This isn’t a blog post. No, really, it’s not. It’s just a note to tell you I won’t be writing a blog today, and possibly not at all this week…or the next. The Time Gods apparently read my blog last week and decided I had way too much time on my hands. So they punished me by sending me to the racetrack on Thursday for 16 hours of research and interviews for an article I’m working on; and then sent me to the barn yesterday for 10 hours and today for eight hours for another article–all of which resulted in 75 pages of crappy handwritten notes that I need to transcribe. Now don’t get me wrong…I’m thrilled to have two paying jobs that require me to write about horses. But even I have my limits. Add to this an essay that I have to write to meet an end-of-week deadline and news on my arrival home tonight that Noah has a 103-degree fever…and we’re leaving town Thursday.

I know I will garner little sympathy from you, my gentle readers, given that I am simply getting what I deserve after tallying up my free time like a British monarch. But the downside of all this is that the blog gets neglected. And for that, you have my apologies.

I’ll be back–soon, I hope. But know that while I’m gone, I’m thinking of you. Totally.

The text came from my friend Lee Ann first thing Saturday morning: “Read the Washington Post Magazine, if you have time…Not even halfway through but I’d like to punch the guy they pull quoted already.”

Uh-oh. I knew if Lee Ann’s hackles were up, mine would be, too. After I made my bleary-eyed way downstairs, said good morning to the kids, let the dogs outside, and opened the curtains, I found the Post’s weekend magazine and opened it to the cover story: “The Test of Time” by Brigid Schulte. The subhead read: “An expert told her she had loads of time. She decided to see if he was right.” Immediately I saw the pull quote Lee Ann was referring to: “Women have time. Women have at least 30 hours of leisure every week. In fact, women have more leisure now than they did in the 1960s, even though more women are working outside the home.” The quote was attributed to John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who is known as the Father of Time-Use Studies.

It didn’t say whether he is the father of actual children, but it did mention that he is now, at the age of 74, divorced and living alone. As soon as I read that, I, like probably 99 percent of the women who read the article, thought, “Of course he is.” Because either he never had kids and doesn’t realize how time-consuming they are, or he had kids and his wife did all the work and promptly divorced him.

I really, really didn’t like this man.

I’ve actually read this argument before: that we have more free time now than the generations of women before us. And why wouldn’t we? We no longer have to scrub clothes on rocks or cook dinner for twelve over an open fire. I remember reading an article years ago in Ms. magazine that interviewed women who were at least a hundred years old. It asked these women what, in their century of living, they thought were the greatest achievements for women’s rights. The first thing all of them cited was the right to vote. But do you know what came second? It wasn’t the Pill, or women being accepted in greater numbers to law and medical schools, or women flying into space. It was the washing machine. Almost all of the women talked about how being able to toss clothes into a machine instead of scrubbing them by hand on a washboard revolutionized their lives. It gave them free time, something none of them had had before.

So I get why we should have more free time. But I also get why we don’t. Or, rather, I get why most women don’t. Because as I read the article, I realized that I actually have what seems to be an inordinate amount of leisure time.

I hesitate to write this for fear that you’ll all find a way to stone me through the computer screen. But it’s true. I did a quick calculation and found that I spend more than 30 hours each week doing leisure activities:

• Four days a week, I ride my horse. If you count my drive to the barn, grooming, tacking, etc., it’s about a four-hour excursion: 16 hours
• On days that I don’t ride my horse, I walk the dogs for roughly an hour: 3 hours
• I read for pleasure (a book and/or newspaper) at least an hour each day: 7 hours
• I watch TV (including movies on the weekends) an average of about two hours a day: 14 hours
• I take a half-hour nap every day. Okay, I know this sounds like the epitome of laziness, but I’ve always believed the Spaniards were on to something with the whole siesta idea. And now multiple studies have proved it: we’re much more productive if we close our eyes for just a few minutes each day. So I do: 3.5 hours

Weekly total: 43.5 hours. And that doesn’t even count Facebook.

