Dad, I feel guilty skiing
I went skiing in 2021 because it felt like the safest trip to take during the pandemic. Desperate to get out of NYC and take some time off work, our friends suggested a ski trip. We would be safe outside, in nature, wearing masks and balaclavas, not being forced to ride ski lifts with strangers, and eating at allotted times in the lodge to ensure social distancing.
I was so excited for this trip, even though I had never skied once in my life. When I look back now, I wonder what possessed me to get down with 5 days of doing a sport I had never done, a sport that required me to spend a lot of money just to play for a few days. But we were all a little desperate during COVID. We ate outside in 28 degree weather while wearing gloves. We isolated for days before holidays so that we could spend a few hours with loved ones. We started watching movies at home while on zoom with other people watching the same movie. We would do anything to feel connected, to feel sane, to feel like one day was different from the next.
As you may know from my newsletters, instagram stories, or coffee dates with me, I am now into year four of skiing and am gushing with love for the sport. The culture, the physicality, the outfits, the lodge french fries, the different types of season passes, the gear - I love it all. But every now and then, when my heart beats for skiing, it sinks because my Dad is dead.
How did skiing become an avenue of joy that is at a crossroads with immense grief? I went skiing because of the pandemic. Sure, maybe I would have found my way to skiing one day, but I am not confident that would be the case. With an annual trip to Aruba and several trips with Sung, I never imagined a ski week fitting into our allotted days off. I never felt like I was missing out because I didn’t ski. I didn’t think about skiing ever, really.
The pandemic brought me skiing. So every now and then, after an amazing ski day, feeling the highest of highs, I feel the lowest of lows that Phil isn’t here. Because if COVID didn’t happen, and Phil wasn’t dead, I wouldn’t be skiing. Skiing reminds me that he is dead.
Look, you can’t play the causation game for everything. I don’t walk around saying that if I had become a lawyer, I would never have ended up at Seamless, would have never met Sung, and then where would I be? If my Mom and I had not talked to this mother/daughter pair in the Bahamas when I was 9, maybe we would not have been inspired to take a mother/daughter trip and maybe we wouldn’t be setting off on our 18th trip to Aruba in a few weeks. If I hadn’t flown Jetblue on Spring Break, I would not have seen the ads for the new show, Top Chef, and would not have become the foodie I am today. That causation game can be paralyzing and doesn’t do much good.
That doesn’t change the fact that I think about my Dad a lot when I ski. How can I continue to enjoy skiing so much, when it reminds me that my Dad isn’t here? When I lost my Dad, there was so many types of losses - the loss of him, the times we would no longer share, the questions I could no longer ask him, all gone in an instant. And these losses poked a lot of holes in my life. I became a sponge, looking to soak up more life to fill all of these new gaps.
Needless to say, skiing does not fill the holes of the loss of my Dad. When someone loses a parent, I certainly don’t tell them to take up skiing to mask the loss. But losing my Dad created all of this space that I needed to fill, and I am glad I filled some of it with something that challenges me, that excites me, and that makes me feel so alive.
The more I miss my Dad, the more I know that I am doing something that I wish he wouldn’t miss. I am living.
