Falling on My Ass

A Family Ski Trip on a Less Than Perfect Day

My family and I decided to go skiing the day after Christmas. I love cross-country skiing, but my kids’ passion for it has waned over the years. It’s hard when your kids grow up and make their own choices. Don’t get me wrong, I want them to pursue their passions, but sometimes I find myself wishing they were a little more passionate about my passions.

Still, it’s the day after Christmas, and perhaps out of guilt gratitude for the presents they received, all that we’ve given them, they have agreed to go skiing with us. I made sure to invite my kids with several days notice. I find this works better with teenagers. I once heard Glennon Doyle share a rule that she never says yes to plans that she wouldn’t want to do that evening. It’s a solid rule that I’m pretty sure my kids haven’t heard of yet because they say yes when I ask them to go skiing three days in advance.

The morning after Christmas as I’m picking up wrapping paper and carrying dishes to the sink, I ask Seabass to get ready to go skiing. He hasn’t gone skiing yet this year, and sometimes there can be hiccups with gear, so I suggest he give himself time to sort out what he needs. He makes a different choice and plays with his new indoor basketball instead. When he’s done with that, he invites Dan to play his new video game with him. Actually, he manages to play the video game while still bouncing the basketball.

I wait for what feels like an incredibly long time. Fortunately, I remembered to do my morning yoga, which helps me not lose my shit keep things in perspective. I love hearing Dan and Seabass laugh and work together to beat the game. It is a Christmas morning, after all. As far as I’m concerned, all these mornings between Christmas and New Year are Christmas mornings, and people are allowed to take the time they take…

Until they are taking way too long. After I’ve waxed the skis and loaded them in the car and packed some of the Cougar Gold fancy aged cheddar cheese we finally opened after two years, I gently, again because of the yoga and it being the day after Christmas, let Dan and Seabass know that it is time to go. We live in Eastern Washington, and it is December, which means there are like four hours of daylight remaining. Dan shuts off the game to go get dressed, and Seabass does the same. Dan is back downstairs in five minutes ready to leave. Seabass has made a different choice and is still wearing a basketball t-shirt while bouncing a basketball, no sign of his boots in sight.

“Go get your boots,” I remind him.

He runs down to the basement, still bouncing his basketball and bounds up the stairs. He tries to put his boots on, I use the word tries lightly here. He looks up at me. “They don’t fit,” he says.

“You can wear my boots,” Anna says. “They should fit you. I can just stay here and draw.” She’s come down with a cold and also, she just got a new iPad for Christmas, and she wants to play with it.

“It’s okay,” Seabass says. “You go, I’ll just stay home and play basketball.”

Such self-sacrificing kids, right? They clearly want to ski so badly, but large, unforeseeable obstacles have gotten in their way, and now they’re just trying to make the best of things.

I planned this family excursion days ago and have been waiting all morning. I want to go skiing with my whole family, and I also kind of want to scream, but I manage to refrain from that because of the yoga and it being the day after Christmas. Seabass eventually decides he can wear his old boots even though they are a little tight and “will most likely be terrible.” Anna, losing her lack of boots excuse, comes along too. My kids don’t ever often do what I want them too anymore, but on the day after Christmas, guilt, love abounds, and they come.

It’s raining in town. It’s a brown, dreary sort of day, and I’m eager for a snowy scene. It is still raining though as we drive up the mountain. I’m watching the temperature on the dashboard and hoping it drops. Skiing in the rain is miserable even for me. The temperature drops quickly as we ascend higher and higher, and rain turns to snow, and then it is slick climbing up the mountain. I worry that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to come after all. I’m hoping our snow tires keep their word better than most and wondering if it wouldn’t have been better to spend the day drawing and playing basketball.

At the top of the mountain, there’s a right turn onto a wide road that leads to the cross-country trails. I make the turn to discover the road is covered with a thick layer of snow, but I take it slowly, and we make it. When we get out of the car, it is so windy that a piece of paper flies out of the trunk and is pulled into oblivion. “I’m not sure I’m dressed warm enough,” Anna says. A woman near us is talking loudly about a tree that was down on the trail. I look out at the trails and see the trees are heavy with snow and shaking. I know this movement is part of their stability, but still, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a downed tree on a ski trail before. I worry we might all be pulled into oblivion.

