Today is the day before taxes are due. It’s the fourteenth of April and a year ago today, I was sliding around like a maniac on the slopes of Copper Mountain. You see, last year was the first year that I dared strap into a snowboard and go sailing down a mountain. I had a taken a lesson or two (okay, exactly two) and after learning next to nothing from that, I  decided to rely on the teachings of my pretty-much-pro boyfriend and youtube videos. This, paired with a ton of unsolicited advice from the interwebz, and I thought I was on my way. I rode for about 1/2 a season and capped my first rodeo with learning to how to jump without breaking my butt. I say half a season because I officially started in February  (2019) and rode through May. All the cool kids had been riding since October. I wanted to wait for “real winter.” Lesson learned.

As the fall of 2020 approached, I spent my summer complaining about the unrelenting heat, posting pictures of my set up, buying boards I had no business buying and watching as much footage as I could of other riders. I was determined to shred the gnar like one of the guys come opening day.  It came early for us here in Colorado with a mid-October opening at A-basin who just barely beat out Keystone. As expected, I wanted to jump on I-70 and take my first ride down the “white ribbon of death” that I had heard so much about. Fortunately for me and everyone else, logic set in and I deiced to wait. I mean, a rock could totally ruin the base of one of my five new boards that had magically arrived since my last day or worse yet, I could have taken out that family of six as I tried to pass them on this legendary ribbon of snow that laid in wait up in the mountains.

Toward the end of October, it became apparent that I was going to spontaneously combust if I didn’t get up on that hill. After talking non-stop about it to my previously mentioned pretty-much-pro boyfriend, he agreed to a snow day on October 30th. There was sufficient snowfall, I had the day off work and that was all we needed to pack up our gear, stuff some breakfast burritos into our faces and head west for those mountains that had been teasing us all summer. My first day back was…incredible. It was ten degrees below zero on the mountain, I couldn’t remember how to turn and I fell getting off the lift more often than one should be allowed. At the end of day one, I felt good but frustrated and as I pulled my snot-laden neck gaiter from my face, I vowed to return in a few days and put in some work.

I did return and worked on things and fell  down and adjusted and fell down less and eventually stopped falling getting off the lift. I took my boyfriend’s advice, I went against his advice at times (by the way, he’s always right) and then one day, I was able to keep up with him and his good buddy on a run that I will never forget. It was full of lovely rolling hills and it was fast! I never lost sight of them and they barely had to wait on me. I thought, “THIS is it!” It was the best day ever and from there, I went on to make several more mistakes, got up and learned and eventually learned to just feel what snowboarding is. Everything was amazing and then along came March 2020.

I had moved in with my boyfriend and the both of us were trying to figure out when we could get up in the snow again. Moving took up several weekends for me and by the time the dust settled it was March. I think it was Winter Park that first announced they were suspending operations; I watched my boyfriend’s face flatten out as he read the news. He already knew the other mountains would follow suit. I stupidly held out hope they wouldn’t but that was soon met with the reality of the situation. One by one, I read about the closures and my heart just sank. One moment of bright light came along when I read that Snowy Range up in Wyomig was still open; naturally we immediately started making plans for a trip up north. They were expecting an impressive storm and everything seemed to be in position for us to get a few more amazing days in….even if it included the horrendous Wyoming wind and ice coast conditions that can affect certain parts of that mountain. As we excitedly planned out this last minutes trip, I began going on about how I could show my boyfriend the back side of this particular mountain, a part he missed on our first trip there. It was all so exciting, and then the email came. Snowy had decided to close too.

That was it. The season was over. I was heartbroken. I put all my boards downstairs into storage as looking at them was too depressing. I stopped checking the websites for the mountains in hopes they would reopen after a few weeks. I was devastated and saddened and looking back, horribly selfish. I lamented to my boyfriend about it often, and he would calmly tell me, it was for the best. I knew he was right but in the back of my mind, I was already panicking about how much I was going to lose. I had figured out my stance and binding angles. I was riding blues and a few blacks without getting in trouble. I was progressing and now after half a season, it had to stop.

