Every year since I can remember ski season has come with ample amounts of joy, except those few where something or someone was broken within the first couple of weeks. The first of September always marks the great ski sales and debuts of new ski films. You start praying for a wet massive snow year early September. Trevor and I had grown up skiing together and one of my most favorite ski days was before his mission. It was a warm day where the snow was perfect and the lines were short. We laughed and chased each other around the mountain and a hundred photographs were taken. I framed those pictures and they remain on my dresser still. After we got married I realized what kind of skier I really had married. We were two different kinds of skiers. I was there for the good time, the fun conversation and the good snow. Trevor was there to make himself the best skier he could be, constantly pushing himself. He was pushing the limits with every single edge he set. For just one or maybe two ski days a year he would love to chase me around the mountain, just screwing around. But all the other days he needs to be charging so hard that he when comes home he can't make it to the shower because he is so exhausted.
Each season the number of days he skis has decreased. But the number of fights we have over him skiing has increased. I am supposed to ski just like him. I don't want to. He is scary good, and scary fast, and almost really out of control. I just want to have a great time and enjoy the lunch run with a diet coke. He usually skips the lunch run and gets in about 4 trams while I am enjoying a sandwich and two diet cokes. I want to go home at the end of the day with sore legs but be able to make it to the shower. I want to stop and take photos, and make sure that my goggles aren't making my face look retarded (which FYI, they do regardless of what goggles and helmet I wear.) Don't get me wrong, I am not a sissy skier, I will ski anywhere Trevor takes me, even if that means he has led me to the top of a 15 foot cliff and left me there. Yes I am still holding that one over his head. I get jealous of the time he wants and does spend up the little cottonwood canyon instead of with me and Stella. I get really upset with the money he wants and does spend on ski gear instead of, well instead of doing anything else with it. Then I get bugged when he says that I can just go ski anytime I want, just by myself like he does. I don't want to ski by myself, I'm not looking for a work out or a goggle tan.
Ski season is a bit of a sore spot. One we are both compromising on, I am learning to love how passionate he is about skiing. I am accepting that nothing makes him happier. When he comes home after an amazing ski day and is so tired he falls asleep on the bed still in his ski pants and sweaty odor, those are the best days of his life. I think of the days in our marriage where Trevor has been as happy as a kid in a candy store and 9 out of 10 days were spent on the snow. How can I be bugged that he has something he loves so much in life? Well, I wish he loved me as much as he loved the best powder day. But he does, in just different ways. They say there are no friends on powder days, and that includes wives and children. I should have known better, I should have learned from the times when I was sick and my dad just put me in the lodge and continued to ski the powder. Or the times I broke something and I just waited in the cafeteria until the ski day was over. Skiing does something to your body, it gets in your blood. Its an itch that only can be scratched locally 5 months out of the year.
Trevor has learned that ski days with me are not training days, as we call them. He can not coach me through my next five turns unless I am asking for help. I will only hike Baldy a few times a year and he shouldn't waste those day early in the season, cause my legs will be way to tired. But I will be there for first tram every Saturday I can. I can carry my own skis and I can keep up. I don't like to listen to music when I ski, I like to listen to the conversation around me. I have to stop and eat food. Snickers bars and a bottle of water don't count.
Unfortunately we are just now figuring out the rules of skis days with one another. Family ski days will have a whole new meaning this year. Stella will make her first debut in ski boots this year and I think both Trevor and I will have to be compromising a lot more to make it a happy experience for her. We will figure it out, as long as we appreciate what we have. As long as Trevor knows what a lucky guy he is to have a wife that can keep up and as long as I can appreciate his passion and love for it all we will be OK. I can't wait to teach Stella how to ski, help her have fun doing it and hopefully she will fall in love with skiing as much as both Trevor and I have. I want her memories of winter to have every Saturday full ski gear, snow and her family.
Because a family that skis together stays together.
We bundled up last night way past Stella's bed time to go ice skating. It was maybe twenty degrees at the Gallivan center downtown, but with the freshly fallen snow and Christmas lights we couldn't resist; so we put on every layer we had and tried to teach Stella how to ice skate. The Gallivan center wasn't the most family friendly place, there were no buckets or walkers to help Stella steady herself, just Trevor and I. We spent most of the night skating with her in our arms, but she was all grins. I wasn't really nervous about Trevor skating with her or my large belly skating, I was really nervous about all the idiots on the skating rink that were falling at our feet. We were so glad that our friends Nima and Marion were with us to help regulate the crowd!
