Satellite Sisters' Uncommon Senses

Satellite Sisters' Uncommon Senses SENSE OF SELFCarry Your Own Skis By Lian When my mother was forty, she took up skiing. Or, more correctly, she and her twin sister took up skiing. They got on a bus, went to ski camp for a week and learned to ski. After that, they'd get in the car and head up to Ladies Day at Powder Hill as often as they could to practice their stem christies. Don't let the name fool you, Powder Hill, which later became the more Everest-like "Powder Ridge," was no pushover bunny slope. This was in the mid-Sixties, when skiing was work-decades before valet parking, fondue lunches, and gear that actually keeps you dry, warm and safe. My mother and my aunt took up the kind of skiing that entailed wooden skis, tie boots, and rope toes that could jerk your arm out of its socket. This was the kind of skiing where skiers, not the snow cats, groomed the hill in the morning. Ticket buyers were expected to sidestep up and down slopes and herringbone the lift lines. The typical A-frame lodge had a big fireplace, a couple of bathrooms, rows of picnic tables, and maybe some hot chocolate for sale. At the end of the day, there were no hot toddies by a roaring fire in furry boots or glasses of wine in the hot tub of a slopeside condo. Instead, my mother and her sister faced the inevitability of a station wagon with a dead battery and the long, dark drive back home in wet clothes. Why did they learn to ski? It wasn't to spend some quality time outdoors together away from their responsibilities at home. They learned to ski so that they could take their collective children skiing, all seventeen of us. My mother's eight children and my aunt's nine. And learn to ski, we did, eagerly. There was, however, one rule my mother had about skiing: Carry your own skis. My mother didn't teach us to ski until we could carry our own skis from the car to the lodge in the morning and, this is key, from the lodge back to the car at the end of the day. Even cold, wet, and tired, we had to get our skis, poles, and boots back to that station wagon on our own. No falling behind. No dragging. And no whining. My mother had the responsibility for her gear, the giant lunch, the car, and the occasional trip to the ER for broken legs. We were in charge of our own gear and meeting at the end of the day. These were the conditions to accompany siblings and cousins to the slopes. Carry your own skis or sit in the lodge all day. No one wanted to get left in the lodge. A cold, wet day on the ice blue slopes of New England, freezing in leather boots and the generation of ski clothes before micro-fibers was far preferable to being left out of all that fun. Miss the lunches of soggy tuna fish sandwiches and Hershey's minis? No way! Sit in the lodge instead of sideslipping your way down a sheet of ice disguised as a trail or tramping through three feet of snow to get the pole you dropped under the chair lift? Not me! Forgo that last run of the day in near darkness, cold and alone and crying because your siblings have skied on ahead without you? Who'd want to miss all that fun? Sitting in the lodge all day just wasn't an option, once we reached ski age. We were expected to participate. We learned to carry our own skis. The lesson was simple, really. Be responsible for yourself and your stuff, or you miss out. No one wanted to miss out. Getting across the icy parking lot and back seemed a small price to pay for the potential of great fun. And even if you dropped your poles or the bindings cut into your hands or you fell on your ass, that was part of the experience. The "carry your own skis" mentality filtered into almost every area of our life growing up. Doing homework, getting to practice, applying to college-be responsible for yourself and your stuff or you miss out. I began to notice the people who hadn't learned to carry their own skis when I wasDolan, Lian is the author of 'Satellite Sisters' Uncommon Senses' with ISBN 9781573222082 and ISBN 1573222089.