So, as much as I don’t like Mr. Robinson, I’m living proof that he’s right. And it’s embarrassing. Most working mothers I know, like the woman who wrote the article, barely have time to shower, much less spend 16 hours a week on a horse. Admitting that I have this much free time makes me feel spoiled and lazy and, quite frankly, unimportant.

The reason I feel this way, according to Edson Rodriguez, a professor of cultural sociology at the University of Southern California, is that being busy is a status symbol. As the article observes, “Everybody who aspires to be anybody is busy. Gone are the days when the goal of the wealthy and elite was to laze around doing nothing.”

But the weird thing is, I’m not the wealthy and elite. We’re far from rich. I don’t have a staff taking care of us. Aside from having someone clean the house twice a month (which we just recently canceled), everything else it takes to run a household (grocery shopping, cooking, daily cleaning, shuttling kids to and from activities, laundry, paying bills, filling out school forms, and so on and so forth), we do on our own. And, in truth, I do most of it. So how in the world do I have all this free time?

Right now, the answer is easy: since the economy went south, my contract work (the corporate communications stuff I do that actually makes money) has slowed to a crawl. I still write for several hours each day (working on articles or this blog or my book), but I don’t have the pressing deadlines looming over me like I have in the past. But even when I think back to those days when I was juggling multiple projects and working 50 hours a week (often including nights and weekends), I realize that, although my leisure time activities were truncated, I still found time to do them. I don’t think a week has gone by since I started riding horses that I haven’t gone to the barn at least once.


Part of the reason for this is that I work from home and am my own boss. So I can decide, in the middle of the day, that I’m going to leave my work for a few hours and go ride my horse, or take a shorter break and go walk the dogs. I might pay the price later by having to work after the kids go to bed, but still, I can make the choice to do that. If I worked in an office, I wouldn’t have that kind of freedom. Any leisure activities I might do would be crammed into the small windows before 8 a.m. or after 6 p.m.—at which time I’d also be juggling kids.

The other reason I have the luxury of free time is, no doubt, a supportive husband. It kind of amazes me that in all the years Dave and I have been together, I can count on one hand the number of times he’s looked visibly annoyed when I’ve told him that I’m going to the barn. Most of the time, he’s happy that I go (in part because when I don’t, I turn into a raging lunatic). I return the favor and encourage him to take time to go for long bike rides on the weekends. But there’s no question my horse habit sucks up infinitely more time and money than his cycling one. Still, he enthusiastically supports it.

But I think the biggest reason I have more free time than most other working moms—and this is the hardest part to admit—is that, when it comes to my kids, I don’t feel the guilt most other mothers do about spending time with them. I don’t think it’s ever crossed my mind as I was riding my horse (even those times when I was working nights and weekends), “Wow, I really should be home right now. My poor kids.” I have no problem when I’m reading the newspaper telling them not to interrupt me. I don’t feel bad when Dave and I get a babysitter and go on a date. And I don’t think twice about telling them I’m going to go lay down for 30 minutes, so they need to play quietly.

And as I say all that, I immediately want to start qualifying it by telling you that I love my kids and I love spending time with them. Because I do. But I don’t feel this compulsive need many other mothers have to spend my every spare moment with them.

Dave and I were talking about this over dinner last night (while grandpa babysat the kids) and how masculine this approach to parenting is. He was saying that if he were a mother with the career he has now (which involves many late nights and fairly frequent travel), he would feel incredibly guilty about all the time spent away from the kids. But he’s not a mother; he’s a father. As such, he doesn’t have that kind of guilt. That doesn’t mean that if he had a choice, he wouldn’t forgo the late nights and travel to spend more time with the children, but he doesn’t necessarily feel bad that he can’t. And neither do I.

When I write things like this, I often wonder what my children will think someday when they read it. Will they doubt that I ever really loved them? Will they print out this blog entry and take it to their therapist as proof of what a selfish, self-centered mother I was? Or will it just tell them what they knew all along: that I love them, but I also love being able to pursue other things I love away from the demands of my family? More than likely, the answer will be: both.

