Wednesday, February 10, 2010

He picks me up

We went skiing this weekend. My husband's family has a house near Woodstock, NY in the Catskill Mountains near a ski resort. So this past weekend, we headed out there to meet up with his parents, his aunt and uncle and his cousins and their son/nephew. The grandmothers signed up to take care of the kids, Little G included, so we headed out to the slopes early on Saturday morning.

My husband is an expert skier and his family members are also very, very good so they tend to hang around the black diamond areas of the ski resorts. I learned to ski in high school and was a solid blue square skier until I met my husband. He encouraged me to try things that I never thought I could do and soon enough I was joining them on those black diamond runs.

But this trip, I fell. On every black diamond trail we went on. If you have never been skiing before, I can tell you that in my humble opinion, getting up from falling is perhaps the hardest part of skiing. Because skis are designed to be slippery on the snow...go figure. And if you are trying to get up from a seated position while wearing sticks on your feet that are more than half the length of your body, it is not uncommon to find yourself continuing to move down the mountain while still on your ass. Add a black diamond trail into the mix with a crazy vertical drop and getting up is next to impossible.

Every time I fell on the mountain, my husband skied just below me and helped me get up. It was pretty comical, but he is SUCH an expert that it didn't even phase him to have his skis all tangled up with mine at the risk of us both toppling down the hill. Even when I started slipping over his skis and physically PUSHING us down the mountain and I started shouting "SAVE YOURSELF!! SAVE YOURSELF!!" he didn't falter. He laughed. But he didn't falter. And eventually I got up and we continued down the mountain.

And I thought to myself: whenever I fall down, my husband picks me up. And then, because I am a sentimentalist, I thought how I don't have to be on a mountain for him to pick me up. When I lost my job just after our wedding, when my father died, when I struggled with breast feeding, when I have been convinced I am the world's worst mother, he has always swept up the pieces of me, and picked me up.

I am so incredibly blessed and honored to be married to such a wonderfully loving man with eternal patience, a joyful sense of humor and the emotional and physical strength to help both of us down the mountain.

7 comments:

  1. Oh Miriam...I just read this on my phone while taking a break at work and now I have tears running down my face. Thanks a bunch for making me all blotchy-faced! You should put a warning at the beginning of the post. ;-)

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  2. Aww...very sweet post! :)

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  3. "SAVE YOURSELF!! SAVE YOURSELF!!"

    Hahahahaha!

    Very sweet story. My hubby grew up on skis in NH, and takes black diamonds in stride. I'm still a bunny slope kinda gal. Last time we skied was Tahoe, and I conked my head pretty bad. It sure was fun going down the hill on the back of a ski patrol toboggan! :)

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  4. Now THAT is a Valentine. Heart. Melting.

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  5. This post made me tear up! What a lovely tribute to your hubs!

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