I went skiing once as a kid. My big Irish family rolled up to some mountain in New England, I’ve now forgotten which one. More than a dozen cousins in jeans and woolen gloves making fools of ourselves. It was a blast, but even calling it skiing is a bit of a stretch. I never really even thought of doing it again. Too expensive, too hard. But thirty some odd years later married with two young kids in the winter of 2020 I went skiing again for the first time.
I was terrible, worse than terrible. I fell putting my skis on. I fell on flat ground, and I fell on the bunny slope. E and I took a lesson and then another lesson and while she got better, I did not. My kids took to it with joy and the ability that comes with being young and low to the ground and so we kept going.
Covid came and we started spending even more time outside. We became a family that goes skiing. My kids advanced, my wife advanced, and I told everyone I was happy to do the bunny slope again and again.
No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. As Beckett said in a very different context.
I’m in my late forties, long past whatever physical prime it is that I once had. Never particularly good at sports I am certainly not getting any better. But the kids adore it, and it has us outside in the cold, which I have always loved, so we keep going. We buy cheap used ski gear. I keep trying. Maybe I’m getting better? I was falling less, but it is still a terrifying experience. I venture off the bunny slope to the easiest of greens and I fall. And I fall again. I fall so much I ended up taking my skis off and walking down the damn mountain. Back to the bunny slope. Another lesson, the instructor, a kind senior citizen, patiently explaining the most basic of concepts to me… again.
It’s embarrassing, frankly. My wife gets much better than me much faster. I take lessons with people who have only been skiing twice in their life and they’re better than me. Friends who grew up skiing talk of doing runs I’ll never be able to do. It would be easy to just hang in the lodge, just revert to the guy who doesn’t ski. But I want to do new things and I want my kids to see me do new things so they’ll want to do new things, even when they are down right bad at those things. So I go again. I fall, again.
A hundred runs, maybe more, on the easiest of easy terrain. Then finally, this year, four years into this dumb sport, it starts to click. The turns started to feel more natural, the balance in the front of the boot begins to seem less precarious. I make it down the easiest of greens, then harder greens. My daughter almost convinced me to try a blue. Almost.
Bit by bit as this season moves along I get better, and it becomes more fun than terrifying. I can say with a straight face that I ski greens and my kids even comment on form improving. I stuck with the damn thing, even though I was bad at it, even though the chances of me ever being good are zero, I just kept doing it, trying to focus on the basics, trying to make small improvements, trying to get just a little bit better, and I did.
By middle age it can seem that we are who we are, and in many ways that’s true. My limitations, intellectually and physically, are known to me. I’ve made peace with that. But within those limitations remains oceans of unlived experience. New ways to learn, new ways to move. Functionally endless exploration or ideas and the world. It fills me with excitement knowing all that lays ahead as long as I stay willing to try new shit.