I know because I lived it. My father was an astronaut who loved flying above pretty much everything else in his life. He has said (and even wrote in his memoirs) that if someone had come to him and told him that he could fly into space only if he sold his wife and children into slavery, he wouldn’t have hesitated before handing them the shackles and chains, saying, “Take them.”

I see more of myself in this statement than I care to admit. Although I wouldn’t give up my children for anything (and I don’t really believe my dad would have either…ummm…would you have, Dad?), I understand that children can be one of the important things in a person’s life without being the only thing. This was my father’s approach to parenting, and it’s mine, too. But I can safely say I always knew my father loved me…even if I wasn’t the center of his life. I’m hoping my kids feel the same way.

And with that, I have to go. The kids are awake and I need to get them breakfast. I wish I had more time…

I’ve started writing three different posts today, and abandoned each after a few paragraphs—bored to tears by what I’d written.

And then I found a “One Step Ahead” catalog in the pile of mail on my desk and started thumbing through it. I’ve now decided this catalog is my muse. Because it is such a rich treasure trove of crap to make fun of.

For those of you who don’t know what “One Step Ahead” is, it’s a catalog that bills itself as “Thoughtfully Selected Products to Help With Baby…Every Step of the Way.” But what it should really be called is, “Thoughtfully Selected Products For the Most Paranoid and Guilt-Ridden Of Parents.”

Ok, a quick disclaimer: I’ve bought several products from this catalog, thus why I’m on the mailing list. Some of them are really useful: the baby gates, the booster seats, the outlet covers, and the like. And it has some cool, creative toys. But so many of the products seem so outside the realm of normal, I shudder to imagine the parents who are buying them.

A few examples:

• The “Relax Right Memory Foam Pillow”: A $24.95 pillow for toddlers ages 18 months to five years. “Ordinary pillows push the spine out of alignment; that’s not good for growing bones!” it tells me.

Oh really? Every night when I put my kids to sleep, they ‘re laying with their heads on their $5 cotton-poly pillows. By the time I check on them before I go to bed—three to four hours later—their heads aren’t anywhere near the pillow, which is a good thing because usually it is either on the floor, or wedged into the corner of the bed against the wall. Why in the world would I spend that much money on a pillow that would likely suffer the same fate? I’m going to take a gamble and say that my growing bones did just fine on the pillows I had as a child, which were likely made out of asbestos, and assume that my children’s bones will do just fine, too.

• The “Gummi Crib Rail”: For just $13.95, you can turn your baby’s crib rail into a teether! I’m not exactly sure what this is. From what I can tell from the picture, it looks like a strip of rubber you attach to the crib rail, that your child can then suck and chew on. “Protects both baby and his crib,” the catalog reads. I really didn’t know either of these things were an issue. I’ve never heard dentists warn parents about the myriad dental problems that result from chewing on bed rails. Nor have I heard of paint ingestion or gum splinters. I mean, I have a lot of friends with kids and never once have any of them complained about their teething babies chewing the furniture to pieces like a new puppy. But a product has been developed, so I assume this is a problem for at least some children? Or was this a product that was developed in search of a problem? I seriously suspect the latter.

• “Infant/Child CPR Instructional DVD”: “In a mere quarter of an hour [and for just $19.95], you can learn how to save your child’s life!” Okay, there’s nothing wrong with learning CPR. It’s a good skill to have. But I hate the paranoid tactics used to push CPR classes onto parents. They talk as if babies are suffocated on an hourly basis and the only thing standing between your child and certain death is your resuscitation skills. Further, this DVD in particular bothers me because, according to the ad copy, “it uses real kids—not dolls—so you learn more effectively.” What the hell? It uses real kids? What child actors did they find to agree to that: “Here, Kate, inhale this marble into your wind pipe.” Or, “Here, Josh…we know you can’t swim yet, but two words: ‘Canon ball!’” [splash.]

