Madison Butchko
We move through life collecting thoughts, moments and feelings. Some we dwell on, others we let pass without a second thought. But certain things linger, pressing at the edges of our awareness, asking to be reconsidered. “On Second Thought” is where I return to those musings — the overlooked, the uncertain, the unresolved — to give them the attention they deserve.
My name is Madison Butchko, and this column is a space for reflection, for pulling apart the thoughts that resist easy answers. Here, I write to question, to challenge, to sift through complexity in search of truth. Some ideas shift when revisited, others hold steady, but all are worth a second thought.
She looked about sixteen. Old enough to tie her own skates, yet she let her father do it. There was something about the way she sat still, her foot resting on his knee, his hands working the laces with practiced familiarity. He tied them without looking, the way you do something you’ve done a hundred times before — steady and careful, firm but not too tight.
I watched from across the bench, my own skates half-laced. It had been years since I last went ice skating. The last time I did, my father had tied my skates for me. Now, I watched another father kneel before his daughter, his hands moving just as my father’s once did.
As a child, I never let my father have it easy. “Too tight.” “Not like that.” “Again.” And still, my father would tie them — undoing and redoing the laces, adjusting the tightness, long after I had learned to do it myself.
Maybe that was why I loved skating so much. It wasn’t just about the ice. It was the routine, the precision, the way every small motion added up to something deliberate, something more than a sport. The sequined dresses, the soft scrape of blades against ice, the way Olympic skaters formed calligraphy, tracing elegant loops with their edges. Figure skating was elegant. Refined. Even in an action so simple as tying the skates.
At nine, I had already begun to develop a wariness for sports, preferring books and drawing instead. Then the Winter Olympics changed everything. I was mesmerized by the way skaters cut across the ice — fast, fluid, unbothered by physics, as if the laws of motion applied only to normal people. It wasn’t just a sport; it was an art: storytelling, musicality, fashion and expression tied seamlessly into movement.
I begged my parents to sign me up for ice skating lessons. They rolled their eyes and muttered something about me being dramatic — I preferred impassioned. After months of relentless pleading, they finally caved — figuring I could use the exercise and some fresh air before I fully fused with my books.
I hated it at first. I was the antithesis of the Russian figure skaters I idolized — clumsy, overstuffed and entirely earthbound. I’d wobble forward, arms outstretched, a human traffic cone buried under too many layers of clothing. My snow pants were so thick that bending my knees felt like my Olympic equivalent of a triple lutz. And then there was the helmet — strapped too tight under my chin, making it impossible to turn my head without shifting my entire body.
But no matter how ridiculous I looked, my father was always there. Every lesson began the same way. He’d kneel in front of me, tying my skates. Twice a week, sometimes three. I’d pull my skates from my backpack, slide on thick socks to avoid blisters, push my foot into the boot, then prop it onto my dad’s lap for him to tie. He never rushed, never told me to do it myself. He just tied them — patiently, perfectly, every time.
It was part of the routine, like him waking me up at 6 a.m. for school or making my breakfast each morning — the quiet ties that hold a life together. If I complained, my dad never argued. We never spoke much during those minutes. During the time I was learning how to skate, my father and I were also dealing with more serious challenges. My grandmother, his mother, was dying. My grandmother on my mother’s side had passed away when I was four, but I had barely known her. This would be different: the first real loss I could understand. Soon, her cancer became a part of my daily routine: hospital visits, whispered updates, hushed phone calls in the other room.
Maybe that’s why I clung to skating. I could trust this routine. Every lesson followed the same script: my dad driving through rush-hour traffic, bundling me in layers, kneeling to tie my skates. At the rink, if I fell, I knew why. If I stumbled, I could trace it back to a misstep, a shift in weight. Skating had rules, rhythm and reasons. The rink became its own world, a place where I moved in familiar circles, occasional falls on my butt included. And my father was always there.
Even when my grandmother got sicker, nothing about him shifted. He still drove me to practice. He still made my breakfast. He still sat through my piano lessons, deaf in one ear. He gave updates about my grandmother, delivering them like weather reports. Some days were clear — she was stable, doing okay. Other days, storms rolled in — complications, setbacks, a shift for the worse.
I knew I was supposed to be sad, but I didn’t know how. My dad, on the other hand, wore his grief like a well-worn coat— neither shed nor acknowledged. He didn’t talk about how he felt. I never saw him cry. I wasn’t five anymore, young enough to sob without hesitation and collapse into my parents’ arms. But I also wasn’t old enough to carry it in the way my dad could.
I was beginning to understand that childhood had an expiration date. On the first day of fifth grade, I filled out a questionnaire with silly icebreaker questions. One asked: What’s something you once believed was true but isn’t? I wrote: That my parents know everything. Now at ten, I was beginning to realize they didn’t. What was “cool” suddenly mattered. The simplicity of being a kid was beginning to fray, and with that came a new kind of feeling — a lingering, unnamable loss.
The loss of that childhood simplicity seemed to go hand in hand with the loss of my grandmother. At the time, I thought I understood sadness. I thought it had a shape, a sound. I thought sadness meant crying. And because I never saw my father cry, I assumed he wasn’t sad. Maybe adults processed things differently than kids, and that was what it meant to be grown up.
One night, over dinner, my dad told me we wouldn’t be making cookies with Grandma this year. When we visited, I shouldn’t ask about her hair — the hair she no longer had beneath a knitted flower hat. He said it with the same casual tone he had used to tell me Grandma had gone swimming at the local pool, her favorite activity. If I hadn’t been listening closely, I might have missed the words entirely and gone on with my day, assuming nothing had changed. His voice was calm, collected. But the words carried a new weight.
I wanted my dad to be upset, to react, to be angry, to feel something. Instead, his composure was silencing — if he wasn’t crying, why should I? I sat there, swallowing my tears like unspoken words.
My grandmother passed away after falling down the stairs and slipping into a coma. I remember my dad’s voice when he told me — steady, flat — but he turned away before I could see his face. At first, I thought he was coughing, maybe even laughing. It was a strange, caught-in-his-throat kind of sound. So I laughed, too. I tugged at his sleeve, teasing, assuming it was some sort of joke. He moved past me.
His face was red and puffy. His breath, unsteady. His shoulders, shaking. He was crying. Sobbing. A deep, guttural choking. Grief broke through, floodwaters breaching a dam. My brain short-circuited, and laughter was the glitch. I tried to stop. But I was shocked—grief and confusion knotted together, impossible to untangle. What I regret about that night is that I didn’t do anything else. I didn’t reach out to hug him. I remember the way he turned away, the way his shoulders shook and the way I stood there, silent.