Act Your Age

I am so cold.  I am cold in the way I used to be when I was little and we spent all day at Hickory Hill, alternating between skiing and sitting on the deck in the sun.  It is a cold that runs all the way through me to my bones, the kind that makes a hot bath sting like pins and needles.  It feels so, so good! 

I am this cold not because of an old house and thin walls, but from hours and hours of playing in the snow, racing down one of the very best backyard hills that I have ever had occasion to ride.  Forget Crandall Park and it grassy stubble, forget Gurney Lane and the lines of children - the backyard slope has so much more to offer: no lines, no waiting, ride as many times as you can bear to climb the hill, the bathroom is only a few feet away, there is probably a good chance of hot cocoa, and even the smallest of slopes can be wickedly fun.  I have not laughed like this in ages, laughs that come not from the belly but from somehwere deeper, perhaps stretching all of the way back to my childhood.  They come bursting out as I lose control and eat a faceful of snow, or as the last jump at the end of the run sends my sled and I flying in different directions and I land with a giant thud in front of my friend who cannot stop laughing, either.  And my bottom hurts and I feel silly but I am having so much fun that none of it matters.

Brendan races down faster than all of the rest of us.  His sled goes further, getting ever closer to the edge of the yard where another dropoff will send you to a watery surprise in the marsh.  He bails at the last possible second, plumes of snow spraying into the air as he flings himself from the sled.  He is buried, but we know he has survived the tumble because he whoops and hollers and quickly scrambles up for another go. 

And my children are fearless.  I get butterflies in my tummy before pushing off, but they run and jump onto their sleds, launching themselves face first down a huge hill, or even a small one, but they do not seem to fear anything at all.  They eat snow, and laugh, and for just a few moments we are all children together and I don't have to be the mom and he doesn't have to be the dad.  It is good. 

Finally it gets too chilly, we all have snow up our sleeves and in our pant legs and down our collars, and the sun is starting to slip behind the trees.  One last run! we call to each other, our friends and our family climb the hill for the final descent.  It is faster than it was earlier, the temperature has dropped and the snow flies in clouds around our sleds.  It is awesome, maybe even better than it was when I was five or seven or ten because I needed, this day, to remind myself of my age.  I needed to know again that we are young, that fun is not something that is purchased or sought out or even acquired...it just is.

So now I am cold, enjoying the feel of my windburned cheeks and the smell of outdoors that lingers in my hair.  And I am scheming for tomorrow...maybe a snowshoe adventure?  Or another backyard slope?  Or even a winter hike around Pack Forest to the Grandmother Tree?

What are you doing to act your age?

***See previous post for video of today's sledding fun! (I can't figure out how to embed within this post)