• But I think my favorite product the catalog has to offer is the “Portable UV Pacifier Sterilizer.” That’s right, Mommy! If you’re tired of your baby dropping his pacifier in the tobacco-spit in the Wal-Mart parking, now you can sterilize on-the-go. For just $29.95, you can have this “ingenious, palm-sized sterilizer” that is “clinically proven to destroy 99.9% of germs” in just six minutes!

First of all, I’d love to see a kid attached to his pacifier wait a full six minutes for it to be sterilized before it’s returned to his mouth. By definition, children are an impatient lot, and I can’t imagine any child kicking back and reading the latest issue of Scientific American while waiting for the advanced UV technology to work its magic on his binky. If a child does have that kind of patience, that’s a clue that he’s way too old to be sucking on a pacifier.

Second, aside from children with suppressed immune systems, is there any mother out there who thinks any sickness her child has ever had can be attributed to a dirty pacifier? If your baby is mobile and has any contact with other children in any way (at the park, in Kindermusik, in preschool or daycare), the number of germs they’re swapping is so astronomically high, it makes the bacteria swimming around on a recently crash-landed pacifier look like a sample taken from a clean room. I’ve seen toddlers eat each other’s boogers. I’ve seen them lick ketchup off tables in restaurants. I’ve seen a baby regurgitate a cracker and then hand it to his playmate, who quickly swallowed it. Do you really think the pacifier that spent three seconds on the ground is your biggest worry?

Oy.

Mostly, I just enjoy laughing at this stuff. It gives me something to do between eating and checking Facebook. But when I stop laughing, I find myself really, really annoyed by it. Because I think marketers who hawk products like this do a real disservice to parents and, ultimately, their kids. We already live in a parent culture ruled by fear—why propagate it?

The answer, of course, is because it makes money. In this way, the baby products industry is eerily similar to the beauty products industry: Make people insecure so they’ll buy products that give them the illusion of control. No one wants to be the parent who didn’t spend $13.95 on the bed rail teether and then have a child with an abscess from a splinter. Nor do you want to have the kid who catches the rare auto-immune disease from the contaminated pacifier. These products shout at us, loudly and insistently: “What if…?! What if…?! What if…?!” and leave us to fill in the horrifying blanks.

I’ve spent the better part of my time as a mother rebelling against this. When the preschool Noah was attending as a two-year-old offered a low-cost CPR certification class, I refused to sign up. “How many people do you know who’ve had to do CPR on their kids?” I asked Dave, who thought I was being unnecessarily stubborn.

“None,” he answered.

“Right.”

“But what if something happened and you needed it?” he countered.

“That’s what 911 is for.”

As I recount that, I realize it sounds a bit cavalier. How could I not take a course that would teach me how to save the life of my child? But being a parent means constantly balancing our natural fear for our children’s safety with reality. I used baby gates because the risk of my toddling baby tumbling down the stairs was high. I put squishy rubber things on the corners of our coffee table when Noah and Gwyneth were little because it was very likely one of them was going to clock their head on it. I kept medicines and chemicals locked up and out of reach. I put plastic thingies in the outlets. But a specially designed pillow to help my child’s bone development? A bed rail teether? A portable pacifier sterilizer? Really?

I remember my grandmother looking at the small mountain of gifts I’d received at my baby shower before Noah was born. She shook her head and said, “And to think I raised six kids without all this stuff.” At the time, it annoyed me. As a rule, I don’t subscribe to the whole, “Well, you ate lead-based paint chips as a kid and you turned out fine!” parenting philosophy. But now that I’ve had two kids and successfully raised them through babyhood, I realize what she meant. There are actually very few things you really need to get you through your child’s early years: a good nursing bra and breast pump; a good baby carrier and stroller; and a lot of diapers. What you really need, you can’t buy: patience, perspective, a good night’s sleep, and love—lots and lots of love.

