Remembering “a” first time we went skiing.

This is God speaking :

Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning , and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying , My counsel shall stand , and I will do my pleasure:

Isaiah 46: 9 , 10 (This is just as it is…)

It was with our friends we played tennis with that we agreed to go skiing. That it was summer still was very good because our family had never skied before. Our plan was to go to the Alps in March.  Being August/ September we had enough time to present ourselves to ski-instructors on a dry ski slope.

The matting was plastic bristles arranged in hexagonal shapes with a hole in the centre. These managed to penetrate what we were wearing rather easily.  I remember a well washed red Laura Ashley track suit all thick cotton. We all had necessary gloves on and with our boots and skis our bodies were on fire.

We learnt the snow plough, and how to ride the lifts. It took quite a few lessons and a lot of courage as I could never let myself fall on that matting without an inner fight making the fall harder.

In no time at all our children , the youngest not yet four and our eldest seven, were zipping over the prickles with no poles and big smiles on their faces.

I then read about the gear we needed: jackets brand new, we could use these for walking, salopettes from a second hand ski shop,  boots and skis we would hire.

We thought we were ready.

Here is a quote by Alexander Pope ” A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”.

The snow was soft. There was no problem letting oneself fall. We showed our instructor what we could do. We were placed in the intermediate group . We were about twelve altogether, everything in the warmth of the sun with the cold of the snow was delightfully enticing.

It was then for a long ride up into the mountains that we went. There were shadows and greys and blues. There was ice. The downward journey proved that there was rather a lot of ice.  We were all falling and once we could see the village in the distance our ski instructor left us. ” I’m late for the next class!” was his excuse. I took off my skis in desperation to walk in my boots. A bad idea. I clipped them back on. Tried that snow plough upside- down- V- look …soon the tips crossed and I fell.  Then we discovered we could lie on our backs legs and skis in the air and slide. It was the most successful way to fall. There had to be a way to get our bodies off the mountain and we did.

That night I cried! I said many times I would never go up a mountain again! 

But I did.

That was “a” first time a painful time.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen : it is happening , each time, for the first time, for the only time.

James A Baldwin 1924 – 1981American writer.

Do not say , ‘It is morning,’ and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

Rabindranath Tagore 1861 – 1941 Bengali poet, writer, playwright

For the first time in his life , he , stopped worrying about results, and as a consequence the terms

” success”  and ” failure ” had suddenly lost their meaning for him. The true purpose of art was not to create beautiful objects , he discovered.  It was a method of understanding, a way of penetrating  the world and finding one’s place in it, and what ever aesthetic qualities an individual canvas might have were almost an incidental by – product of the effort to engage oneself in this struggle, to enter into the thick of things.

Paul Auster 1947 American writer. Press on Paul Auster Interview : What Could Have Been. to hear him speak.

Thank you for reading about this painful first time. It always seemed like “the” first time whenever we went back!

Sandy 🙂