It's Not Hitting the Slopes I Fear... It's That They Might Hit Back

Skiing is one of those hobbies that my wife and I always intend to embrace wholeheartedly, but that life has always had a way of intervening to prevent us. Mostly, it's been a matter of our budget not feeling comfortable supporting that particular extracurricular activity, but I guess we have to take the blame for a noted lack of motivation as well. If we really wanted to go on a regular basis, we'd probably find a way to make it happen. Well it turns out that this year, to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm, life, uh, found a way.

Some friends of ours who have taken up skiing/snowboarding as a hobby invited us over for a ski trip weekend this past February. It was exactly the kind of swift kick in the posterior we needed to get us back out on the slopes. It was long overdue for an activity that both my wife and I seemed to enjoy; for me, it had been about a decade since I'd been out on a hill, and for my wife double that. My daughter had been part of ski club at school the winter previous. It was only my son who had yet to be initiated, and this was the perfect opportunity.

Braces for Impact

I never really had a lot of dental work done as a kid. Partially, because I didn't have significant issues (one remaining crooked tooth aside), and partially because at one point growing up, we just didn't have money to go to the dentist for, I don't know, about ten years-ish. At one point before the well dried up (or maybe the well dried up because of this), two of my siblings were fitted for retainers, the kind with the key you have to crank to force your teeth to behave (much like Austin Powers), and my sister even had the full headgear at one point, which for some reason I had completely forgotten about and was only recently made aware of through the magic of family home movies.

That is to say, I've never had too much experience with extensive dental work or invasive appliances or procedures, aside from a pulled tooth or two and having the old wisdom teeth removed. My daughter, on the other hand, was inducted into the sorority of orthodontic metal gear just a few days after getting back from a last hurrah of junk food at Great Wolf Lodge. To her credit, Kaiya took the news like a champ, and even seemed kind of excited by the prospect. It helped that some of her friends had already had their smiles brace-ified, so I can only assume the zen attitude was at least in part due to human norms of socialization and having an in-group to validate the change. I guess it also helps that they've made braces "fun" now, and you get to pick your own colours.

Tales of the Great Wolf

January marked our family's quasi-annual trip to Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls, and this time, it was personal. For several years, we'd been going now, thanks in large part to a discounted rate from my then- and again current-employer, but this was the first time we'd be going for two nights instead of one. Especially now that the kids were getting old enough to do partake in a fuller range of activities and still have energy to keep going right up until the water park closed and kicked us out, we figured it would actually be worth the investment to extend our stay. This way, we had time to take full advantage of the water slides and wave pool, and the kids could also run around and play MagiQuest, an augmented reality game (ARG) set up across the hotel, where children could wave their magic wands at various objects, collect gold and artifacts, slay magical beasts, and in general, go on an epic fantasy adventure, the type of thing that would have been right up my ally as a kid. Definitely just as a kid.

Christmas 2019

Christmas 2019 marked the first Santa-free Christmas for our family, which was a nice change of pace. Not only was I proud of my children for demonstrating the continuing development of their critical thinking skills, but my wife and I didn't have to sneak around to maintain the whole Santa Clause illusion. I also didn't have to share credit with some imaginary character for the gifts I bought my kids with my (relatively) hard-earned cash. Maybe I'm an emotional vampire, or maybe I'm just a good, old-fashioned narcissist, but either way, all of that sweet, sweet gratitude was all mine now. And my wife's, I guess.

Of Grandmothers and Crabapple Jelly: Death, Sugary Preserves, and Summers by the Beach

On July 9, 2019, Noreen McCauley nee Hoffman passed away, and with her passing, a page turned on a major chapter of my family history. She'd outlived my grandfather by a solid six years, but in the end, she caught up with him, and so that marked the end of my maternal grandparents. Her contribution to the story was over, and so the responsibility--the burden--passed fully to the rest of us left on this small corner of this tiny blue orb hurtling through time and space with no regard for, well, anything. Certainly that great, old bitch Mother Earth wouldn't pause her cosmic dance for a second for the loss of a politician or a philosopher or a celebrity or even an entire tribe, so it certainly wouldn't hesitate for the final curtain call of a random woman in a random room in a small town painfully similar to so many other small towns around the world that you wouldn't be able to pick out of a police lineup.