I’ve long believed that the key to being a good parent is accepting (and embracing) your children for who they are. This means that no matter how much you love football—and no matter how much you’ve dreamed of spending Sundays on the couch watching the NFL with your son and then watching your son play football himself—if your son has an affinity for musical theater and Bette Midler, you need to be okay with that. In short: we can’t hold our children hostage to our own dreams and expectations. Their lives are not ours to live.


I always thought this would be the one area of parenting at which I would excel. I would proclaim loudly to anyone who would listen that I would love and support my children no matter what path they strode or stumbled down. If they decide they want to be circus performers, I’ll be the first to sign them up for carnie lessons. I see so many parents (especially in the uber-competitive world of Washington, DC) who seem to have their children’s futures mapped out for them with total disregard for the child’s own interests. I talked to a mother of three the other day whose children are all under the age of nine, yet she’s worried about how few high school seniors from Northern Virginia schools are accepted into the University of Virginia. As a result, she’s getting her kids on the honor track and scoping out which schools are the most successful so they’re more likely to be competitive when they graduate. I nodded commiseratively, but wanted to ask, “But what if your children have no interest in going to UVA, or any other college for that matter?”


So I pat myself on the back and tell myself how I will allow my kids to create their own futures and be their own people. As a result, they will be happy and successful in their own right.


And then I turn around and find myself pushing my kids to do things they don’t want to do.


Case in point: Thanks to the generosity of Dave’s dad, we spent the last six days in the Colorado mountains. Last year we did the same, when Noah and Gwyneth took snowboarding and skiing lessons respectively. Noah loved it. Gwyneth, not so much. But after some discussion (yes, that’s what I’m calling it, rather than “prodding” which might be more accurate), she decided that this year she would like to try snowboarding. Skiing might not be for her, but snowboarding most certainly could be.


Uh, yeah.


Both Dave and I were nervous about sending Gwyneth, who favors the climate-controlled indoors to snow and a high of 15 degrees, and tutus and halter tops to long underwear and ski pants. When we took her backpacking for the first time this summer, I was careful to let her wear whatever she wanted on the trail. When she stepped out of her bedroom in a mini-skirt and spaghetti-strap tank top, Dave said, “Sweetie, you might want to wear long pants and a t-shirt.”


“But this is prettier,” she replied.


I pulled Dave aside and whispered, “Let it go. If she associates backpacking with ugly clothes, she’ll never want to go again.”


Then there’s just the fact that she’s not too enthusiastic about going into environments where she doesn’t know anyone. This is probably the way in which she and Noah differ the most. Noah could make friends at an anthrophobia conference. He’ll strike up a conversation with anyone, adult or child, and be exchanging phone numbers by the end. Once, when he was four, he introduced himself to the couple sitting next to us outside a Baskin Robbins…asking them how old their daughter was and telling them about how he and his sister were only 16 months apart. At the end, the husband shook his hand and said, “Well, Noah, it was a pleasure meeting you. I think you’ve got a future in sales.”


Gwyneth has always been shyer. Strangers to her are, well, strange. And new situations are unpredictable and a little scary.


But she said she wanted to take snowboarding lessons, and, in truth, we really wanted her to. Both Dave and I have been skiing since we were eight years old (Dave grew up skiing three days a week, having the good fortune of living just 15 minutes from a ski area) and love pretty much everything that has to do with the mountains. We want our kids to have the same love.


Does that sound suspiciously like an expectation?


So we woke up early Wednesday morning and suited up the kids in their 85 layers of snow gear and drove to the base of the ski area, where we waited in an excruciatingly long line to check in for lessons, then rent helmets and boots and boards. As we waited for the helmet and boot fitting, I could see Gwyneth’s confidence begin to erode. She started hanging on my leg, looking up at me with eyes that were growing increasingly bigger, tears rimming the edges. “I’m scared,” she told me.


First, I tried the confident, no-nonsense approach. “Oh, you’re fine, sweetie. You’ll be okay.”


