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Full-Time Dads;
The Magazine for Caregiver Fathers
Issue 19, originally appeared in print - January 1996
My wife has decided that our children should learn how to ski. She thinks that, like tennis and golf, it is a sport which will enable them to remain active and healthy even late in their lives. Therefore, last month, for the second year in a row, I found myself driving my family to a hazard-filled excursion onto the slopes of New Hampshire's White Mountains.
My wife had taken everything she would need for the holiday: good books, a quilt she is sewing by hand, her favorite CDs and a few snuggly sweaters that she could wear while curled up by the blazing fireplace at the lodge.
My suitcase, on the other hand, was bulging with a totally different collection of necessities - ace bandages, ankle wraps, knee braces, ice bags, Bengay and an economy-sized container of Advil - because my wife had also decided that it would be me who would haul his sagging, middle-aged body up onto trails with names like True Grit, Utter Abandon and Oblivion.
The drive up turned out to be a typical family ride. Both kids, in the back seat, had their Walkmans tuned to different stations at such high volume that the car's interior was sizzling with the tinny drumbeats that escaped from their headphones. My wife, not to be outdone, blasted such immortal oldies as "Wipeout" and the Dave Clark Five's "Bits and Pieces" from the dashboard radio.
Then, about a third of the way in the journey, our children began to feel insufficiently entertained, so they elected to play their favorite traveling game, "Sibling Rivalry". They warmed up with the mini-competitions of "I'm Better Than You" and "I Know More Than You" before getting down and dirty with the ever-popular "Let's Exchange Personal Insults". They kept this up for a full two hours until, by the time I pulled into the parking lot of our lodge, I felt as if I had just been through a Desert Storm air attack on Baghdad while locked in a very small room with Joan Rivers and Don Rickles.
The mountain, all 4,000 feet of it, seemed absolutely Himalayan this year, but we dutifully put on our vice-grip boots and unwieldy skis and made our way to the bunny slopes for some practice.
My teenage daughter, on the strength of five hours of previous skiing experience and her dancer's legs, completed one run and declared the hill far below her level of interest. I'm not sure what she said as she slid off to a more arduous slope - she was muttering incoherently in guttural tones of teenagerese - but I'd guess it had to do with my unjust insistence upon treating her like a child.
My eleven-year-old son, who last year skied like a Hollywood stuntman, was incurring surprising difficulties. Somewhere during the last twelve months, he had discovered that pain, rather than being an intriguing part of life, was something to avoid whenever possible. Headfirst zooming, catapulting and crashing no longer held the allure of the past.
He was wary of steep sections, but could not manipulate his legs or turn or stop. He fell and could not get back up. His skis came off and shot into the woods. His poles, flying off his wrists, landed just beyond the limit of his reach. Snow was in his face, up his sweater and down his pants. This skiing stuff was miserable and horrible and he hated everything about it.
It was clear that it was time for me to come up with a solution to this problem. And it was equally clear that this solution lay not in parental experience, child development books or in the transcripts of Phil and Oprah shows. No, this solution could be found in only one place: TV commercials.
Accordingly, I walked my son into the lodge and sat him down in the glow of a bank of vending machines. We remained there for quite some time, sharing a soda and crunching on a bag of prehistoric pretzels, until he had calmed down. Then I put a hand on his shoulder, looked him straight in the eyes, and in a supportive, but manly way, said, "Keep trying, kid. You'll get it."
And, for perhaps the first time as a father, I was right. We went back out and took the bunny slope by storm.
The rest of the day, my son displayed a much more competent control of his skis and, as further proof of the miracle in which we were involved, I was actually able to keep up with him. Moving gradually to harder and harder trails, we fought our way around moguls, cut across icy patches and swooped down steep grades with the satisfaction of improving ourselves with each run.
Finally, for our last downhill of the day, we stood, expectant and rosy-cheeked, on top of the formidable intermediate slope. The air was crisp, the view was stunning, and we had learned once again that hard work could overcome any obstacle. My son, I could tell, felt great.
But I felt even greater because I knew that, as soon as we had made it safely to the bottom, my hazardous duty would be over for another year - unless, of course, my wife decided at some point during the next few months that bungee jumping or para-sailing might be beneficial for our children's future development.
Copyright 1994 John C. O'Brien
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