“That’s what I’m f*cking talking about!”

No, I do not care that Alysa Liu dropped an f-bomb on live teevee. How could I? I personally tend to swear like a sailor, and honestly, her statement perfectly captured that moment, didn’t it? She just skated out onto the ice and proceeded to execute on the kind of flawless level we only expect from the very greatest of athletes. We’re talking, oh, that game in the NBA finals that year when Michael Jordan just started raining down three’s against a hapless opponent (I think it was the Trail Blazers). The only thing I’ve seen like Liu’s performance yesterday was Brian Boitano’s 1988 long program.

I’m trying hard not to read a lot of significance into the fact that an American woman won a medal, Gold no less, in the first Winter Olympics after my mother’s death. Mom loved figure skating, and I often watched it with her. I still remember some of her caustic commentary through the 1990s…”Another goddamned boring Russian in a fru-fru shirt!” She really, really, really did not like the string of Russian men who won Gold every time out in the 90s. I can occasionally see her point…I will never believe that Viktor Petrenko outskated Paul Wylie in Albertville, but I didn’t hate him. Alexei Urmanov, though? That dude was soporific. And I had a healthy dislike of Evgeni Plushenko, but honestly, he was an amazing skater. I suppose my “dislike” was based on him being a skater for them.

Would Mom have liked Alysa Liu? I honestly don’t know. Her lip piercing would have bugged Mom, as would Liu’s two-toned hair; for as much a staunch leftist as my Mom was, she could be downright prudish when it came to women and their appearance. She used to kvetch about Kirstie Alley’s hair on Cheers, for God’s sake.

And yet, as I watch Liu perform, I couldn’t help hearing my mother’s voice: “Atta girl!” after every jump, “Yesss!” when she spun, “She’s cute,” at some random point. And Mom would have loved “That’s what I’m fuckin’ talkin’ about!”

“Good for her,” Mom would have said. Good for her.