Testing the waters, again

It seems Emily is just wired this way. Wherever the edge, she will find it and explore it - whether the edge consists of rules or limits or spaces. Despite her experience a few weeks ago finding the soft spot in the ice, yesterday we went to Squaw Valley, and again, the ice was seemingly irresistable. This time, too thin for skating, but still tempting to poke at with a toe, trying to see how strong it is, what it would take to break through.

Testing the limits isn't all bad, of course. This is exploration, too - pioneering, if you will. Yesterday I managed to convince Emily to explore with just one foot, but at the same time I couldn't help being proud seeing her lead her sister into the fun. Because Hazel, despite being all into dresses and clothes and all things pretty, is pretty daring herself. They don't get it from me - I nearly always let my fears get the better of me - but perhaps that makes it all the more fun for the girls. I walk safely around the track at the park, observing plants, with their roots holding tightly to a single location. The girls, meanwhile, were looking for adventure, and yesterday they managed to find just the right amount. Each went home with muddy, wet shoes, but dry socks; with dirt on backsides and knees, but warm dry skin underneath. It was a perfect outing.

Girls' basketball, indoors and out

The weather report from Pittsburgh this week has included flurries, rain, sun, mud, and frost. The path from our house to the community center is nearly impassable with mud, and the ice patches are gone. Frankly, I miss the snow, though I'm not sure the girls do, because with it melting, the driveway is clear for dribbling.

The highlight of the week is definitely basketball. Much as I believe in free play, I often see that a particular sport is what draws the kids outside in the first place. This week, nearly every time we went outside to play, a basketball was motivating the action.

Emily's team features a full handful of very skilled girls and two mom-coaches who clearly love the game. Her lack of experience shows compared to many, but she is learning and motivated. Hazel participated in clinics run by the high school girls' team, and ended her season recently with 2 halftime dribbling shows by the Lil' Hoopers. I credit this clinic with convincing Hazel that basketball is centered on dribbling skills, because so far she can't hit the bottom of the net, much less the hoop. Nonetheless, Hazel loves her basketball, and she's gotten noticed for her ferocious drive to dribble around the court during Emily's practices and games.

The most exciting revolution about this for me is that for my daughters, basketball is a girls' sport. They have been to high school games, and a college game, and played their own games, but the only games they've witnessed have been played by women and girls, dribbling, running, shooting, sweating, scuffling, reaching, and fouling each other in their eagerness to get the ball. At Emily's games, players' brothers wait on the sidelines for their turn to shoot a few hoops after each quarter. In my world in Kentucky, it was the girls who went out at the quarters, in cheerleading outfits with pom-poms instead of balls. But here and now, when the ref blows the whistle, it is the girls who run out on the court for the real action.

Snow Retreats

Yesterday, I spent my morning with a group of students on retreat for the weekend out at Chatham's farm. I was invited to give a plant ID walk, and we modified it to a tree ID walk due to my uncertainty about my ability to identify brown seedy stalks reliably. I intended to take the girls, but they have declared themselves tired of snow (despite snow tubing last weekend and Emily being outside with a friend right now, sliding on ice refuges at the pool parking lot). I went alone, driving past muddy hillsides before reaching the farm, 16 miles north of home.

As you can see, I had reason to wish I'd taken my skiis. But it was, in fact, perfect weather for a winter tree ID walk. We found, or at least I *think* we found, all the particular trees on our list: hickory, maple, oak, birch, beech, spruce, hemlock, and poplar. (The one I declared hickory was long-dead, which I pointed out was perfect because it would never again grow leaves to contradict my identification skills.)

And though I'd complained about giving part of my Saturday for this, I was honored to be included. For a moment, I got to join in a moment of running gravity-fed and young down a sunny snow-covered hill. Because they let me.

The Times on Dirt

Two friends have posted this article on how dirt is good for our immune systems, and it is, for me, cause to celebrate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/health/27brod.html?_r=2&em

I know about the various diseases we can catch from dirt, soil, or animals: salmonella, toxoplasmosis, simple gastrointestinal distress. And yet, I'm enormously pleased to think that my laissez-faire attitude about dirty children might be paying off. The once-a-week bathing, for example, might just be the thing for development of a healthy immune system.

Now, I'd love to apply this attitude to what we do today, but we are looking out our windows at a cold drizzle falling on icy snow, and I'm thinking that to find any good dirt today we'd have to get a pickaxe. And unfortunately, snow days make me feel like I have to clean up house a bit or I'll go insane with the clutter. But now I know reason #2987 for playing outside, as soon as I can find an outdoor activity that matches with wet rainy sleet and slick puddly snow.

