I spent Christmas at home in Htown with the FamilyOh. Although the traditions stay the same (going to Christmas Eve Mass, eating dinner with MomOh’s side of the family, posing for a photograph on the stairs with BrotherOh and SisterOh on Christmas morning, retrieving our stockings from the mantle after breakfast with my grandparents), the notion of “Christmas at home” feels a little different and a little less possible with each passing year. Is this a mid-twenties feeling, when Home becomes My Parents’ House? It’s unsettling. Oh right, and during Christmas dinner I accidentally set my hair on fire by leaning over a candle and burned off a few inches on the right side. Whoops. It seems my personal brand of klutz is no longer limited to the falling variety – now I’m branching out to pyrotechnics.
On Friday R and I drove up to Vermont with his friends for a L.L. Bean catalog ski weekend. Now, I haven’t been skiing for six years. I’m a fine skier, a passable skier, but my experiences were limited to school trips. The Oh Family doesn’t ski; we beach. Sure, BrotherOh is a good skier, but he’s spent half of his life on an ice hockey rink. Give me a kayak, a boogie board, even a surf board any day and I’m in. But strap blades on my feet and send me down a mountain…well, I’m going to fall.
As it turned out, the falling wasn’t my issue. Sure, I wiped out two or three times, but nothing compared to pain that accompanies some jerkass flying down the mountain straight into me. Christ, there are signs on every lift pole reminding you that skiers in front have the right of way. So this reckless idiot basically cross checks me from behind, drilling me headfirst into the snow. It hurt. A lot. I didn’t even ask if he was okay, I didn’t care. I had been skiing pretty well up to that point, but the collision shattered my confidence and left me with a killer headache. R took me into the lodge for a little breather and I considered quitting entirely, but I bought a two-day lift ticket and rentals so I was going to ski, damnit! I’m glad I stuck with it, despite the wicked whiplash I felt the next morning, because Sunday was a great day on the slopes. R and I skied together on easier trails in the morning, and then we met up with the other guys for the rest of the afternoon. I got through the whole day injury-free!
Monday brought us some sledding, a snowball fight, and the construction of quite possibly the world’s biggest snowman (it was about eight feet tall!). That night we rang in the New Year in an old farmhouse surrounded by cows and trees and mountains – quite the departure from New York City. It was a fun (albeit exhausting) trip, and I’m looking forward to going back next month with R’s family, but The Beach has nothing to worry about The Mountains. He’ll always be my true love.
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