When Quinn was a baby our colleagues at school started imagining the day when Quinn would join the ski club. They started telling us how great it would be, and how much she, and we, would love it. When she was in preschool, they started telling us, “you have to sign her up for the club!”
As is often true, those who have gone through life before you have an uncontrollable desire to preview, for you, what’s ahead. To tell you the absolutes of your future, and in so doing leave you to feel that your process as a first-time parent, isn’t really a unique process at all, but rather a following of other people’s leads. I tend to think of myself as a nonconformist, at least a little bit, even at my “mature” age. And certainly I know that I react against being told what to do—no matter how immature that may be. I like to make my own choices, and I always have. And “clubs”—either literal or metaphoric—have never been my thing.
For all these reasons, I have never been sure that Quinn would, as predicted, join “the club.”
There is irony, of course, in the fact that Sam and I have both made our living from working at the academy for the past sixteen years. Irony as well in the fact that I have, long since, come to fully believe in the values and the mission of our school, and to admire the expertise and the care of the ski coaches I have worked with for so many years. Among them are many people who have coached or competed at the national and World Cup level. There are champions and Olympians and heroes among them. And yet, in spite of now being the point person in the academic program to sell our school to prospective families every year, when I have imagined it for Quinn, I haven’t been sold.
One of the stories I tell prospective families is the story of our graduation tradition. For as long as the school has been graduating students (forty-five years now), the graduation ceremony has been the same: every graduate gives a speech. This remains true even in years when we graduate over thirty students. Every single one earns her and his spot at the lectern. And inevitably, the predominant theme, year after year, is gratitude for the opportunities students have had to build meaningful friendships with each other, and with the faculty, and a sense of appreciation for the ways those relationships helped them through the many highs and lows of their high school and ski racing experience. “Skiing is just a metaphor,” our long time Head of School would say, again and again, and graduation is the place where I am reminded each year of what it is a metaphor for: hard work, taking risks, the importance of setbacks, the value of commitment and perseverance, the gift of being challenged. I could go on.
Who wouldn’t want this for their kid? And how could I not want it for Quinn, when I clearly see the value it has for other people’s kids? And how can I sell people this bill of goods if I’m not willing to buy it myself?
Graduation isn’t every day…it’s one day, at the end of a long road. And on that road our students face some formidable challenges. Mostly I picture the crutches—many, many sets of crutches, and bandages, and braces, and stitches, and bruises—of the flesh, and of the ego, and worse yet, of the heart. “Be careful” is one of the phrases that comes most often out of my mouth with Quinn. I try to stop myself, and sometimes I succeed, but still it sneaks out. And being careful is the antithesis of ski racing, the opposite of what ski racing requires. Ski racing requires you to be comfortable taking risk. And while risk taking is something I used to be good at, that changed a lot when I went from being “Kerry” to being “Quinn’s mom.” As Quinn’s mom, it is my biological imperative to steer her (and me) away from risk—it is a hard wired aspect of my job as mother, and when I do a job, I do the job.
And all that said, just as I see the idea of being able to make my own choices as a sacred right, I believe it to be Quinn’s right as well. I have always felt a desire, even a responsibility, to honor Quinn’s right to make choices, or, at the very least, to protect her future ability to choose things for herself.
This fall, as the ski club sign up deadline approached, again, I found I was more conflicted than in years past as I tried to dismiss it. Quinn is nearing the age when, if she is not soon involved in the sport, she will lose the ability to later jump into it and experience any success. Insanely, if she were to ever want to go to our school in high school, she would need to be working her way toward that opportunity now, in the second grade.
At the end of the last ski season, Quinn was still small enough that Sam and I would help her onto the fast-approaching chair lift as it swung around to scoop us up. And for the duration of each seemingly interminable chairlift ride, as Sam gazed around at the scenery, I would hold onto her, pinning her to the seat and to my side, waiting anxiously for the ride to end. As the beginning of this ski season approached, I was sick at the thought of Quinn being at the mountain without us. I had a hard enough time letting her go with her dad, nevermind going with some kid “coach” who wasn’t going to pay attention.
And yet as sick as I felt at the notion of Quinn being fifty feet in the air in slippery snow pants, I also felt sick when I imagined having a conversation with her as a middle school aged Quinn, trying to explain to her how I let my own fears get in the way of her being able to make a choice for herself. Quinn has grown up on our school campus. She is at home there. For every day of her life she has been welcomed there and treated with care and kindness by our colleagues and our students. I imagined her reaching the age when she could finally be there on her own, if she chose to, and being told it wasn’t available to her. I knew this was a conversation that I never wanted to have.
We had asked Quinn in year’s past if she wanted to try the ski club, and each time she said no. It’s possible I willed her to answer that way, and it’s possible she had no interest. In all other things Quinn has signed up to do—soccer, gymnastics, swimming lessons, camps—we have had to coax her in, and promise to let her quit if she would at least give it a try. Fortunately, whenever she’s tried things, she’s later admitted that she’s had fun and was glad we made her do it. This year, when we asked Quinn if she wanted to try the ski club, she thought about it briefly and then said yes. I was surprised when it didn’t require any coaxing. She asked plenty of questions about it, but she seemed, from the beginning, fairly determined to give it a try. It reminded me of a day last year, when Quinn was in first grade and we were driving to school, she said something along the lines of “When I go to GMVS…” At the time, I told her it wasn’t certain that she would go to GMVS. I told her that all the kids who go to GMVS are ski racers. Her response was quick: “Well I don’t have to be a ski racer,” she said. It was half statement, and half question, and it seems she filed the answer away.
