Fatherhood: Snow Dog

I am face down in the snow. It’s a change from the hour I’ve spent on my ass, but not exactly a welcome one. François, my instructor here on Mont Tremblant, helps me up and puts me back on my butt. My thighs are burning, my face is stinging and I wish I were wearing real snow pants, instead of these vaguely waterproof track pants.

“You are from BC, no?” he asks again—as if maybe he’s misunderstood. He’s given up on my French faster than he has on my snowboarding.

“Yeah,” I say. “Vancouver. I went to high school with Ross Rebagliati.”

“Wowee!” He whistles, then pretends he’s smoking a joint. Fair enough. If you’re the first-ever Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding, and then the first ever to lose your medal for testing positive for marijuana, then the first to get it back again, people are going to remember, especially snowboarding instructors.

“But you…?” he says. “You are from BC, but you don’t do snowboarding?”

Sitting on my wet ass, eyebrows made of snow, I feel this should be self-evident by now. But François appears to have a genuine need for perpetual confirmation. I shake my head: “Or pot,” I say. “I didn’t do pot, either.”

François just stares in disbelief.

• • • 

My last column was about never having learned to skate. I based my flimsy defence on growing up in 1980s Vancouver, with its lack of ice or entrenched hockey culture. (This was before climate change and Pavel Bure.) But it’s hard to do the same with snowboarding.

I skied for a few years when I was a kid. I don’t remember ever taking a lesson, and I had no form at all. In what could be a kind of foreshadowing, I’d fly straight down a mountain, often crashing into the orange mesh at the bottom. It was a lot of fun, and it used to freak my dad right out. Even now, he goes a little pale when he talks about it.

“You were fearless,” he says. “And very fast.”

“That’s not really skiing though, Dad.” I say.

“Still. It was pretty impressive.”

But around age 15, when snowboarding was just becoming a thing, I stopped hurtling down mountains. At least literally.

Then, just last month, Zev, my four-year-old boy started taking lessons.

“Skiing. That’s great, Zevvy!”

“I’m going to do snowboard,” he said.

I looked at his mum, who shrugged. “They start them all on little skis fastened together in a V-position. No poles. From there they can do skiing or snowboarding.”

“Snowboard,” said Zev, nodding seriously.

• • 

The idea for this column was that I’d learn how to do everything I should have learned by now, before my boy is old enough to realize I don’t know how to do anything. I mention that because now that day is just around the corner. It’s happening faster than I thought it would. I think that’s called parenting.

With skating, I somehow retained enough from shuffling around on the ice as a kid to stay just ahead of Zevvy’s learning curve. But now it’s come to this: me unable to stand up, and an earnest Québécois shaking his head.

I knew it would be difficult. But I figured skiing lessons would be tricky, too, and if Zev is shooting for snowboarding, then I should, too. And anyway, that’s the point: to learn new things. For my son, everything is new and has to be learned. So, at least I should be able to get off my ass.

But snowboarding is nothing like skiing, at least not like I remember it. You don’t soar off a chairlift and fly down the mountain really fast. Instead, you shuffle about in ignoble positions for hours, with no balance, no control and one leg attached to this thing like a ball and chain with stickers on it. I tell myself it puts me closer to my son’s experience, like learning to walk. But the kid’s been running and jumping off things for years now, and, anyway, children have no shame. I, meanwhile, am stuck in an icy drift, slipping back and forth between pain and embarrassment.

“Erect!” says François, holding my hands in front of me. “Look at the whore-zone!”

“Horizon,” I mutter and start to slide.

“Good, good! Remember the peanut butter!”

There’d been some analogy: the edge of the board like the blade of a butter knife, and how you’re supposed to spread it, thick and…bang, I’m back on my tailbone again.

• • 

Somehow I stick it out for the whole lesson, and I really do keep on trying, even as the burning in my thighs spreads out to my core and calves and soul. The humiliation is replaced by a cold, painful acceptance, almost like determination. Though I don’t actually achieve anything.

“The first time always is like this,” says François. “Nobody learns it the first time.” He could have told me this at the start. But then again, I might not have tried so hard.

After two hours of trying and failing and trying again, I have no feeling of satisfaction whatsoever. I feel like an old, wet-assed dog who can’t be taught new tricks. I drag my board over to the rental place.

“Return or exchange?” says the girl behind the counter.

“Return…wait. Exchange for what?”

“You have an all-day multi-rental,” she says. “You can take skis if you want.”

There’s a smile in her eyes like she knows what kind of morning it’s been and is trying to help me out. And though I’m very tired and sore—and I doubt skiing will be any better—I appreciate the sentiment.

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll take skis.”

• • 

I am sick to death of the bunny hill, so I take a chairlift halfway up the mountain to a slope marked green or blue, not black. If it comes to it, I can probably just slide most of it on my ass. I’ve had a morning of practice doing that. The lift is coming down now, about to hit the slope, and I’m trying to remember how to do this. I force my body to push…

I slide off the chairlift and onto the mountain, really fast. Then partway down I start to ski, for real, swooping and carving, back and forth across the snow.

It’s not the same as it was 25 years ago; it is better. This, of course, is due to the skis. These modern parabolics, thanks to snowboard technology, are a cinch to lift and turn and steer, compared with the long flat planks of yesteryear.

I reach the bottom alive, then go all the way to the top this time. I hit the snow skiing, and my body remembers being a kid. I’m happy as an old dog who’s doing what he used to love.

Who cares if I’m on two boards, and him on one? Who cares if I’m facing forward, and he’s going sideways? Zev and I will fly down a mountain together one day. 

I take a turn at speed, then soar.

Illustration by Paul Blow 

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Fatherhood