The girls started ski school last week. We prepared them with a few short outings to the mountain in advance. Defying their birth order and our preconceived notions, it was Stella who flared down the mountain at full tilt, while Zoey preferred to amble and felt most passionately for the whole aprés ski part of the experience. Give the girl a deck of cards, a hot chocolate, a lap to cuddle in, and she's in bliss.
With promises of many marshmallows and rounds of Go Fish, we escorted Zoey to her Mighty Mites lesson last Sunday. The weather couldn't have been - has yet to be - more ominous: dark clouds, (leaden is what I heard them called on the radio,) ferocious wind, and serious cold.
Off she went with 'water' in her eyes and steaming up her goggles, zoom flew Stella to her 'green group', and suddenly, surprising, Chris and I were alone. Somehow we forgot about that part — the no-one-but-us part. The weather attempted to lure us inside, but we strapped on our gear and headed up.
It was too cold to talk on the lift, but we sat close and held mittens. The ride up is a little over seven minutes, time enough to think about my last ride up the hill with Chris, almost ten years ago exactly, just a few months before we got married.
Feeling far more romantic than my helmet and my too-big ski pants would suggest, I spent the ride traveling through corridors of memory that I haven't explored in years, revisiting the full-throated mix of terror and thrill that filled my days as I attempted to prepare for the unknown future that marriage would bring.
This time, I knew where we were going. And I knew we had two hours before we had to be there, steaming cup of hot chocolate in one hand, cards in the other.
Side by side, we made our way down the mountain over and over, sometimes right next to each other, sometimes way off in each other's periphery. The thrill was on, softened by time, but beautiful in a new and tender way.
Living with children, it's easy to see that they're changing, but we are changing too. All of us, every day.
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