Stolen Runs

Sunday afternoon, I snuck in a few ski runs with my teenaged daughter. She’d spent much of the day competing in a ski race and was tired from the hours on the hill, the earlier-than-usual race day wake-up call, and the emotional and mental exertion of competition. Add to that this winter’s weirdness of booting up and eating lunch in a cold car, and I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d opted to go home and curl up someplace warm and cozy with a good book.

 But I’m glad she chose to ski with her mom instead.

The older my children get, the more I find myself cherishing the stolen moments – an unexpected ski through the woods with my son, a quiet hour of piecing together a puzzle with my youngest, an afternoon on the mountain with my oldest girl. There are plenty of times where these growing children of mine retreat to their rooms as soon as they are home from school, or skate off to the lift with their friends without a backwards glance, or are aggravated by my very presence. And I’m (mostly) OK with that. It’s all part of the process of growing up.

There are also many moments of teenage angst, siblings annoying each other, the stress of making their way through middle school – on top of the constant curve balls of doing so during a pandemic – and a mother (me) who doesn’t always have the patience to gracefully dance through it all.

Somehow, Sunday afternoon, I convinced Ella to keep skiing. Decision made, we clicked into our skis and pushed away from the race day hubbub toward the lift. We headed to the summit of Cannon, passing through the mid-mountain snowmaking fog to rise into the cold sunshine of a world above the clouds.  

This late in the day, many skiers had gone home, so we had our choice of trails, without having to human-slalom our way around other skiers.

Not so long ago, I brought up the rear when skiing with the kids in case they fell and needed help, or to make sure they turned the right way at trail intersections. I hoped, in those days of snowplowing and pony slope runs, that there’d come a time when the skiing pace was a little bit faster. Now, I play caboose because I don’t have a prayer of keeping up. I love watching my kids race ahead of me, all fearless speed and nimble turns.

But Sunday afternoon wasn’t about keeping up so much as just hanging out. We chatted on the chairlift – about what, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t recall the specifics of our conversation, but I am holding tight to the feeling of just being with my daughter. No stress, no angst, no more race day nerves.

Just a mom and her girl, sunshine and snow, and a few stolen ski runs. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's January 14, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Hello, Ski Season

Winter arrives in a rush for my family this weekend. Never mind that we haven’t reached Thanksgiving yet, or that we’re still a month away from the Solstice, or that it has felt and looked like winter for the past two weeks.

The Ski Season part of our Winter starts in earnest Saturday morning, and there’s no way, really, to ease into that – no matter how much I love Winter.

While others lamented the early arrival of cold and snow last week, I was thrilled to see the landscape covered in white. I am happy when Winter comes suddenly, putting a quick end to Stick Season – that time post-fall-foliage and pre-snowfall – which is my least favorite.

The kids were ecstatic to wake up to their first snow day of the school year, tacked onto the end of what was already a long weekend. They rolled out of bed with more enthusiasm than on any school day and were soon outside. By the end of the day, there was a snowman in the yard, a hodgepodge of sleds cluttering the front porch, and a pile of winter boots crowding the shoe tray by the radiator.

Ski Season, though, feels like a different (albeit related) entity from Winter.

As ski racers (the kids) and coach (me), Ski Season occupies our weekends and vacation days fully for the next four and a half months. And while I love to ski, and I love to coach, and I love to watch my kids and their friends at ski races, sometimes this season – with its early mornings, challenging weather, and the constant need to tune skis – seems all-encompassing.

This winter lifestyle is what my kids have always known. They love to ski, too. But we all realized last weekend that it was our final chance for a long while to sleep past dawn, linger over breakfast, and chill out in PJs well into the day.

Come Saturday, we’ll be up and at ’em and out of the house before I’ve made it through my first cup of coffee.

While this will be the official start of Ski Season for my family, I’ve already put in some time on skis. I’ve donned the old cross-country gear to glide through the woods on November snow with the dog. Last Wednesday I sprang two of the kids from school early to take a few runs at Bretton Woods on opening day. I returned a few days ago to check out the new gondola and sneak in a some ski time with my dad.

We’ve picked up our season passes from Cannon, the skis are waxed and ready for the weekend, and I feel confident that the kids all know where their boots and helmets and various warm layers are. That doesn’t mean getting out of the house Saturday won’t be a cluster. It just means we’re as ready as we can be for Ski Season to start.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 22, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Fan Club

My parents came to every home game my college soccer team played, and many of the away games, too. This might seem unremarkable – until you realize I went to college a 6-hour drive away from home. And that I mostly sat on the bench, making brief appearances in a handful of games through three years.

