The Young and the Boneless

Gotta be quick - it's late, and I'm very tired. But here's the latest:

My birthday was fantabulous. Up at 7:00 or so, and off to the Chef's Hat, Williamstown's finest eatery. OK, not our finest eatery - but the best greasy spoon in the Northeast...ern part of town. Pancakes and French toast for all, then off!, to Jiminy Peak!, where Q and T once again trooped happily off to be taught the many secrets of gravitationally-enhanced locomotion.

Janneke and I then hit the slopes, and I tell you what, boy-howdy: Best conditions I've ever seen in all my days of skiing. (There have been three.) Nice soft powder - at least, compared to before - and 28 degrees to start, eventually rising to 35 or so. There were a lot of people, sure, and at one point that did cause me to get confused and fall over as I tried to avoid plowing under a group of hapless and clueless teens who had blocked an entire run so they could stand arm-in-arm and decide what to do next. But otherwise it was an A-OK day.

We had our new skis and boots on, and man-oh-man, that made a lot of difference. Not once did I feel like I couldn't go fast enough - a sensation i definitely had in the learner skis. We looked and felt snappy all day.

Picked the kids up and learned that even T was now certified to go all the way to the top and come all the way back down on green trails. So we hooked up with her friend Hazel's family, and rode to the top, four abreast in the ski lift. Which was quite a feeling - just the family, floating slowly above the trees, smiling at each other, admiring our ski tips. Big fun.

We all came down the mountain, and it turns out T is a speed demon. With no annoying instructor to insist that she follow any particular pattern or rule, she devoted herself to going as fast as she possibly could. We called after her and caught up to her and helped her up from a spill here and there, but by and large, she was zooming happily along. At one point I was a little ahead of her, and as she saw me pass her, she called out, "Feliz cumpleanos, Papi!" Watching her smile at me as she did so on the fly was one of the best moments of the last several weeks.

One of the worst came seconds later, when she hit a series of bumps and started doing front flips.

I skidded to a stop below her just as she finally came to a rest. Her helmeted head had done a few reps against the snow, and now she rested on it, her legs curving up over he back and down in front of the helmet. I could hear her muffled screaming - and it was downright screaming - and felt myself sinking into empty nausea as her left knee hung there at an angle that was never intended. I looked down to get my own skis off, hating myself for ever having introduced her to this and for having let her go so fast, sure I would soon be cradling a crippled little girl.

I ran up the hill to her and saw that her leg had righted itself, and as I turned her over and touched her knee, she pulled her legs up and started to stand. And before you could say "Thrombitis", she was lifting first one foot, then the other, and saying through tears that she really wanted to keep skiing. Four-year-olds, I'm convinced, are made completely of rubber.

Eight-year-olds must be, too, because at the bottom of the hill, I found Q, who had gone ahead, quietly taking off his skis, and soon found myself listening to a sobbed description of a multiple-flip fall that had ended in a collision with another person and a lost ski, subsequently recovered. Man. It's that last run of the day - It should just be banned. Officers in space suits should step forward out of a brilliant, lightning-like rip in the space-time continuum and say "Sir, we're from the future, and this run you're about to do turns out to be the last one of the day, so we're not going to allow you to do it. Please go to the lodge and remove your skis. Thank you." Then they'd disappear back into the air. And then they'd poke their heads out again to whisper, "The Steelers win tonight, by the way. Bet the farm."

We all went home and watched that happen, too. We were all pulling for the Cards, but it was not to be. I did take enough emotional distance not to lose any sleep over it, though - the sleep I lost was from starting awake again, shaking my head, trying to rid myself of that image of T's gooey knee, hanging over the back of her head in a way that just doesn't seem possible.

Had a guitar lesson today - here's the song I'm working on now:

AL FINAL DE ESTE VIAJE EN LA VIDA

And there you are. Apart form Skittles peeing everywhere she shouldn't (I'm open to suggestions there, by the way), we're kind of newsless. Hope to talk to you all soon, off to bed...