#113: Living well requires admitting what we’ve outgrown.
Before starting any new streaks, I’m breaking an old one.
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“You’re still going??”
A few brave and caring souls said this to me out loud.
Everyone else was surely thinking it.
It was December of 2016. My husband Mike — master logistician and family trip organizer — had planned our upcoming holiday ski vacation as soon as our 2015 trip wrapped. Flights, lodging, lift tickets, even a Leanne Rimes concert at the Vail Valley’s performing arts venue were lined up and locked down.
But six weeks before scheduled departure, he was gone.
The holiday Beaver Creek ski trip was a family tradition.
As soon as the kids were big enough to ride the magic carpet up teeny, tiny slopes we embarked on our first snow odyssey. Ski instructors patiently schooled them on ski moves such as the pizza (make a wedge!) and french fries (parallel position to fly down the hill!). Then we’d hit the slopes all together.
It was a family love affair with all things winter, but Mike in particular reveled in the physicality of skiing (that guy was good at everything, I swear!), the beauty of the mountains, and the uninterrupted time with the kids as work laptops and conference calls finally took a backseat. We’d also get a little date time in, sneaking off to a distillery or art gallery while the kids were in ski school. The trips were an essential yearly battery re-charge for the entire family.
So, of course, we’d still go on the trip he’d lovingly and obsessively planned, right??
Looking back on it now, I can’t decide whether to be baffled, appalled, or pat myself on the back that I decided to haul the kids and all our ski stuff to Colorado while we all struggled to hide our constantly watery eyes. How did I process that decision? Why did I choose to proceed? How did I make that call amidst the jagged shards where my heart and brain used to be?
I can’t remember.
I can’t remember a lot of things from those days. This is the healthy and necessary cushioning of a mind in shock… Of a mom using trial and error to find what was right for her babies (which by necessity required doing what was right for her).
What I do know is, I was a master at both going through the motions and staying in motion. I’m sure that somewhere deep down I had a sense that doing something was better than doing nothing.
We could cancel the trip and stare at the ceiling, waiting for the sound of the garage door and Mike’s booming voice as he wrapped up a conference call from the car. We could stare at all the spaces he used to fill — kitchen table, family room sofa, next to the stove making breakfast. We could wake up each morning to face the crack in the universe where he should have been with a grief only seemingly refreshed by the night’s sleep.
Or we could get on a plane and have one week of escape from the daily reminders of how wrong our new reality was.
So, that’s what we did.
We fumbled through that first trip as a family of three. We skied during the day and kept to ourselves in the evening. We spent just the right amount of time with friends who lived up the valley. We snuggled in bed together and watched movies to keep our loneliness at bay. We didn’t tell a soul what we were missing. No one asked.
We started the slow, fitful journey to becoming the next version of our family.
Over the last eight years, we’ve repeated this trip.
Year after year we’ve come back to the snow, the mountains, the views.
At first because it was simple and effective. Get out of dodge without too much trouble and feel like “normal” family for a little while. I could execute the prep and implementation with confidence in my newly solo state. I knew the ins and outs of the Vail Valley. I knew the two hour white-knuckled trip from Denver in the sideways snow. I knew the best Tex Mex, the best grocery store, where to get my newspapers. I looked forward to my yearly visit to favorite indy bookstore The Bookworm.
With time the trip evolved, matching our inner evolutions. We were no longer trying to do an amateur-theater-company reenactment of our family of four. We were adapting to life as it was, not as we wished it to be. Which meant becoming who we were, not who we wished to be.
I stopped skiing. I was a menace on skis, too anxious about hurting myself or someone else. Yes, I lost time with the kids, but I also ceased holding them back. So I set them free on the slopes, and instead focused on what I found fun — swimming pre-sunrise in the outdoor pool as the steam rose and the snowflakes fell. Watching college bowl games with a raucous hotel lobby crowd (Duke’s Mayo Bowl, anyone?). Reading my new books.
And… working. Far, far too much. Me and all the other corporate wonks (mostly dads) in the hotel lobby at the crack of dawn, finding quiet corners to take conference calls, clickety-clacking away on our laptops, nursing our coffee and our slow-burn frustration that work never stops.
Connor, Kendall, and I found a new rhythm too, meeting up for afternoon hot chocolate, grabbing pizza or burgers or whatever enormous carbo load the kids needed during their ski week marathon, and then soaking in the hot tub under the velvet sky. This week, from Christmas through New Year’s, became the time when we broached deeper subjects — the topics that didn’t fit during hectic school days or endless errand weekends.
The mountains provided a time out of time; secrets were safe from the ears of our everyday lives and even heavy topics sparkled under the morning frost.
Change is the nature of things.
When we adjust to our evolving circumstances, we open ourselves to the new. New observations. New emotions. New opportunities. Even when something has been good for us in the past, it may not be good for us in the future. Claiming the capacity to make new choices is the very definition of empowerment. Yes, it requires trial and error; yes, we may not get it right on the first try. But that’s how we eventually end up at something better, by being willing to move forward anyway.
In other words, this year was our last year spending the holidays in Colorado. It’s time to break our streak.
This mountain has served us well. We took our first independent steps (ski turns?) as a family of three here, reconnected here year after year, and had a few spectacular blowout fights here. Deciding to end the tradition does not negate that, but it does open up the possibility for the next version of Vail Valley to emerge. To discover what can meet us now, now that we are different.
Connor will be 23 (!!) next holiday season, living an independent post-college life. Kendall will be studying abroad in the fall, God knows where, and may want to extend her travels. I’m no longer buried under a corporate workload, overwhelmed by the endless to do list of single parenting, and no longer seeking a sure thing. None of us know where we’ll be come December 2025, physically or emotionally.
So I’m putting down the master planner baton Mike passed to me and making no commitments.
Mike would have never put up with this. He liked to plan in advance as far as you could buy flights (on United Airlines, that’s 330 days ahead!). We could honor his memory by living how he liked to live, or we can honor his memory by never letting anything stop us from living our best lives as we define them… which means keeping up with that ever-evolving definition.
Times, they are a-changin, as Nobel poet laureate Bob Dylan sings. But we’re not afraid of change. We’ve learned to move with life’s current. We can’t know what’s around the next bend, but sometimes it’s just time to find out.
To 2025 and the surprises it brings,
Good for you. Where family rituals were concerned, I completely dropped the ball after Adam died. We had a place at the beach that was our default summer vacay. I went there, but the kids didn't. They had summer jobs and then real jobs and I just forgot about having a family vacation. Just as covid was easing it occurred to me that Adam's absence didn't leave us "not a family," and that we should go somewhere. We went to Maine, and that trip gave me wonderful memories.
But we've not gone anywhere together since then. Doing so may involve bringing along a few new, extra people, and I've wondered how that will upset--or maybe enhance?--our chemistry. I don't know. But your post has inspired me to think about it.
Cheers to new vistas,
Sheryl
This portion really hit home for me: “When we adjust to our evolving circumstances, we open ourselves to the new. New observations. New emotions. New opportunities. Even when something has been good for us in the past, it may not be good for us in the future.”
We all play the game where we convince ourselves that things will stay the same if we keep our eyes closed and imagine things as they were. Until we simply can’t any longer. It’s always good to have a reminder that this is completely normal human behavior, the act of attempting to wrench control out of the hands of an uncontrollable force. You share so much of yourself here, and I am very thankful that I’ve added your writing to my reading list.