The ski club kicks off with a series of dryland training workouts in the fall, as they wait for the mountain to open. The workouts take place at our school, where Quinn feels as if she is master of the domain. This helped her, on the first weekend, with her first-time jitters. What also helped was the fact that every one of the coaches knew her, even if she didn’t know them. They were our colleagues and our current and former students. Upon arrival she had the gift of being treated as a “native,” even though Sam and I both see ourselves, and therefore Quinn by extension, as outsiders to this sport that was never our own. She took note as one coach told another who she was: Sam and Kerry’s kid. She took comfort in knowing where the bathrooms, and water fountains, and mats and rings and balls were, and knowing too that she could point these things out to others. Quinn has always imagined an air of authority for herself, and the whole scene suited her. She loved everything about "dry landing." And, eventually, when she came home and told me who her coaches were, that suited me.
Quinn’s primary coach, week after week, was Sarah McHugh…the same Sarah McHugh who was my advisee, and who knit Quinn a blanket, along with another advisee, Susan, while they were training in Chile at the same time that Quinn was being born. Sarah, who has since gone on to graduate from college and become an elementary school teacher. Sarah who, I knew without doubt, would make sure Quinn got onto the chairlift.
Quinn’s primary coach, week after week, was Sarah McHugh…the same Sarah McHugh who was my advisee, and who knit Quinn a blanket, along with another advisee, Susan, while they were training in Chile at the same time that Quinn was being born. Sarah, who has since gone on to graduate from college and become an elementary school teacher. Sarah who, I knew without doubt, would make sure Quinn got onto the chairlift.
The first Saturday of skiing was a depressing one for me. I felt sad to see her head off to spend the day with other people, just as we each have to do all week. For the past eight years, I have enjoyed our lazy winter weekend mornings, watching cartoons (Quinn) and drinking coffee (us). We rush out the door all week, and I hated the idea of rushing out the door on the weekends too. I was cranky and sad that first Saturday. But on the second Saturday, I went to a yoga class. And then I went grocery shopping. And I had time to do some things around the house. The second Saturday wasn’t so bad and, in fact, it was kind of nice. Just when I finished doing things I wanted and needed to do, Quinn came home—excited to see me, excited about her day of skiing with her friends, and eager to tell me all about it.
And so it went every Saturday and Sunday for the rest of this winter: out the door by 8:30, skiing from 9am-2pm, home around 3pm. In all these weeks Quinn took only 2 single days off—each time to go to birthday parties. She went to training when she was tired, when she was sick, and when the weather completely sucked. And she added days on school vacations when, miraculously, the club coaches offered extra training. One day, over Christmas vacation, when it was pouring rain on bullet-proof ice, and the start of training was delayed, and Quinn was in her new Christmas pjs watching cartoons and feeling sick with a cold, I told her she could stay home—that in fact she should stay home to rest (i.e.: be with me because I was missing her). “No way, Mom. I want to go to club!” Quinn has always been a heel-dragger in the mornings, she still is every school day, and yet this winter, every weekend, she got herself dressed and out the door. On this December morning when she insisted on going, in spite of my repeated encouragements to stay home, I drove her to the mountain, and I stood watching in disbelief as she clomped up the hill, with her skis already on, to catch up with her friends on the t-bar.
Within a couple of weekends of skiing with her group, Quinn was a different skier entirely. Her confidence was undeniable and her whole demeanor had been transformed. She was quick to pick up the habits of the other kids—leaning casually on her poles, and clicking out of her bindings in quick alternating steps. When she trained or raced in gates, her vertical posture set her apart from the more experienced skiers, but when she skied with me, she was the one with skills. One Saturday, when I met her to take a few runs after training ended, she was eager to take me into “Semi-Tough Woods,” but I stopped her. “I don’t do woods,” I told her, so she said okay and turned down a different trail—a trail with moguls. “I don’t do moguls,” I yelled down to her, but she was gone, weaving effortlessly between the mounds. She stopped at the bottom and turned to watch me. “You’re doing great, Mom!” she yelled up the hill, and I was mortified by the realization that she has already, at age 8, left me behind.
Still, what I can’t deny is that the ski club has been utterly incredible for Quinn. The kid who always wants me or Sam to go with her wherever she goes, now goes all over the mountain on her own. The same cautious kid who has refused to buy school lunch for three years running, is now asking for money so she can walk from the clubhouse to the ski lodge with her buddies, buy chicken tenders and maybe some Starbursts. She is negotiating the crowds, the lines, the transactions, and the change she knows she needs to bring me. She has gained so much confidence, independence, pride, strength of body and will, and so many new friends that I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude every time I think about “the club.”
All of these gains make the risks, for now, worth it. Every single weekend since the end of October has been dedicated, in our house, to ski racing, and yet ski racing, as I’ve been told for years, has so little to do with it. Our Alpine Director at school described Quinn as having a “fine-tuned sense of self-preservation.” That was his positive spin on the fact that she is, for now, still slow. It is a description that I appreciate, given that I’m still getting used to this new sport she’s chosen for herself.
The two highlights of Quinn’s first year of racing had nothing to do with racing, which strikes me as just right. The first was winning the “Best Crash” award on the mogul trail with her group, with the bag of Starbursts she was given as a prize. And the second was winning the medal at the Club Championship race for “Second Place” in the costume contest, where she was dressed, appropriately, as a Starburst--a costume she imagined and her crafty dad managed to make real.
In a year or two or three, Quinn might decide ski racing is not for her, and it will be fine with me if she does. I don't care about the ski racing, and I don't care about whether she's ever any good at it. I do care about the metaphor--the hard work, facing the challenges, and learning to pick herself up after her "yard sales" in life. Most of all, I care about her right to choose her own path. What an amazing thing it is to watch your daughter become her own person—ready or not.
With sincere gratitude to our GMVS family, for helping Quinn on her way.