“No one is here,” Seabass says.

“There’s lots of people here,” I say with forced optimism. Two rows of cars line the parking lot, making us both correct. There are people here, and there are not as many people here as there usually are. It’s a Thursday after all, and it’s the day after Christmas, and it’s not exactly ideal skiing weather.

I head into the lodge to use the bathroom. Small groups of people are gathering by the fire or finishing lunch. I overhear more talk of cold conditions and downed trees, but their conversations matter little to me. They have also chosen to bring their families out in this weather, and this comforts me.

I wait for Anna, and we leave the lodge together. We put on our skis and start climbing the first small hill to the trails. It isn’t until we choose our first trail that we realize just how much fresh snow is covering everything. All the rain in town becomes snow on the mountain at this time of year, if it’s cold enough, and this makes for excellent skiing. The problem today, though, is that it’s not quite cold enough, and a wet snow surrounds us. Also, because it is the day after Christmas, the trails have not been groomed. If you don’t ski, a groomer is a machine that packs the snow. It’s kind of like a Zamboni for ski trails. Grooming the trails provides a more consistent snow surface for skiers which makes for a safer, more enjoyable experience. On Mount Spokane, volunteers groom the trails frequently. They take good care of us, but even the groomers deserve a day off to spend time with their family. I imagine them at home with their art and their basketballs and their iPads.

So, we head out into the wind on the ungroomed trails amidst the shaking trees. I’ve stopped hoping for an enjoyable experience at this point and will be satisfied with a safe one.

One benefit of fresh snow is that it doesn’t hurt when you fall. One downside of fresh ungroomed snow is that you tend to fall a lot, or at least I do. I learned to ski as an adult. It is not as natural for me as it is for my kids. They may not want to go cross country skiing often, but they are excellent skiers. I find myself struggling to figure out how to go downhill in the current conditions without falling. My skis keep getting buried in snow, and I’m still going fast, but I don’t seem to have as much control over slowing down. This results in me falling a lot.

When I make it to the bottom of one hill after several such falls, I look at the kids and say, “Why am I going so fast?”

Anna laughs and says, “That’s just what I was thinking, Mama. As I was watching you up there, I was thinking why is she going so fast?” I can tell by the mirth in her eyes and her tone of voice that this is not at all what she was thinking, and it occurs to me that perhaps I’m not going as fast as I feel I am. Anna’s teasing is without malice, and it causes me to laugh, a deep belly laugh that warms me from the inside out.

“Seabass was actually looking for you,” she said. “He was wondering where you were, and then we noticed that you had stopped completely.”

I haven’t fallen this much since I first learned to ski. I don’t think my skis are made for what is basically backcountry skiing, and perhaps I’m not made for it either.

As much as I love cross-country skiing, I sometimes still get nervous when I do it. Today, I’m nervous because I have so little control. I’m still afraid of falling even if the snow fills like a fluffy cushion.

I once fell hard on a different day, when the conditions were icy and my fall wasn’t broken by soft, billowy snow, and the memory of that fall is still with me. It hurt to shake hands for a year after that one.

Sometimes I live in fear of falling. I fear things falling apart or falling away. I worry about my kids growing up, moving on, not wanting to do things with me anymore. When they choose to do things with me, I worry that something will spoil it.

This morning, when I was waiting for my family to go skiing, I listened to Elizabeth Gilbert speak of her struggle with perfection, not physical perfection, but emotional and spiritual perfection. In a letter to herself, she wrote, “we know you WANT to be an ascended spiritual master. But we have terrible news for you. The way to ascension is by falling, by failing, by accepting losses and limitations, by hurting. And then by loving the one within you who hurts.”