And now it’s April and the weather is heating up. I no longer have all the resorts in my phone to quickly look at their snow stakes each morning. I don’t randomly check to see if by some miracle that A-basin has reopened (high five for high altitude!). All I do now is remember that winter will come again and we will all ride again. There are those that are brave and go into the backcountry to continue their season. I sit with zero experience and enough brains to know that I would be making a bad choice giving that a go without ever trying it before. I just know that I have more to learn and more to do. I know we all do. For a while, I was angry that I only logged 17 days but I have been sharply reminded that others only got a handful or maybe for some, none at all. I made some fantastic memories up there this season and learned A LOT. I faced fears, rode like a fool (sometimes) and got hungry for more. To say, “but this isn’t fair, I just started” sounds exactly like me and now that I’ve had time to think it over, I realize how selfish that sounds. I’m thinking positively for next season and the health and safe operations of our mountains. I’m thinking of all the resort employees and everyone who loves to be on the snow (even the skiers) and I hope we can all get back to what we love just as soon as possible.

To close this, I think it’s important for all of us to realize what’s happened over the last few months. We live in a different world right now and we’re all making adjustments. Some folks are angry, some are indifferent. Others panic and more still go with the flow. This writing isn’t meant to downplay  how COVID-19 has affected all of us, it’s merely to shed some light on myself and how the loss of something I love has served to remind me of the bigger picture. The closures and distancing are only helping us get back to normal safely, though it feels odd and wrong. The day will come again when we can all jump in the car at five in the morning, ram a breakfast burrito into our face and proceed to talk about riding switch, going off rollers and that one time I fell and broke my face in the park.

Stay patient, stay positive and most of all stay the course.

Four short paragraphs from prompts about childhood:

1. I remember tormenting my younger brother in the mornings before school.  I was in junior high and he was a lowly elementary school kid.  I woke up and prepared myself for school while he moped around missing our parents and complaining about the cold.  I clearly recall him putting on one of our mother’s sweatshirts and perching himself on top of the heating vent in his room.  What odd behavior, I would think to myself as I buttoned up my coat and affixed my mittens to my hands.  Now, as an adult, I find myself pulling the blankets around my head in the morning missing my family.
2. I remember walking around my childhood neighborhood in the summers with my best friend Kelli.  We lived in a small town and when we were too young to drive but too old for things like summer camp and swimming lessons, we spent our days walking to a huge field that was near my house.  It had a dirt path that became full of “crackle-mud” after a rainstorm had dried up.  It also had a huge hill made entirely of dirt; perhaps the start of some construction that was never finished.  We’d sit up on that dirty hill and look out over our town and talk about absolutely nothing.  At the present, there are rows of attached houses sitting where she and I spent so many summers.  I often wonder if the dirt misses our simple conversations.
3. There is a picture of my when I was around six years old holding our black cat.  The cat was named Booger (thanks Dad) and she was dressed in a pink dress. The cat looked miserable with her claws sticking out and a scowl on her face. I remember pushing that cat around in a doll stroller after a maniacal case through the house to catch her. That cat hated me and today, I hate cats. That cat was like a doll to me which usually emulates practice for motherhood and today, I couldn’t be more pleased to be childless and catless.
4. When I was little, my dad used to write things for work on this big black typewriter. I would hear him tapping away on it’s archaic keys and then the inevitable *ding* would sound and it would snap back to start a new line. I wrote a few stories on that stone age machine and remember going to my school’s computer lab and trying to type as quickly as my dad could. It never sounded as impressive as he did and in today’s line of small-keyed notebooks and laptops, when I really get going with my writing, it seems less satisfying without the heavy clunk and familiar *ding*.

In the midst of this new frustration, another fear dawned on me: his assistant.  In my years of working in medicine, I had come across a few assistants of varying degrees.  There were those that sat around looking busy and important but you could never really put your finger on what it was they actually did.  They were always on the phone or hogging up the fax machine or diligently bent over their desks filling in insurance forms and saying things like “within my area of expertise” or “our office protocol is as follows.”  This breed of assistant was cool with me.  They were usually non-threatening and boring and brought their own lunch to work and were nice to everyone.

The slightly more worrisome variant of the assistant was the type that worked alongside the doctor as their medical assistant.  Now, you can get a few different versions of this one and here are the two most common.  Type one is the caring and kind medical assistant.  They ask how you’re doing, how your family is doing.  Did you have nice holidays?  What do you think of this weather we’re having?  Are you feeling alright since the last visit with us?  How is your dog?  Did your son get out of prison yet?  Type one is very concerned about anything and everything and will spend upwards of fifteen minutes preparing the patient for the doctor.  This might include bringing the patient some water or running out to the waiting room to get a selection of magazines.  It might also include recounting a story about how a relative had the same exact surgery and did just fine darling, she was fine and you’ll be fine too, I promise you!  Type one is nice enough but utterly irritating after about ten minutes.  Type two on the other hand…

