Her technique is text book.  Knees bent as to take pressure off her back.  Hand placement on the back rest is perfect- direct pressure not too high, not too low to cause a flip backward.  She has known this from birth, an inherent skill as a daughter of a wheelchair user.  The rest of the photo is pure comedy.  The bigger child- the one holding the trophy- has lost steam walking home from his Gram’s house down the street and had to get a lift from dad.  Geoff is exhausted having spent the last 19 days on snow (for work) and the last thing he needs is to push 60 pounds of Carver.  Note the lack of snow in the background.

We transitioned this weekend from winter to spring, and we are clearly confused.  We skied, yet we all talked about when the bikes were coming out of storage.  We made snowballs and threw them at one another, yet we discussed whether T-ball was on the docket for this spring. Or, if we would continue to work on our unorganized sporting skills of hiking, biking, and swimming.

Geoff is sporting a lovely goggle and helmet tan, while the rest of his family is whiter than white, and I wondered today if I would get the bad mother award for not applying sunblock this morning.   We wore boots because the transition between snow and grass is a mud clumped snow slush special.  We have tracked in enough mud just in the last three days due to warm temperatures to fill a small sandbox.  Between wheelchair wheels and Carver’s boots, the boys are killing our vacuum!

Let’s talk about the trophy for a minute.  His seasonal coach at Loon, part of their development team, is a good friend named Teri Walsh.  She is a full time nurse who works weekends at Loon “for fun” and because she loves to ski.  She gave Carver this trophy today (and, yes, she did give one to each kid in her group with their name inscribed) and told him it was because he was an amazing listener.  I hear things like this and want to be filled with pride, but suddenly a movie montage plays through my head of the previous 24 hours, all those moments when he chose not to be the aforementioned amazing listener.  Carver loves his coach Teri, and she loves him.  She provides that incredible balance of structure, fun, and skill that every kid needs.  This was an awesome moment too right before bed when Carver was telling me about a chairlift ride with Teri’s daughter, Grace, who is a ninth grader on the Cape, and our good friend Kai Goode of the Brendan/Dylan Goode fame.  These were his words, “Mom, Grace was telling me about this blog on the lift that was about a blind man.”  The fact that he used the word blog astounded me.  So, I’ve written before about chairlift rides being captive listener time, and I love that other young people are filling his head with thoughts of blogs about blind people, their own family dynamics, and whatever else comes up in conversation.  Never did hear the rest of that story come to think of it.

Greta helped me to sell some books in the lodge, which was fun because we visited with some cool people, including my mom and dad, although we only sold 7 in a 7 hour period.  These are not good numbers, but the sun was shining, and I would not have to bring wood in tonight for the wood stove. We people watched and wondered about what they did in real life– that it is when they were not here skiing on a warm March day.    We made a few runs, let the kids ski through some big puddles, hoping it would wash some of the mud off.

Spring here in NH is tricky; kids play on parking lots and not playgrounds at school because the water and mud is just too tempting for some kids, like our own two.  Mud season is temporary, and soon we will be biking and waiting for the fish to thaw out of our pond, and searching for pollywogs in the river.   Greta, like her mother, is ready for winter to be over now that the skiing is going downhill (hah- Lin-Wood kiddos please take note of my pun); however, the Krill boys would ski right up to the bitter end.  Mud season is like tearing off the bandaid of winter; it’s the clear withdrawal of a season gone too fast for some.  A friend, Kate Haines, posted a picture of her little guy crying when she broke the news that our Kanc Rope Tow would close today.  That is a harsh reality when we don’t see it coming.

Spring is coming.  We jumped ahead on the clocks last night, and I’m recovering from not enough sleep.   This is not to say we won’t get more snow; we will, and I believe I will be slated to shovel this time tomorrow night.  We celebrated tonight with all four grandparents and a few good neighbors, hot dogs and hamburgers, a last supper of sorts before my parents hit the road for their 2 month stint in Florida.  Most people like to head south during the bitter cold months; my parents are so tough they stick around for those terrible days and head south just when the grass, birds, and tulips return.

But a family walk after dinner was awesome; nice to see our walkway and ramp again, foreshadowing the sidewalk chalk and action figures and biking obstacle courses to come.