today. Like two swans."

I did one of my rituals after she told me the conditions. I squeezed my eyes shut and spun in a circle three times. I drew a giant pentagram on the ice with my frozen mitten, and then I skated over to mom.

She was skating in tight little circles, spinning faster and faster. I zoomed around her in big loops, counting as I went. I was up to twenty-three when I saw it.

It came over the snow piles by the lake. It was a dark shape against the white. It walked slinky and low to the ground, like no dog I ever saw. I stopped dead for one second and then shot over to mom, grabbing her around the waist in the middle of a spin.

"What on earth, Hannah … " she began.

Then she saw it by the bench about five yards away.

"Is it a dog?" I said, yanking my scarf down, knowing full well it was no dog.

My mom hesitated before speaking. "Sure, honey. It's a dog. A mangy old dog."

The creature raised its head. It stood motionless under the streetlight, watching us like we were watching him.

"It's not a dog," I said.

My mother squeezed me tight. "Stay here, honey."

"Where are you going?"

She didn't answer. One long silent glide at a time, she crossed the ice to the edge. The wolf was still standing by the bench. I could see its eyes. They were light colored and almost see through, like two yellow marbles.

My mom stopped and held out her hand. She was saying something but I couldn't hear. All I could do was watch. She was a pale figure reaching out to a wolf under a streetlight.

It all happened so quickly after that.

I heard the whine of sirens. A police car with the lights spinning on the roof screeched to a stop. The lagoon lit up with red flashes.

"Don't move, lady!" I heard a man yell.

Another man was running towards my mom with a gun in his hand.

I screamed.

My mother darted towards the wolf, flailing her arms. Then she did something she told me never to do. She leapt up the bank of the lagoon in her ice skates.

"Run!" she screamed at the wolf. "Hurry!"

The wolf backed up a few steps and spun around. I saw him scramble over the mounds of snow before disappearing into the darkness over the frozen lake.

People were coming out of nowhere. Kids were running towards us yelling. Grownups were spilling out of the big houses across the street. I ran over to mom, running up the bank with my ice skates on, reaching her just before the first policeman.

"Lady, what did you do that for," the policeman said in a mean voice. "The zoo guys'll be here any minute."

My mom was holding a hand to her head. The man moved closer.

"Lady, you took a chance going up to him. You coulda been killed."

The policeman was sticking his face in hers, trying to get her to look at him. My mom was sobbing.

"Oh, it's her," I heard a lady behind us say. "You know. Mrs. Millar."

I turned and glared at the lady.

The policeman's voice changed. It got softer. "You okay, ma'am?"

"The wolf," she whispered. "Oh, the wolf."

Nobody except me seemed to understand what was going on. I pointed to the other policemen. "He was going to shoot him."

"Yeah. If he attacked your mom, of course I woulda shot him," the other policeman said.

"She saved the wolf," I said. Grownups could be awfully dense.

"He's safer in a zoo," the other policeman said.

"Talk about safe," I heard a woman say. "I'm not letting my cats out till they catch him."

"I'm not letting my kids out!" another voice said.

I put my arm around my mother. "Everybody, just leave her alone," I said. "She grew up with wolves."

Someone laughed. A boy yelled, "I see him! Over there on the lake!" The small crowd hurried away, following the boy. The first policeman stayed by my mother.

"You gonna be okay, ma'am?"

She nodded.

"Sure you don't want a ride?"

She patted her hair and reached down for my hand.

"No thank you, officer. My daughter and I are fine. We'll be going home now if you don't need us any more."

He stepped back. "Have a god evening then, ma'am."

"Thank you, officer. You too."

She gripped my hand and we turned up Lake Street for home.

I don't know what happened to the wolf. In some other household, I could have scanned the newspaper for details. But my mother didn't allow newspapers in our house. Too depressing, she said. I knew my father read them in his office. I suppose I could have asked him.

I'd figured a few things out already. The wolf got out of his cage at Lincoln Park Zoo. He crossed Lake Shore Drive in the middle of the night and walked across the ice to Evanston. I was afraid for him. I was afraid something bad happened to him. A policeman shot him, or he got run over by a car.

My mother got one of her sick headaches the next day. In my memory, it lasted for weeks. Maybe it was only a few days. I don't know. All I know is I was dying to go in there and talk to her about what happened to the wolf. But her door was shut and my dad would shake his head every time I asked to go in.

One evening just before my bedtime, she called out to me. I climbed up on her big bed and curled up next to her. We didn't say anything for a few minutes. I was afraid to talk. Sometimes when she had one of headaches, even the smallest sound hurt her ears. Then she smiled at me.

"You've been worried about him, haven't you?"

I nodded, my eyes fixed on hers.

That night my mother told me what happened to the wolf. She told me he crossed the ice for days and days. His paws were frozen. He had icicles hanging from his chin, but he kept going. He walked across the Great Lakes until he came to Canada. In Canada there was a big forest with plenty of food, and a frozen stream with a hole he could drink from, and other wolves to keep him company.

I fell asleep on the bedspread. The last thing I was aware of was the feel of my mother's hand stroking the hair away from my face, and the sound of her soft voice as she ended the story.

That winter I thought about the wolf a lot. I thought about him chasing rabbits, and howling under the moon, and following a frozen stream. I imagined how, on clear nights when the moon was full, he must have paused in his nocturnal wanderings. He raised his head. He was looking for the woman with the long yellow hair who saved his life.

My mother stopped skating after we saw the wolf. She said she was too old to do spins. She said she didn't want people to laugh. She said she had a debt and she paid it. She said all that and then she never skated again.

Years later when I was sitting in the library at college, looking at microfiched newspaper articles for a research paper, I thought about the wolf again. I realized I could look up what really happened. The newspapers were right in front of me. All I had to do was find that week in January.

I stared at the microfiche machine for a few minutes, my hand on the knob. But I didn't move. I didn't look it up. I didn't want to know the facts. I wanted to believe her ending.

When I come back to Evanston at Christmastime, I always go down to the lagoon. It's my favorite part of my hometown. It doesn't change. Evanston has changed. Chandlers and Marshall Fields are gone. Kids aren't playing in front yards anymore. The fountain at Fountain Square is hardly even a fountain. The lagoon though, is frozen in time. It looks exactly like it did when I was a child.

I walk around it three times. The first time I see the present. I see the college kids running, an old couple walking, a young man and a dog. I see the stones lining the walls of the lagoon and the neat stone circles around the island. I pass the old iron streetlights and the wooden benches.

The second time, the present starts to fade. I follow the wide path around the lagoon. The cinders crunch under my feet but I don't hear them. I hear instead the scrape of blades on ice. I see children skating, their hats bright spots of color against the winter grays. I walk through the past, rewinding time until I get to that moment.

Some memories from childhood are like thorns. Sharp and painful, they stab you in the gut. You want to yank them out and throw them away. Other memories are like exhibits at the Field Museum. So clear it's as if they are sealed under shellac. They're shiny and unalterable. You can't change them no matter how hard you try.

Then there are the other memories. The ones that time embellishes. The wishes made real. The dreams come true in your mind. That wolf did cross the ice to Canada. Just because it was made up, our ending to the wolf's story isn't a lie. It's a truth of a different kind. The kind of truth found in art, in magic, and in dreams. The kind of truth found in childhood and lost in adulthood.

The third time around, I feel the sting of the North wind on my cheeks. The pale winter light fades until it is dark once again. I come to where the wolf stood under the lamppost. I see them so clearly in my mind, the woman and the wolf. I'm the little girl again.

I stop and watch as the woman in the dark reaches her hand out to a wolf standing in a pool of light.