Then we waited in another line to get her board. Gwyneth’s grasp on my leg was growing tighter, her eyes wider. Again, she told me she was scared. This time I tried the affirmation approach. “I know it’s scary meeting new people. I get that way, too. But you can be scared and still try new things, right?”


I could tell this wasn’t working, so I told her to give me her hands and I would put kisses in them, and she could put those kisses in her pockets, and then when she was lonely, she could pull the kisses out and put them on her cheeks.


This seemed to bolster her, but only slightly. Not near enough for the terror of drop off, which was looming.
Helmet, boots, and board in hand, I took her to where the instructors were standing in front of an elevator. I would say goodbye to her there, I told her, and she would take the elevator upstairs to a room where the other kids would be.


The whole elevator thing seemed like a serious design flaw. If Gwyneth had been able to see a room full of kids, she probably would have been more willing to go. But sending her on an elevator? Here, little girl, get on this elevator with a complete stranger to take you to a place you can’t even see. I couldn’t blame her for being reluctant. But I put on my most positive face, and confidently walked her to the elevator, where a 20-something man greeted us. I knew this would mean trouble. Gwyneth loves women. If a cute, pig-tailed, 19-year-old woman had greeted us, I think Gwyneth would have been much more willing to go. But a man? And not a father- or grandfather-like man, but a snowboarding dude with a soul patch. This won’t go well, I thought. “It’s going to be fine,” I told Gwyneth. “You ready?”


Gwyneth looked up at me and the tears that had rimmed her eyes for the last 15 minutes tumbled down her cheeks. Her mouth opened into a full scream. “Mommy! I don’t want to go!” Her hands covered her face and she started sobbing uncontrollably.


“Gwyneth,” I said, kneeling down to meet her face, “it’s okay. I know you’re scared, but it’s going to be okay. You can do this.”


Her sobs only intensified. What killed me was that I could tell she didn’t want to cry. She was wiping away her tears as fast as they came to her eyes and trying really hard to stop, but she couldn’t. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than watching a child trying desperately to control him or herself, and losing. It feels mature beyond their years. They shouldn’t have to act so grown up when their bodies are so little. “I’m scared, Mommy!” she kept saying. “I don’t want to go!”


I hugged her, trying to comfort her, but it was useless. I knew the only thing that would make her feel better was to tell her, “Okay, you don’t have to go. Let’s leave and get some hot chocolate.” But what would I be teaching her if I did that? The fact is, throughout our lives we’re faced with new and scary situations, and running away isn’t an option. I think of how often I’ve walked into a conference room or an interview or a cocktail party and felt my heart rate spike and my throat go dry. I hate it, but I go anyway because I know bailing would hurt my career or someone’s feelings. Sucking it up is, quite frankly, a really good skill to have. This was a chance for Gwyneth to learn that.


But she’s five, not fifteen. Was I pushing her too fast too soon?


The snowboard instructor stood there looking at us. I gave him an “oh-boy-I-bet-you-have-this-happen-all-the-time” smile that was met with a blank “holy-shit-what-the-hell-do-I-do” stare. The poor guy was terrified. I looked back at Gwyneth. “Honey, I know you can do this. It’s time to go. Do you want to push the button on the elevator?”


She looked at me with absolute, sheer terror in her eyes—like I was a Nazi asking her to flip the switch on the gas chamber. “Noooooo,” she sobbed.


“Okay,” I told her. “Then I’m going to do it. And when the elevator comes, you’ll have to get on it, okay?”


She grabbed onto my coat. By this point she was hyperventilating. “Can you [gasp, gasp, gasp] go [gasp, gasp, gasp] with me?”


“No, sweetie, I can’t. See the sign?” I pointed to a sign next to the elevator. “It says ‘Parent-Free Zone.’ I have to say goodbye to you here. But I’ll pick you up at three o’clock. Okay?”


I pressed the button to the elevator. The doors opened.


She was still crying, but, without any more words from me, she walked into the elevator with her instructor. I waved goodbye to her and blew her a kiss. The doors closed and I could hear her sobs behind it.


