Sacrificial Lamb

If you’re a skier, you know there are two cardinal rules of taking kids up the hill for the first time — go when the weather is good and don’t go when it’s too crowded. Actually, if you’ve been a parent for more than about a year, you’ve usually figured out this general rule for most things (I say a year because until then, you’re still clinging to a fantasy world where children fit into your previous lifestyle and can just be carted around like luggage). Keeping that in mind, we chose this day to take Newt and Elfie skiing for the first time:

Now, I haven’t been skiing since I was pregnant with Newt (7 and a half years ago), but I grew up skiing, had a terrible first experience skiing, and am generally not a dumbass. But on this occasion, that rarely-seen, “damn-the-torpedoes” side of me took over and the kids were going skiing. Didn’t matter if Tenzin had to park farther up the mountain than I even knew there was a parking lot. Didn’t matter if 1,000 children and out-of-control adults — most of who were vacationing from Japan — were trying to share one football field-sized bunny hill. Didn’t matter if I to had to dump an inch of accumulated snow off the top of my hood every 10 minutes. The kids were skiing, damn it.

Actually, everything went remarkably well, and we’ve somehow convinced them that skiing is a privilege (novel concept), so they want to go again. I even got Elfie to stop complaining about having her hair brushed by threatening to not take her up. How’s that for brilliant parenting.

I know I sound like a broken record when I talk about this, but whenever we’re in one of these new, crazy situations, I can’t help but feel amazed about how far Newt’s come. When he was 3-years-old and diagnosed as autistic, I remember talking to one of his developmental preschool teachers about a ski program for special needs kids. On the one hand, I was interested in the idea of therapy through sport. On the other, all I could picture was Newt freaking out on the chairlift and plunging to his death. Of course, the idea of putting him in a “regular” lesson was out of the question. There were so many pitfalls: strange instructor, new kids, too many directions to follow (any directions to follow). Come to think of it, we never would’ve even gotten him out of the rental area — the boots would’ve felt too irritating, and the meltdown would’ve begun.

So the other day, when the kids were lost in a sea of helmets and puffy jackets, I was taken aback when I realized that I was worrying more about Elfie, not Newt. I stood there in the snow without anything to do but analyze every little move he made, and those old feelings of doubt started creeping in — every glimpse or sign of him growing frustrated or irritated left that little question mark hanging.

But in the end, it was another kid who was rolling around in the snow, yelling about his skis being “stupid.” And it was another kid whose mother had to drag him kicking and screaming off the hill. And it was another kid who freaked out and made the rest of the class come in early.

My kids looked exhausted and frozen when we came to get them. But they managed to pull it together, drag themselves to the lodge, and turn in their gear. We had a small hiccup when Newt laid down on the wet restroom floor and I went ballistic (I’m not a big fan of public bathrooms). And so, as it turns out, the only person in the family who freaked out that day was me. Given the alternative, that’s frankly just fine with me. I’ll take one for the team.