While Geoff is Not Mikaela Shiffrin…

Our son is 13, and he loves wheels and danger. My husband is 52 and loves wheels for different reasons altogether, given his spinal cord injury and is not quite the risk seeker he was 30 years ago; however, together, they love to work on wheels and have wheel fun. All winter long, my family slides on snow, until this time of year when there is as much mud as snow-- and not nearly enough dry patches of grass to throw or kick balls or enough warmth consistently to get on our bicycles.

Carver rigs up various forms of entertainment for the indoors or our driveway. Except our driveway is on a hill, with very little flat space to work on balance, so many times he finds himself indoors with me yelling for him to “get outside with” whatever contraption he is playing with. Geoff, on the other hand, encourages these forms of entertainment because:

They are not electronic in nature.
They generally work on core strength and balance.
They move his body.

So, this is another way he connects with the children as the “fun parent” while I’m the one yelling to get the balance board out of the house. He challenged our boy to try to do 10 minutes a day of this kind of balance activity to maintain the muscles in his legs, which are tree-trunk strong, given how much the child skis in the winter. This is the teacher in Geoff too, the one who is able to trick people into exercises that are good for them while thinking they are just playing. His ability to articulate body movement and analysis with people skiing on snow to the offspring balancing on kitchen floors is unparalleled.

And so, Geoff heads to Finland, the happiest country in the world, this week. Every four years, the Professional Ski Instructors of America National Demonstration Team heads somewhere international to talk shop about ski instruction with the best ski teachers on the planet. He has traveled to Argentina, Bulgaria, and now Finland, Levi, where our kids want him to take reindeer photos. Our daughter reminds him how cool it is that he gets to ski, where Mikaela Shiffrin, our family ski idol (not their dad), has won many ski races and reindeer. He gently reminds them that he won’t be bringing home a reindeer and assures them he is equally excited to ski in the same place as Mikaela.

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Here at home, we have started middle school softball and baseball, indoors, of course, until the snow on their respective fields melts away. There are spring soccer tryouts and daffodils and crocus who will try their damnedest, too, to pop up literally within hours of the snow melting. We’ve put away the winter bird feeders as our bears are waking up, and, well, I don’t want to run into one on the porch-- or in the yard, for that matter. Although, I half expected to find one sleeping in our treehouse when enough snow melted last weekend that I could open the door again. Spring doesn’t happen overnight here in northern NH, but we feel her presence in the approach, and this hope fuels our spirit for all that is to come.

Thank you for always reading our family journey, and maybe if their dad gets his picture on a box of Barilla pasta, they will revere him as much as Mikaela Shiffrin. Until then, they will just have to take my word (along with the instructors who work and train with Geoff) that people’s lives will be changed forever by those who get to ski with their dad in Finland. They will return to their home countries and bring those lessons back to all kinds of skiers there, whether disabled or not.