I turned around to find Dave, who had dropped off a very happy Noah at his class, and arrived just in time to see the tail end of Gwyneth’s tearful goodbye.


“Jesus,” he said.


“I know.”


“That was awful,” he said.


“I know.”


“Do you think she’s going to be okay?”


I shrugged. “They’ll call if she isn’t, I guess.”


We walked away somberly. We spent the rest of the day cross-country skiing together—enjoying our kid-free date as much as we could. But Gwyneth’s sobs were a constant companion. We talked about whether we’d done the right thing. “If I knew for sure that she was going to have fun once she got going, I wouldn’t feel so bad,” I told Dave. “But I’m just not sure that’s going to happen. I worry she’s going to hate it.”


But more than that was the other issue this raised for me: the worry that I might very well have a daughter who isn’t tough, who doesn’t like to ski or snowboard, who doesn’t like to hike and camp, who doesn’t like the mountains, who doesn’t (God forbid) like horses. It’s possible, right? Dave’s and my genes aside, she could very well decide that she prefers asphalt and air conditioning to the great outdoors and animals. And, seriously, as I write that, my heart sinks.


And I tell myself it shouldn’t matter. What about the whole accepting and embracing thing? That doesn’t just mean accepting and embracing a child who prefers Emily Dickinson over Edna St. Vincent Millay; or who supported Hillary instead of Barack; or who loves warmbloods instead of Thoroughbreds. That means accepting a child whose interests and values are fundamentally different than my own. A child who is a conservative, fundamentalist Christian who thinks Glenn Beck is the smartest man alive. A child who becomes a member of PETA and thinks riding and competing horses is inhumane. A child who would rather spend her day in the mountains indoors playing board games than on the slopes.


These are the possibilities that I need to accept and embrace.


As the day wore on, Dave and I checked our phones about a hundred times, waiting for the voicemail that said, “Gwyneth is in the fetal position in the corner. You need to come pick her up.”


But that didn’t happen. Instead, at 2:30, we made our way to the lesson hill, where we could watch Noah and Gwyneth demonstrate their newly honed shredding skills. As we approached, Dave and I braced each other: “There’s a good chance she won’t even be outside. They might have just let her stay in and color. I hope she doesn’t see us and burst into tears.”


To our surprise, we arrived at the hill to find Gwyneth riding the Magic Carpet (a short moving walkway) up the hill. She saw us and waved enthusiastically. “Mom!” she yelled across the snow. “I can snowboard, Mom! Watch!” She got off the walkway, cut in front of the boy standing in her way, sat in the snow, took off her gloves, and buckled her boot onto her board. She then pushed herself up and started gliding down the mountain—arms out, legs bent in a squat, looking straight down the hill. At the bottom, she rocked back onto her board, spraying some snow as she stopped.

She turned to Dave and me and yelled, “Did you watch me?”


“Yes!” we called back, giving her a thumbs up. “That was great!”


She did it again. And again. And again. After the instructor said it was time to stop and all the other kids took off their boards, Gwyneth asked to go one more time. And she did.


Afterwards, we talked to the instructor, who told us Gwyneth cried for the first 45 minutes after I dropped her off. He said he kept trying to distract her with other things, but she would have none of it. Eventually, she just walked over into a corner by herself, sat down, and cried for 10 minutes. After that, she walked over and joined the other kids and became his most enthusiastic student. When we asked her if she wanted to take lessons the next day, she didn’t waver before telling us, “Yes!”


I realize this doesn’t mean much of anything. As I said earlier, she’s only five. As time wears on, she might decide that she really doesn’t like snowboarding. Or skiing. Or the cold, or the mountains, or the outdoors. Noah might discover these things, too. But for now, I don’t have to worry about that. For now, I’ve got a daughter and son who love to snowboard. I’ve got a daughter and son who love to camp and love horses and love being outside. If someday they decide none of these things are for them, I’ll make sure to accept and embrace them. But for right now, I’m going to enjoy watching them shred the slopes.


[Noah on the slopes:]