Downhill

In 1996 my son Nick and I moved to Aspen.  (That’s a whole other story for another day.)  We were unceremoniously relocated to the condo in Snowmass Village that had been our family’s second vacation home when his father and I were still married.

In our divorce decree, my ex was awarded our primary residence, the fancy co-op in Chicago, and all its priceless marital contents.  I was exiled to the part-time residence with the “fun” furnishings, and the interest-only mortgage.  (Again, another story for another day.)

But the inequitable division of assets had its upside.  Nick and I both adored Colorado.  The mountains, the weather, the people, the skiing, oops, sorry, Nick, the snowboarding.  We were both in hog heaven and considered ourselves blessed to be able to live in such a paradisical place.

There were other perks.  One of them was houseguests.

I love them, and it’s a good thing.  Believe me, you are never lonely if you have a place anywhere near Aspen.  Summer or winter, fishermen, golfers, hikers, skiers, mountain bikers, paragliders and snowboarders all found their way into our guest book.

And no guest was more welcome than my dad.

I guess you could say that I have always been a “daddy’s girl.”  But it’s easy when you have a daddy like mine.  Handsome, funny, easy-going, lovable, proud of his children; the word “no” was not in his vocabulary.

Anything that was in his power to do, he did for my brother and me.  He spoiled us shamelessly, but I don’t mean with material things.  He was a hard-working stiff, a Willy Loman without the tragedy.

When we were kids, he worked for his brother-in-law as national sales manager of a brush manufacturing company.  Hardly glamorous, and boy did he travel.
When I was little, I actually thought he lived at O’Hare.

He was a hundred thousand-miler on three different airlines.  Monday through Friday,  I automatically set the dinner table every night for three.

Yet somehow, he was always with us.  He never let us down.  And when Nick and I relocated, he was there for us too.

By now, of course, he was older.  But he hadn’t slowed down one iota.  Still fit, still running three miles every day.  At eighty-one, he was a testimony to the benefits of jogging and clean living.  And he flew out to be with us all the time.

We went on hikes with the dogs around the golf course, to gala evenings at the Wheeler Opera house, to Nick’s college graduation ceremonies in Boulder.

I would cook lavish meals for him and take him on tours of the astronomically-high priced real estate.  He met all our friends.  He marveled at the scenery and revelled in the glorious, sunny winter weather.  He loved it all.  And he was game for anything.  Like I said, he never said no.

So, at eighty-one, we decided to teach him to ski.

He had two things going for him.  He was in great shape, and he had ice-skated a lot in his youth.  And I happened to be married at the time to a fabulous ski instructor, Mike, who would make sure that my father came out of every lesson a happy camper- with two good legs.

So on a sunny, spring Rocky Mountain morning, Mike, Nick, Dad, and I trooped up to Snowmass Mountain and buckled up/in.  (Depending on your ski/snowboard boot.)

He was a natural.  Quicker than you could say “Jean Claude Killy,”  Mike had my dad schussing joyously down the beginner’s slope.  Both teacher and student were grinning from ear to ear.

Dad got it.

He loved the feeling  of freedom that skiing can bring .  As he glided down the hill,  the look on his face was priceless.  Matched only by the look of pride on my son’s.

(If you think that skiing grandparents get a charge out of seeing their grandchildren learning to snowplow, try it the other way around.  It was a gas watching Nick watching his eighty-one year old grandfather make his first ski runs.)

It was a day to remember.  And now, eleven years later, it’s a happy memory for all of us.

Dad’s in a nursing home these days.  Kidney failure meant five-day-a-week dialysis, and what organs Father Time hasn’t naturally eroded, the dialysis has.

Slowly, he is going away.  His  short term memory is kind of shot.  His ability to walk gone with the wind.  Dressing himself, making decisions, well, you know the drill.  He’s on the downward slope of his wondeful life.

The nursing home staff are extremely kind to him, and my brother and I are happy to do whatever we can.  We take him to lunch, bring him his beloved hot sauce, schlep him to never-ending, sometimes painful doctors’ appointments.  We never say no because he never did.  Any service we do for him, he “prepaid ” long ago.

And  he’s still our same old dad.  Still handsome, still lovable, still funny.  We sit around and reminisce.

And when he talks about skiing, he grins- and so do we.