Fickle ice

This week's activities featured ice skates, sleds, snowboard, cross-country skiis, and alas, a big end-of-week melt. Yesterday at this time I was heading out for a walk in the warm sunshine, sans gloves or long underwear; last night the temperatures dropped again, just in time to make the Winter Festival feel truly like a winter festival. As you can see, even without skates on the pond was a major feature of interest, even while competing with horse-drawn wagon rides, a band, roasting marshmallows, and free pizza and hot dogs.

But here we are, at 3:45, back at home indoors, because Emily was baptised today in another ancient winter rite of passage: her leg pushed through the ice when she stepped on a thin patch hidden by snow. She got herself out and we came right home - she's fine. I guess we can say that she has a new level of empathy with the polar bears. And any of my readers who know Emily know that she can always use a lesson in caution, given her personality. Although I witnessed her playing - to all appearances being cautious enough - she is just the kind of kid who would find a thin place on the ice, just to see what it was like to go through.

Two firsts: one outside, one inside

This afternoon, despite the fact that Emily's basketball team lost their game (after winning the first 2), we all had reason to celebrate, as Emily made her first basket, a nice little layup at a moment when her team really needed her. We got home, got some food, and then, at Emily's request, went to the pond at a nearby park to ice skate.

Last night we went skating indoors at a rink crowded with teenagers and with music to urge us on, with a snack bar steps away, skate lessons to watch, and young hockey jocks to dodge. I think of this as the normal way to skate, since I had never, before tonight, been skating outside. It isn't something children growing up in Kentucky learn to expect, and plus, I'd never had my own skates. But it has been so frigid, and this park's pond is a shallow little water body which we've slid on before during the local winter festival, so we had a good idea it would be safe.

Another family was out tonight, too, a dad with two boys, complete with hockey sticks and pucks. I suspect the older boy was 5, a wickedly good little skater already. None of us is a great skater, but tonight we all got better. Hazel figured out how to propel herself forward without me or a wall - it seemed easier without so many people around, and also easier perhaps because the ice wasn't so smooth and fast as indoors. Emily, despite literally having two left skates due to my taking advantage of an end of season "bargain" last year, was whizzing around the pond, and had a great time skating fast and crash-landing into the snowbanks at the edge of the shovelled "rink".

It was fully dark when we stopped. I feel like we've finally participated in an ancient rite of winter, linking us to children we've read about in history, whose only concept of ice skating was outdoors. And though I've known for some time that I love snow in winter, tonight I finally learned to appreciate bitter cold spells, for giving us thick, safe ice for a chaos-free skate in the brisk night air.

Seasonal overdose

Back when I was in my 20's and fitness came easily, I would often get into a nice summer exercise routine and then drop it like a rock when cold weather came. In grad school, with friends there, I started cross-country skiiing, my first regular winter exercise, though I wasn't too regular about it. Then, in Chicago, I had Ser, a native Alaskan, to prompt me safely through a season of winter running, and the standard was set. I learned to give up on the same routine working in all seasons.

That's not to say I always manage to successfully develop a routine. This fall I lost track of exercise, mostly, despite many beautiful days and the once-weekly biking through October. Winter is always challenging, but finally last weekend we got snow - not much at first, but now settled into about 4 inches of squeaky-cold white stuff, just right for skiing.

Saturday, the girls and I went sledding with a friend of Emily's, despite cold rain which threatened to melt the snow out from under us, but didn't quite. Sunday, we went downhill skiing at Seven Springs, with Hazel and I pairing up on the green slopes and Emily and Brian going for slightly bigger challenges. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday I cross-country skiied, and hope to go out again this morning once the sun has had a chance to warm up a tiny bit. I go right down our yard, across the snow-covered pool parking lot, and to the flat field and hilly power line at the Community Center. I try to go about 2 miles, though I'm not measuring exactly, and as you can see, on Monday I had to work to keep from melting the snow beneath my repeated ski tracks. (This is not a problem today!)

Barbara Kingsolver and other responsible garden writers extoll the virtues of seasonal produce overdoses. Today, I extoll the virtues of seasonal exercise overdoses. Swim and mow the lawn in summer, run or bike in fall in winter, rake leaves in fall, dig the garden in spring, ski, sled and shovel in winter. At the end of summer, I am infinitely relieved to see the end of growing grass; at the end of fall, I love to see the last leaves tucked safely in a pile. I'm not sick of skiing yet, but I might get there. If I do, I'll be proud of myself for making the most of the weather, for making the best of the season, and for making it through winter, perhaps no thinner, but at least still in good enough shape to keep every pound I carry moving.