Does it matter if my children learn to ski?
The new generational wealth is inheritable experience and it's causing me FOMO
Over winter break, an arctic freeze took over most of the country. During this time it was both Christmas and Jacob’s birthday, and as a present but also as a way to get out of the house and away from the kids, I got us lift tickets to go skiing on the 26th.
The two of us left before the kids were up and drove through bracing air to a mountain an hour and a half north of my parents’ house in Upstate, New York. We remarked at the miraculously short lines at both the ski rental area, and to the various lifts. Even the quad, the lift of choice for its protection from the elements, was no more than a few minute wait, a minor miracle, it seemed.
While trying on our boots, then again while hiking over to the lift, then again while riding the lift, then again while enjoying a 3 p.m. beer on the mountaintop, we’d revel in the adrenaline-filled joy we both get from speeding down a mountain. We’d also comment just as often at how it seemed like our kids were the perfect age to learn to ski, how it’d only get harder, and how it seemed kind of impossible and very expensive to actually do it.
I grew up downhill skiing about once a year from elementary through middle school, then in college a handful of times, then had a friend with a house near a mountain in Vermont in my early twenties. Jacob’s mom lived in Boulder, Colorado for five-ish years before we had kids, so altogether I’ve been fortunate to make my way to a mountain at least a few dozen times. This puts me in the category of moderate-but-not-great skiers, capable of making it down pretty much any run, but rarely with grace or speed. It also makes me an inadequate teacher of this sport, my skills mainly focused on my own self-preservation.
Downhill skiing is a preposterously expensive sport from the gear to the lift tickets to the transportation and the lessons. Conservatively, a lift ticket is $100/day per person. Rentals are $50/day. The chicken fingers are $10. The hot chocolate is priced reasonably in comparison. The ROI is greater—like many things—if you do it a lot but that also requires the perfect intersection of geography and resources and know-how. It’s a sport that’s historically been very white and for the wealthy and growing up in a very white town as a minority where the kids who skied and the kids who didn’t mirrored this demographic really drilled that home.
On a few occasions, my parents, who are immigrants, would take us to Jiminy Peak and wait at the bottom of the mountain in their slacks ready to see us successfully arrive back down. They’d keep an eye on our things in the lodge and readily buy us the hot chocolate and chicken fingers. They were supportive of the endeavor but were never going to participate. More of my childhood trips were made when I was invited by my more-skilled friends who’d grown up with season passes, who could elegantly pitch their tip over cliffs without hesitation. I wouldn’t, and couldn’t ski like this, but at least I was out there with them.
When I see the four year old on IG Stories attached to a leash with their dad deftly maneuvering them down the mountain or skiing backwards, I admit to feeling envy. I will never have that much skill nor will the sport every feel that “natural” to me. I see a kindergartener, already on year two of lessons. There’s an eight year old, doing tricks in the terrain park with their cousin. One has the very biased perception from this small slice of social media that skiing is important, as a life skill, when of course a lot of people just never ski.
But most of the kids who do get to ski are—predictably both white and have parents with resources of time and money and some experience skiing. This is not a critique, it’s an observation. I’d guess they have the nostalgia and skill from growing up skiing themselves. Others decide to give it a one-time splurge. Others do happen to live close to a mountain. Others believe it’s a skill that will serve their kid well and participate in some degree of self-sacrifice to get their kid there—schlepping them to the mountain, getting them the gear. It’s a little slice of an experience they never had, but their kid knowing how to ski also means their kid belonging, which is what every parent wants to feel.
A few new year’s recommendations:
To watch: The new Matilda musical is a delight for both kids and grown-ups if you can get down with truly dispicable parenting
To watch: LEGO meets ASMR aka my kids are obsessed.
To listen: Can Chat GPT Make This Podcast on Hard Fork, a good Chat GPT explainer and debate for the 101-level listener.
To read: I finished All This Could Be Different, a queer coming of age story from Sarah Thankam Matthews and Run Towards the Danger, essays by Sarah Polley over the holidays. Also currently reading The Furrows, by Namwali Serpell, which is already devastating and beautiful.
To Eat: Winner in the Park offers 1/2-size offerings of their delicious sandwiches, which is the perfect amount of sandwich for a midday walk destination.
To visit: Rivertown Lodge in Hudson is the perfectly pared back getaway from your children. Went their for the 2nd year in a row for a night and very much enjoyed chilling and drinking coffee in the lobby. Also if you’re up there, the sandwiches at Quinnie’s were perfect, and the cinnabon at La Perche.
Happy 2023.
Non-parent here, but a child of immigrants (and an immigrant myself). This post brought up so many memories I'd not thought about in nearly 40 years: namely, of the ski trip my elementary school in Southern California organized, ski rentals mostly subsidized, but you still had to show up in ski-able clothes. Most of the white kids showed up at the buses with full-on ski outfits, while the predominantly kids of color, many of us immigrants or first-generation Americans, showed up in two layers of pants heavily (and ultimately uselessly) Scotchgarded and then spent time on the bunny slopes, milling around with each other and staring in awe at the other kids who whooshed down the slopes so effortlessly. I'm at a place now where I could afford to pay for ski lessons for my nieces and nephews if they wanted to learn, and maybe even join them!, but I've never stopped internalizing the feeling of skiing being a county club of sorts.
You wrote exactly my sentiments from my snowboard trip with two young kids, and we paid for lessons! I grew up with immigrant parents too and we didn’t even go to the mountains because the cost alone was ridiculous. But my kids loved it. And it made me want to re-learn so I guess we will empty our pockets each winter.