Get ‘em in, get ‘em out.  We ask you how you’re feeling on the way into the exam area.  We are looking at your problem list three days before you come in so that we can avoid asking questions that might spark a twenty minute long explanation as to how you came about to have your specific ailment.  We don’t offer you water unless you’re about to pass out in a coughing fit and we certainly don’t fetch magazines for you either.  If you bring your unruly and misbehaved children into the exam room with you, we will not feign friendliness and say how precious they are; in fact, we might even ask them to to leave the room.  We are the no-nonsense, no time to be wasted, we don’t care about your second cousin’s brief stint with pre-diabetes that you think you’re susceptible to medical assistants that people either really love or really hate.  I say “we” because I am a card-carrying member of this gang and we get shit done.  Our doctors love our efficiency and most patients love our shall we say strong willed personalities.  They know we will get things done and when you’re talking health and wellness and weather or not you might die, people appreciate efficiency no matter if comes served with a side of “I’m sorry about your second cousin, but I really don’t care.”  If I was to be paired with a fellow type-two, things would be just fine.  If I was stuck with a type-one, things were not going to end well for him or her.

The third and final group of assistants came in the form of what I liked to call “the pretend doctors.”  These were the physician assistants, you know, the people who were just a few credits short of being able to end their signatures with an M and  a D.  I always wondered about these people.  It always seemed to me that they had big ambitions but then gave up when the finish line was in sight.  It must be like getting tackled on the one yard line.  The golden establishment of being a medical doctor is right there, you can see it and maybe even taste it but then, you don’t get it.  You settle.  You become a pretend doctor.  You posses all the skills and knowledge and know-how but yet, you are not one of them.  To me, the whole idea of being in this middle-man position must have been the greatest form of torture.  No one will call you doctor and therefore, no one will ever trust you one hundred percent with their health.  Sure, they’ll allow you to examine them and look at their blistering rash that supposedly magically appeared out of nowhere, but deep down inside, they don’t trust you or your diagnosis and will be on the phone demanding to speak to the doctor for further advice thirty minutes after they leave the office.  These poor people; who in their right mind would ever be a physician’s assistant on purpose?  Somebody that is genuinely fucked up in the head, that’s who.  Someone who has labeled themselves a noble martyr and will go out of their way to make sure everyone else knows it.  They can usually be heard muttering to themselves under their breath such favorites as “I noticed that elevated Sed rate weeks ago” and “I said from the start we should have left that cyst alone.”  Passive aggressive is my least favorite color and these poor souls owned sweaters in every available shade of it and wore them on a daily basis like a child wears his favorite batman cape to bed each night.

After tossing my phone onto the bed in childish disgust, I sat there wondering what I was going to do now.  I told myself it would be alright and I could still bring my wit and charm to this established surgeon.  I bet he had great stories to tell and I could probably pick his brain about the most gruesome surgery he had ever performed.  After all, fixing broken bones is a messy and violent job.  I bet he had taken a bone fragment to the forehead or something cool along those lines.  I wondered if anyone had ever suddenly awakened in the middle of surgery and saw him drilling away at their knee.  I wondered if he had ever hit his thumb with the mallet while impacting a prosthesis into place.  What would happen if he accidentally broke another bone whilst fixing another?  My list of questions grew and with that, my anxiety began to fade and my excitement came back.  After spending an entire decade in the fascinating world of internal medicine and lung disease, I was ready for something more exciting than hypertension and less depressing than end-stage lung cancer.  I was also thrilled beyond belief that I might never hear anyone mispronounce the drug name Metoprolol again.  I mean honestly, just sound it out for crying out loud; Me-to-pro-LOL.

As Monday morning slowly woke up, I lay in my bed awake thinking about this momentous day.  The day I would boldly walk into work and show everyone there what I was made of.  I wasn’t some lowly new girl who was going to teeter around asking dumb questions and making captain obvious-level observations.  I was going to hit the floor running and amaze everyone.  I would be the talk of the office and by lunch time and everyone would want to sit by me and hear about my past adventures in medicine.  I would dazzle them with stories about how I used to heroically pull foreign bodies out of people’s ears or maybe I should open with the story of that one time I had to assist the doctor with a beautifully infected wound by holding the emesis basin so he could collect the copius amount of green sticky fluid that was draining out of said wound.  There was also the incident involving myself, the EKG machine and a patient with rather large breasts that might be a good opener, you know, so everyone knew that not only was I intelligent and experienced but also quite funny and likeable.  First impressions are everything, right?  With this thought in mind, I proceeded to get ready for my big first day; I absolutely could not wait to meet this surgeon and his assistant.  Naturally, I was most curious about this mystery assistant.  I had to be prepared to out do him or her without coming off as a know it all.  Part of me wanted to be a nice team player but the other half of me wanted these people to feel secure in knowing they had not hired a dummy and I could hold my own and get things done.  I had left my previous employer in such good standing and was eager to continue on my own tradition of kicking ass and taking names.