Being at the games was about more than simply rooting for me. They became part of a group of parents cheering for their daughters, a collective cadre of supporters who watched through crisp sunshine, cool rain, and even autumn snow, who hugged us after many wins and occasional losses, then took us out to dinner.

Now that my own kids are out there, competing on the soccer field and the race course, I’ve found they also have their fan club – and that I’m just a small part of it. This was clear at October’s Halloween Cup, when grandparents, aunts and uncles, and family friends stood along the soccer field sidelines for hours to cheer for the kids.

It was again apparent last weekend, when my son raced at our home hill of Cannon Mountain in a two-day event to try for a spot at this weekend’s state Championships for his age group.

Ski racing can seem an intricately complicated sport, even at the junior level. To simplify, there are a series of races through the season whose cumulative results qualify a pre-determined number of kids to Champs. If you don’t make the cut, you get one more chance – at Finals – to qualify.

Finals were last weekend. My son needed to finish in the top 5 out of a pool of close to 100 racers from around the state to get to Champs. His twin sister and a bunch of his ski racing buddies had already qualified. He really wanted to go to Champs as a competitor, not an onlooker.

Being a spectator at a ski race is really an act of love. It entails several hours in usually cold weather, sometimes with precipitation falling, and often including a hike up (and then back down) an icy slope to gain a decent vantage point. All to watch the kid you came to see ski by in a matter of seconds.

Because I coach the youngest ski racers on weekend mornings, I often have to follow along on Live Timing, which means logging onto a website to check racers’ times as the competition progresses.

As I was coaching Saturday morning, my phone buzzed incessantly in the pocket of my ski bibs. At our mid-morning break, I pulled it out to get an update. Even if Live Timing hadn’t been an option, I would have known my son’s first run went well. Friends who were at the race – on the other side of Cannon Mountain from where I was coaching – had texted to tell me he looked great and skied fast. Other friends following from afar on Live Timing sent congratulatory “Woo-hoo!” messages. They kept coming through the day and into the evening.

Sunday afternoon I ditched my ski boots and hiked up along the edge of the long giant slalom course to watch the action. (If you read this column regularly, you may remember that last year I wrote about what a disaster I am when my kids are racing. I’m much better mid-course than at the finish. If you missed it, here's Race Mom Jitters.)

The higher I went, the more spectators I found. I ended up standing with my husband and younger daughter, my dad (Mom was lower down), and my brother. Our posse of Owen fans joined a group from Cranmore, there to cheer on their own kids. But they didn’t just cheer for the kids they knew, the ones from their own race program. They yelled for every kid who went by. If they could learn a racer’s name from some other spectators cheering nearby, they yelled that name. They asked what number my son was, then cheered as enthusiastically for him as they did for their own kids.

And so the fan club grew that day, if only for a few minutes.

My boy came through with two days of great results to notch that coveted trip to Champs this weekend. The reasons I am proud of him are fodder for some other story, one I’ll write in a more private way.

While the success of the weekend may seem the most important thing – and certainly had my kid walking on air – I noted something more valuable than results this weekend.

What I’m most thankful for is the fan club my children have, the people who will show up to watch – whether on the sidelines, at the edge of the race hill, or as part of the audience in the auditorium. They offer support in person or from afar. They are there to boost the kids up on the tough days and to celebrate with them on the good days.

They’re the best fans any kid could have.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 8, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Race Mom Jitters

It is a rare occasion that I get to devote an entire day to watching my kids ski race. Based on my physical reaction to being Race Day Mom last weekend, that’s probably a good thing.

I’d taken the day off from coaching the littlest racers at Cannon to spend the day rooting for my son and his friends at the U12 State Finals at Cranmore. Most of the day, all was just peachy. The sun was out. The snow was soft. I chatted with other parents at the finish area, cheering as kids we knew came down the course and through the finish.

(Photo cred: Josh Lawton)

About two racers before my son’s bib number, though, my heart rate quickened. My shoulders tensed. I had to focus on taking even breaths. By the time I saw Owen push out of the start at the top of the hill, I felt like I was going to vomit. Or cry. Possibly both.

For the 49 seconds it took him to get through the course, I was a disaster. And then he pushed through the finish, and everything returned to normal.

This is how it is for me every time one of my children is in a race course and I am at the finish.

I can’t explain why the mere act of watching my children do something they love causes such acute angst. There is no logic behind it. I am not overly concerned with how well or poorly they will do compared to the field. Nor am I particularly worried about them being injured.

And this is not a new sport to me. I grew up ski racing. I’ve coached young racers and soon-to-be racers for several years. I’m familiar with race day nerves from a competitor’s perspective, but I was never the kid puking off the side of the trail before first run. Likewise, I never felt overly nervous for the kids I coach as I doled out pep talks at the start or high fives at the finish.