On Christmas Eve, when my family and I were playing a game that I wanted to play, I told them, “I can’t play anymore,” and left the table. I was frustrated, and my feelings were hurt. There was some teasing, and I didn’t receive it like I received Anna’s teasing on the mountain. I couldn’t laugh at it, so I walked away. I regretted that decision, getting frustrated and just up and leaving, assuming the worst of others, not working through something hard…

I don’t strive for physical perfection anymore. I did that for a long time, but I’ve mostly let go of that struggle. However, like Liz Gilbert, I, too, want to be an “ascended spiritual master.” I don’t want to be a mere mortal who walks away from her family frustrated or loses her patience and yells about chores not getting done in front of her kids’ friends, someone who needs yoga and daily codependency meditations in order to keep her shit together, and yet it all still falls apart. I don’t want to be someone who falls apart. I don’t want to be someone whose family falls apart. I imagine my family on the mountain on a clear blue day with perfect conditions. Everyone is wearing comfortable just right gear for them, and we are all keeping pace together, no one is going too fast or too slow, no one leaves anyone behind, we laugh and cheer each other on. There are no bumps on our path let alone downed trees. All is pristinely groomed, and there is nowhere else we’d rather be.

Today, Seabass says the snow hurts his face when he skis downhill. Anna says her throat is sore, and she’s not sure she will be able to work Saturday if she’s still sick, and they might fire her. Dan keeps skiing ahead and then circling back for one of the kids. We decide it’s time to turn around, and Seabass says he wants to take Wild Moose on the way back. Wild Moose is one of the longest winding hills on the mountain. It is hard to stay upright on Wild Moose even under the best conditions. I consider taking off my skis and just walking down the long winding hill. I know with one hundred percent certainty that I’m going to fall if I try to ski down. I also know the snow is soft, and it will not hurt me. Still, I find myself struggling to release my fear.

The kids go first. I can hear them rooting for me. “You got this, Mama,” I hear Seabass yell. Still, I fall. Anna tells me later that Seabass kept saying, “she’s got this, she’s got this… oh no, no, she doesn’t,” every time I fell.

This makes me laugh again deep down in my belly. I want more of this laughter. On the last part of the ski, the kids and I talk about Christmas gifts. They share how they sometimes fear their gifts are not enough.

“They always are, though,” I say. “Your gifts are always enough. You are enough.” It is so natural and easy to say this to them.

Seabass made us all pictures for the back of our IPhones this year. Mine is a bird, and now the bird eats the sunflower he made me last year. I cherish it.

“I didn’t buy Anna a gift,” Seabass says. “She bought me candy.”

“Your gift is not less than because you made it,” I say. It’s special. If next year, Anna makes you candy. Wouldn’t you love it just as much?”

“That would be so cool,” Seabass says, and Anna agrees.

“Remember the candy machine you made that one time?” Anna asks Bass. This leads to a conversation about how creative they were when they were little. We remember the intricate details of Seabass’ cardboard candy machine, how he got the little cardboard wheels to turn and dispense candy.

“I’m pretty sure Cato ate it,” he said, “Or maybe it just broke.”

“Nope,” I said, “She definitely ate it. She ate a lot of things.”

“I didn’t mind,” Seabass says.

I did, I say in my head, but I refrain from saying it aloud. Cato, our beloved dog of the past decade, has been gone less than a week now, and her habit of eating cherished sentimental items feels less important in her absence. What she destroyed feels less important in the face of what she gave us.

“Remember when she ate my My Little Pony, Seabass, and you chipped in to buy me a new one, which was even better than the first one?” Anna asks.

“I didn’t buy it,” Seabass says.

“No, but you chipped in. You were really little.”

“I had more money then,” Seabass says, and all three of us laugh.

I want Dan to be there with us. I wanted us to ski altogether. We made it through these awful conditions and more than one downed tree, but we got separated about three quarters of the way through our trek. He chose to go on ahead which I don’t quite understand, and we stayed behind, which I imagine he doesn’t quite understand, and we could argue over why someone didn’t wait or why someone else didn’t try to catch up, but I don’t want to do that. He will call me from the parking lot after he’s been waiting for us for a while, just as it’s starting to get dark, to make sure we are okay. On the ride home, the four of us will eat cheese that tastes like pure gold and witness the most beautiful sky.

My kids didn’t want to go skiing, but they did, and the conditions were awful, but once I accepted them for what they were, I had the loveliest time.

Pocketful of Prose is a community for sharing stories. I would love to continue this conversation and hear some of your stories in the comments. What resonates for you today? What is your relationship to perfection? How does it show up in unexpected ways at unexpected times? Who makes you laugh deep down to your belly? (It’s been a while since we’ve connected, so feel free to just say hi, Happy New Year, and maybe tell us about what you are reading.)