This of course, started off with looking the part.  I had been informed that traditional scrubs were not part of this particular office’s dress code.  They preferred a “professional” looking staff and as I feigned excitement over this, my brain had already gone into panic mode about what I was going to wear.  I owned exactly thousands of scrubs.  Some were cute, some were boring, some were threadbare but most importantly, all of them were comfortable.  You see, wearing scrubs like wearing pajamas.  In fact, you’re basically wearing pajamas to work.  When you think about it, working in medicine is like a very stressful Saturday morning .  You’re sitting there in your comfortable pajamas, sipping coffee at an ungodly hour while your family (co-workers) start shuffling in and complaining about the food in the cafeteria.  Keeping with the Saturday morning theme is the entertainment.  Instead of cartoons, you get to be entertained by the endless shenanigans of your patients.  Always entertaining and rarely boring, patients are forever a staple of our entertainment when it comes to surviving a busy day at the office.  Another major survival tactic of hospital life is your scrubs.  I mean, they have pockets everywhere; the better to carry secret snacks with you or accidentally take home some extra bandaids or alcohol pads or about eleven pens.  Trust me, you don’t want to be caught in the middle of a day of busy patients without something to eat or be without a pen or the always needed but too often forgotten spare pair of exam gloves.  Next up on the scrubs rule list is their sheer comfort and functionality.  For example, how many times have I had to get on the floor to look at something or…look in to something?  How about moving patients?  Do you honestly think I want to help lift up a patient of the large variety while wearing high heels and a skirt?  I won’t even entertain that question with an answer.  Obviously, scrubs provide you freedom to move, good hiding places and, let’s face it, they just look cool.  When I was in school, I would purposely wear my scrubs onto the train for my commute home.  They were plain blue and after the first few times doing this, I noticed something: people thought I was important!  Fellow commuters would offer up their seats to me upon seeing me standing there looking haggard from “surgery.”  What a great scam this was!  I soon added my stethoscope for dramatic effect and noticed that once again, people were generally nicer to me than most of the other commuters and many a time, I would procure  a seat on the train simply because I looked like I was tired from saving so many lives that day.  I suppose the fact that my hair was always a mess and I lacked the skills to properly apply makeup only added to my great heist of obtaining a seat on the train in the middle of rush hour.  See?  Scrubs are awesome.  I rest my case.

So now what was I going to do?  I peered into my closet and looked at the adult looking clothing I had purchased in the preceding days.  I had a nice array of soccer mom dresses, grandma sweaters, middle-age librarian slacks and one too many scarves which I had intended to use as accessories.  Right now, my closet looked back at me and said “Well, look at you, working in a professional environment.  Aren’t you precious and grown up and boring looking and adult.”  Almost begrudgingly, I began to comb through my hangers to put something together.  At least color would not be an issue; everything I owned was black.  There were one or two gray layering pieces but my years spent living in big cities had taught me something: you will never go wrong with all black, all the time.  After a few attempts at looking fashionable, I decided that I was now 47 years old and should have been named Martha because this is exactly what and who I looked like.  I took a good long look in my mirror and stood there trying to decide if I should start crying or burn down my apartment so I could use the insurance money to buy better clothes.  I had chosen to adorn myself in a simple black cardigan paired with a knee length black skirt that somehow fell lower than my knees giving me that slightly risque Puritan look.  To complete my Vogue-worthy ensemble, opaque black tights and solid black heels.  I added a simple necklace which consisted of a silver coffee bean shaped pendant that hung from a delicate black ribbon.  A dear friend had given me this quirky piece of jewelry after countless afternoons of sharing laughs, cries and everything in-between over bottomless cups of coffee.  It was the perfect gift and I felt that somehow, her powerful personality was contained in that little pendant and would help me get along through my first day.  I could hear the bean speaking now with her most comforting piece of life advice: “Hey, at least you’re not pregnant!”