It’s been a long while, but it felt so familiar to be sitting in Tahoe with the fire burning and candles lit, drinking wine with my two daughters. I had brought up a box of photos from their very youngest years, and we had spent the afternoon looking at them, going through the years when they were babies, toddlers, preschoolers, grade schoolers, and then there was an abrupt end. Everything had gone digital.
After the photos were scooped back into the box to be shuffled through again in another 20 years, the wine glasses came out, and my elegant older daughter started dinner. My younger daughter poured the wine, and it took me a minute to adjust as I was still back in time when the girls had a Barbie Jeep and a cake full of candles and miniature friends standing around them as they made a wish on their 3rd, 4th, and 5th birthdays.
As tradition dictates, after dinner, playing cards were found, another bottle of wine was opened, and we talked. My older daughter said, “We just have a way of knowing how to carve a path.” She meant this as a skiing analogy. The path she referred to was the path you choose as you ski downhill. As in life, the terrain is always different and unexpected variables arise, so you have to choose: do I take the right or left side of the run, on which moggle will I make my first turn? Sometimes, if you are lucky, a very experienced skier may be in front of you, and you can follow their path; other times, the path that has already been carved can turn icy because too many others have gone down that exact path, and then you have to carve your own. A day of skiing can entail following better skiers down their new path, or taking the already carved out path, or creating your own path, which is always the hardest.
Now that I have had the privilege of raising my own family, I can say that, of all the things I’ve done in life, having children has been the best part of life for me. Looking back, I think there are many transitions just like in skiing when you get to the top of a run and look down and try to assess the best path to take. Sometimes it’s a bluebird day, and other times it’s a total whiteout.
Either way, in the end, you end up back by the fire playing cards with the ones you love.
Love and blessings.
Sydney 