Winter Sports

    I am sitting here on a Sunday morning with my second cup of coffee (decaf hazelnut).  Its a rare weekend treat.  I am alone this weekend, alone with my thoughts, my memories.  What do I choose to remember?  Winter sports.  You see, my husband and son are off on a Boy Scout Excursion this weekend.  They, along with many others, have gone to a winter resort in a neighboring state.  They are having a father son weekend.
Once there, they called to let me know they had arrived. They joked how mom would be freaking out over how treacherous the roads were.  And they are probably right.  I never drive in snow and ice.  Its not something they teach in coastal Southern Virginia where I was raised.  But having grown up in Massachusetts, my husband is the skilled one, and he has the man truck, so I need not worry.  Sometimes he skids on the ice just to scare me.
    I wish my stepson could've gone with them.  He's been an avid snowboarder for years.  But he is in college now.  Our youngest, aspiring to be more like his big brother, chose to learn snowboarding in lieu of skiing.  My husband just called.  He says he loves it.  I imagine there will be more weekends like this.  Maybe, next time I will go along and take pictures.  Then again, I'm not much for the winter sports.
    I have very little memory of snow as a kid.  We got our share of blistering cold weather.  Though we prayed for snow days every year, they never seemed never to come to our little part of the world.  When I was in the Army in Germany, I discovered that I was one of the few who had never been snow skiing.  At nineteen, I was too embarrassed to be on the learner slopes.  When my friends took weekend ski trips to winter wonderlands, I chose to take more touristy trips alone.  I wish I had been braver.
    I didn't go ice skating until a few years back.  It was at a local rink.  I went with my kids.  Surprisingly, I was quite good and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  It wasn't much different than roller skating.  And well, I was a roller queen back in Virginia.  Growing up, I had fantasized about doing roller derby one day.  I only went once though.  The rink roof caved in after the winter snow.  Maybe someday, they will rebuild.  I might be the oldest one there, but I would go back in a heartbeat.
    I tried sledding for the first time last year.  I was frightened, but my husband said he would go with me.  As I was looking down the steep hill behind a local elementary school, I felt a wonderful rush of adrenaline.  The cold air bit at my uncovered face. For a brief second, I felt like I was twelve years old.  I was genuinely excited.  Was this what it was like to have a snow day?  But that excitement ended soon.  As we were going down, my husband caught his boot on a patch of ice.  As we slowly found out, the hill was covered in frozen snow.  We flipped over half way down the hill.  He rolled over on top of me, as my face scraped down the frozen snow.  As I dragged across the ice, the bottom of the hill seemed never to arrive.  Then, for a moment in time, I lay there unable to move, because he was still on top of me.  He had gotten injured also.  When he caught his boot, he had jammed his leg.  Still, he helped me back up to the top of the hill (bad knees...I almost always need assistance up hills).  When I warmed up, I realized I was bleeding.  And I wasn't alone.  A friend of my son's had also gotten scraped up.  His hands were a bloody mess.  He smiled and said he was fine.  He continued to go down the ice covered hill.  My husband and I sat it out.  I took pictures of the kids until it was time to go.  We were done sledding for the day.  With his injured leg, my husband was done for the season.  Would I go again?  Sure.  You are never too old for that rush of youth.
    You know what?  All this remembering and I forgot about my coffee.  Yuck...cold now.  Guess it wasn't meant to be.