Sledding After Dark

My grandson stood at the top of the snow basin, dropped his sled, and watched it slide to the bottom . “Go on, Alex, just get on and go down.”
“No,” he said, “I just like dropping it down.”
Of course, no wonder. He’s from California and has maybe been sledding twice in his short, four-year-old life and he was scared. Frankly.
It was eight at night and we were sledding under a full moon with my daughter and her daughter. It was late because by the time their plane landed and I finally found snow pants and boots and gloves for everyone and after we had eaten dinner, night had definitely come to the Salt Lake City park system.
Over and over Alex dropped the sled, comfortably clinging to his assertion that he just wanted to watch his sled go down, more than he wanted to slide down. Over and over he watched it solemnly as it bounced over the bumps and skittered over icy spots.
I admired his tenacity. His younger cousin, a girl, was whipping down the slope, on her saucer, whooping and laughing. His sister adopted a kneeling position on her sled and careened as far as possible out into the open area at the bottom.
“We’ll try again tomorrow, okay?” “Okay.”
The next day he suited up and went out to the driveway by our house. Carefully he climbed aboard and slid down the short slope. Again and again. I went into the house finally, freezing, and he kept at it for another hour.
When I came out, he’d advanced to the short, steep sides of the piles of shoveled snow at the edge the driveway. Off he’d go from there and down the concrete he flew.
Grandpa came home, and with more patience for little boy things than I have, took him across the street to a neighbor’s yard with a longer, steeper slope. Once again, out under the full moon, he practiced his technique until he was perfect.
The next day, we were ready to try the steep slops of Bicentennial Park off State Street on the way to Provo.
We trudged to the top, and down he went. Fast and furious. Ready to race all comers. Although after an hour it was naptime, even for dangerous athletes like Alex.
His dad was coming that night, and we wanted to be in peak form, so we went home, got some cookies, and watched the cartoons for awhile: Max and Ruby, about snooty six-year-old Ruby and her little brother Max.
Once again, it was eight at night. The moon came over the mountaintop. The slope was shiny and icy from the cold, covered with the tracks of earlier sleds.
There were a couple of other families but soon they left, too cold, and ready for hot chocolate and popcorn. Alex and his dad Kenneth were on their own.
Never has anyone gone faster or farther! Alex was a champion.
They climbed on a sled together and their speed increased. No one even considered watching his sled slide down an icy slope without him on top of it.
Heartened, I decided to try it on my own. That first night, my daughter had talked me, and my fat tummy and bad knees, into going down. “Don’t panic, and don’t stick your legs out,” was her advice. Immediately after leaving the top, I screamed and stuck my legs out.
So with Alex and his dad there, I tried again. First I went about a quarter of the way up the slope and went down again and again until I got over the I’m-going-to-die feeling. There was much ridicule, particularly from Alex. “I can’t believe you’re just going down from the bottom, Maimie.”
But gradually I worked my way up to the…to the middle. I never got to the top. But I learned the value of trying and how important it is to work hard to learn things you really want to do. There’s value in realizing, as adults, that sometimes the only way things are going to change is to let go of pride and go back to being a student again.