When you're older...
You may just change your mind
This weekend I went skiing for the first time since middle school. I sent a photo of my pass to the family group chat, with wary encouragement and confusion in response. Which is to be expected, since I spent much of my childhood campaigning against ski trips and telling everyone about that time I broke my leg.
I was surprised too, that I was at the resort voluntarily. When the interest in skiing first cropped up this year, I attributed it to Instagram, and the sport’s prominence in my feed. That’s what people who love mountains (me) do in the winter (right?) But it wasn’t the high-speed carving down steep slopes that pulled me in. It was the women taking dogs on a walk while gliding among gorgeous snow-covered trees. Slow and graceful, stopping to take in the view.
As a kid, I was adamant that my distaste for skiing would never change. Years after my bones knit back together, I gave it another try, pointing my skis down the green hill, hoping not to fall. I didn’t, and still I did not go back. Another year, when my mom booked us a cross country ski lesson, I abandoned her halfway through, furious because I’d already declared that I don’t like skiing! When anyone dared to tell me that my mind might change as I got older, I felt insulted, as though the substance of my opinion was flimsy given that I was in middle school (ha.) If anything, the stubbornness they hinted at only grew stronger. I would never like skiing.
I regarded any predetermined change this way. “When you’re older… ” invoked great suspicion. What did age have to do with it? It’s easy now, as an adult who journals diligently, to note the ways change just happens. Often I actively seek it out. But middle school me, she could have used a little faith. In particular, I remember the rumor that people got more confident when they got older. How? I wanted to know, adjusting my purple corduroy and teal camisole every two minutes to be just right. Such growth was unfathomable to me. I did not know what confidence felt like. Determination? Spite? Apathy? I’d rehearsed those feelings well by then, but they were exhausting. Did adults do that all day?
At the ski resort, quiet at the end of the long weekend and icy with snowmelt, I strode into the rental building, got our skis, and led Nicole and Jeremy to the easy cross country loop, the one I’d snowshoed while my siblings got in line for the lift. I cackled when my boot clipped in and my foot slid forward. Over a decade since my doomed class, the slide-almost-out-of-control was still familiar. Nicole, with a touch of experience was our guide and gave brief instructions: shuffle shuffle glide. She set out in front, to fall first, and then to film our crashes.
We set our skis gingerly in frozen tracks that had thawed nearly to the dirt below, just glazing over the trail. I strode forward, and the ski bumped gently along the frozen ground. A few shuffles in, I was sliding down the hill, terrified and grinning and totally unsure how to make the turn ahead. I was surprised to hear myself whopping, and crashed a little after the turn, where the tracks melted away and my feet drifted wildly apart. Still, I was laughing. It was exhilarating to be terrible at something.
Five or so falls later, I determined I like straightways and going uphill. Powering up a gentle slope felt like hiking a mountain, but more graceful. It felt like dance, joy, strength. My body was eager to power the familiar motion, the poles an extension of my arm. On downhills that felt unsafe, I took off the skis and hiked. When I crashed, I hoped it was on video.
The nonchalance with which I repeatedly fell on my butt didn’t strike me until we passed by the lodge on our way out. I refused to take off my skis early and struggled up the hill, trying to stay out of the way of the speedy eight-year-olds. I grinned at their marshmallow fluff snowsuits, which I used to hate wearing. And my smile widened when I realized I did not care if they noticed my awkwardness. I knew they didn’t. Neither did their siblings or parents. The recognition felt like relief, and made me want to hug middle school Allie and whisper just trust me, it gets better. I’m sure she’d roll her eyes.
Happy trails,
Mumble