Although I’ve coached and watched my kids play other sports – soccer, baseball, basketball – those competitions don’t inspire anything like the anxiety I experience during ski races. The one exception there, perhaps, is the few times my kids have been involved in penalty kick shootouts during soccer games.

Maybe, then, it is that sense that my child is up there alone.

Perhaps at its core this nearly paralyzing, and thankfully only momentary, anxiety I feel on race days is simply motherly instinct. My son is facing a challenge on his own, and there’s nothing I can do to help him. My daughter, who wakes up full of nerves every race day, has to overcome her own anxiety to push off from the start and charge hard through a course, and there’s nothing I can do but stand idly by and watch.

There are no timeouts, no teammates to rely on mid-race, no direct opponent to deke around or win the ball from. During that short race run, it is just the racer and the course – and the potential for both heartbreak and triumph.

I know I’m am not the only frazzled parent standing at the finish line. I’ve watched friends stare at the course stone-faced as their children come through, or bouncing with nervous excitement, or muttering some encouraging phrase repeatedly for their child’s entire run. Normally reasonable people, we get a little wonky during races.

My kids are just at the start of their ski racing experience. Maybe the more races they’re in, the more times I stand at the bottom and watch, the easier it will get. For now, though, I remind myself to breathe, cheer as loudly as I can, and know that this feeling, too, shall pass – as soon as my kid crosses the finish.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 9, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

Ski Season Shuffle

We are three and a half months into ski season, with who knows how long to go. Despite the weird and wacky weather, which has brought us more rain this winter than snow, the skiing has been plentiful, and ski season has been busy. Busier than usual this year, because my children have entered into the world of ski racing, and I have jumped back into a weekend coaching gig.

Throw in a smattering of ski writing deadlines, which sometimes involve traveling to other ski areas, and it all means ski season is an all-consuming entity. The mudroom is a muddle of skis and boot bags and helmets. The gear collection spills into the living room, where ski boots are lined up to dry by the radiator, which is piled high with hats, mittens, and neck gaiters.

Notes about night skiing and spring skiing and adaptive skiing are scattered around my makeshift office at the dining room table. House projects we started months ago, including an ambitious plan to shift bedrooms, have been abandoned in the fullness of ski season. Non-skiing plans are delayed to that vague point of “after ski season,” and there are some friends we just don’t see as much this time of year.

This ski-centricity is a phenomenon probably impossible to explain to someone not involved in skiing. But my skiing friends and cohorts will understand: skiing is not merely a hobby, or a way to pass the normally cold and snowy months of winter, or even a passion. It is an inherent, un-extractable part of simply being.

Skiing is why we wake up before the sun during the darkest days of winter. It is why we don innumerable layers on the coldest days of the year and are willing to face the elements, whether sub-zero chill, gale force winds, sleet, rain, snow, or sunshine. It is why we forgo other things to buy equipment and passes and why we stay up late tuning skis. It is something we think about, sometimes dream about, during even the dog days of summer.

Skiing is why I moved west after college, seeking higher mountains, deeper snow, a skiing life in a skiing town. And it is why, when I came back East five years later, I landed in the mountains, why I am here still.

My dad used to tell me when I lived out west, probably in an attempt to lure me home again, that skiing is skiing. Doesn’t matter where you do it, it’s the same. I’d scoff at such a crazy concept as I headed out to ski Colorado powder on a mountain whose base was 5,000 feet higher in elevation than my home hill’s summit.

The snow in Crested Butte is a good bit different than the snow on Cannon Mountain. And it’s different, probably, than European snow and Tahoe snow and Midwestern snow. But it turns out that skiing IS skiing. Yes, skiing powder is different than skiing hard pack (and goodness knows there have been days this season when I have lamented the ice and longed for a deep dose of Rocky Mountain powder). Groomers are different than bump runs or glades. Flats are different than steeps.

But there’s something in the feeling of it all that is intrinsically the same. Skiing is freedom and grace. It is strength and precision and the thrill of self-made speed. It is unbridled joy at each perfect turn – and the imperfect ones, too.

Some ski seasons are longer than others. This one, here in the East, has been particularly challenging in many ways, and there are moments when I feel ready for the busy shuffle of ski season to shift definitively to spring, ready to pack away all the gear and move on to the next season, ready to sleep in and not hurry everyone out of the house for first chair.

But then I click into my skis and arc my way down a mountain and everything else fades away. There is only skiing then, and it is worth a little shuffling.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 11, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.