Author Adrian Essigmann and Christian Writing

Title: Skater Boy – Coming of Age Part VI A support team is vital to any endeavor like Matthew’s.   Unlike his early days skating, Grandma quickly became the main figure in the story.   She was his driver, agent, scheduler, cook, financial backer, and of course, fan:)   Whether it was making food for summer skating camp (a very intense amount of time training) or getting a hotel around for a competition, Mom Card worked tirelessly to make sure Matt had everything he needed.   It is not that Mom Card is independently wealthy.   She worked for years for IBM and then Lockheed Martin, in their food staff, bringing carts of food to different executive meetings and making sure the regular cafeteria was ready for the engineers and staff of the building.   Being a blue-collar worker, Mom Card knew how to pinch pennies, but she also knew when to spend what was needed to succeed.   One example was Matt’s skates!   When you buy a growing boy $1000 skates, you want to keep them as long as

Title: Skater Boy – Coming of Age Part V Earlier in Matt’s career I had been killing time at a rink, when I happened upon a mother and a daughter.   The mother was screaming at the girl about how much money she had invested in the girl's skating and that the girl couldn’t just quit.   As I walked away I thought, “That is never going to be me!   If Matt ever wants to quit, that’s fine.”   I know that in the beginning of Matt’s career I wasn’t a big fan of figure skating but I now thought it was awesome!   Still I never lost that conviction that he could quit at anytime no matter how good he became.   I might have asked him to finish out that month to make sure he meant it but I had no intention of forcing Matt to continue down this path if he grew to hate it at some point. So... a few years later, I wondered if Matt was sick of skating and just didn’t have the guts to tell us.   Mom Card would call and say, “Well, he got sick again.   I think there is something wrong.”  

Title: Skater Boy – Coming of Age Part IV Normally on a Sunday morning, I am totally focused on ministry.   I am reviewing my Sunday School lesson or my morning message.   If by some miracle I’m totally ready, I will try and pray or read my Bible, but not that morning!   It was early and I got in my car to head to the only open store in the our area.   Parking outback, I hurried inside, heading straight for the newspaper rack.   It was a Sunday morning edition, which would be packed with comics, coupons, community news, and an article about Matthew... I hoped!   Paying for it, I hurried back to the car, to open it up.   I couldn’t believe it!   The front page of the local news had a gigantic picture of Matt, with a huge banner reading “Cool as Ice!”   I immediately went back in and bought several more!   I would get stopped after that by local people who would ask about Matthew.   “It’s neat to have someone in our community that does that stuff!” they would say.   I think too,

Title: Skater Boy – Coming of Age Story Part III When Matt and I went to the Corning Ice Rink the next week, I made sure we made it there in plenty of time to talk to whoever was in charge.   A pleasant woman greeted me and listened as I asked for Matthew to be evaluated and placed in a class that was on his level.   (Yeah, the five step Mohawk Matt had taught his "coaches" the previous week wasn’t a clue that he might be in the wrong class.)   She had Matt quickly evaluated and at least put him in a more advanced class.   I was happy but still wondered if the class was too low but again... I didn’t want to be THAT parent.   As I watched the class I wondered if Matt would test out of it that night.   He didn’t.   The next week he had a different coach.   They worked their way down the clip board and went through the moves at that level.   When it was Matt’s turn, he looked awesome, but for some reason they did not pass him out of the class.   “Surely, next week,”

Title: Skater Boy – Coming of Age Story Part II We drove down to Elmira on a school night to join their “Learn to Skate Program.”   The official definition of Learn to Skate Program is “O­ffering fundamental and specialty badge curriculums that are fun, challenging and rewarding for skaters of all ages and abilities to develop and enhance their skating skills.”   I had no idea ice skating was so organized and I was also surprised that there was a fair amount of boys in the program.   Over the next few months I would realize the boys were hockey skaters and that even Matt’s coach was a hockey girl trying to score free ice time.   She was very nice though and Matt excelled under her.   Four weeks later, Matt took his test, and he passed getting a little United States Figure Skating patch for the level.   It was obvious Matt was hooked!   He was very proud of that little patch and wanted the others. Mom Card offered to pay for lessons and so we started to go up on Tuesdays an

Title: Skater Boy – Coming of Age Story Part I In real life, you don’t know when a story is beginning.   A young person tells you something they want to do and it could get lost in the sands of time.   I told my Grandma K that I wanted to build a tree house style Starship Enterprise in my backyard.   She listened patiently as I went into great detail about this project, that was never going to happen.   I think I talked about this same idea for days and she just listened.   Each day  we would arrive at her house and she would make me a tuna fish sandwich and probably took several aspirins herself:)   I also wanted to become a detective and a fireman... those never happened either.   When I was a Youth Pastor, Jared Ingraham came up to me when he was twelve and said, “I’m going to be a singer someday!”   I said weakly, “That’s great!”   Jared couldn’t sing at that point in his life and has dad was a genius pastor but not a soloist.   There was no way this was going to happen!  

Title: A Writer’s Journey Part XVIII Kolton Hawkins.   Kolton is my only 8 th grader to ever put in 120 miles over the summer!   It would make a HUGE difference!!   In seventh grade, as a modified runner, Kolton was 235 th at the McQuaid XC Invitational but in eight grade he was 34 th !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   Mr. Lyons son (Addison), John, ran that year, and although Kolton didn’t beat him, he was able to keep up with him only coming in behind him by seconds.   Kolton struggled to do summer running the next two years of his career, and so even though he grew as a varsity athlete, his progress slowed.   At the beginning of  Kolton’s junior year a friend named Nolan Lubberts (former JT XC and Track athlete) got him running again.   I asked Kolton how much he had run that summer and he said, “At least fifty miles.”   His mother told me he ran WAY more than that!   She said that Kolton and Nolan had run all over!   Kolton had a fantastic junior year!   This added to his 10 th and 11 th

Title: A Writer’s Journey Part XVII Have you noticed in American culture, that we are becoming so divided that we like or hate an idea or concept depending on who espoused it!   If you are a Democrat and Donald Trump said, “The sky is blue,” it seems like you might ask, “But is it really?”   If you are a Republican and Hillary Clinton said, “The sunset is pretty,” you might ask, “But was it really?   Did you even see a sunset?”   We have become extremely divided as a culture.   So when Hillary Clinton wrote, “It takes a Village” the Republican side immediately viewed it as a prelude to turning America into a Dystopian culture.   I never read it, so for all I know it was just that, but even if she took that concept to an extreme... the basic principle is sound.   I have no desire to live in “A Brave New World” or “1984” but I have learned that a community can make an individual stronger! Take my daughter, Autumn Essigmann.   She tested up for varsity track as a seventh grad