A Boomer’s Run With The Mountain
Talia Carner
One thing about us boomers that no one in any generation can deny: we are not just inventive, not just energetic … but we are undefeated. This doesn’t always matter, but when storyteller Talia Carner hurt herself on a ski slope, it mattered big-time. We’re only as old as we feel.
Not a cloud in the sky. The air is crisp and cold, neutralized, devoid of any smell from a world that is not just pure white and powdery. I fill my lungs. In the silence, all I hear is the swoosh, swoosh, swoosh of the snow scrunching under my skis. Swoosh to the right, swoosh to the left, what freedom! My body leans forward over the tips of my skis, pumping up and down as I serpent the slope. The mountain is mine, the world is mine, the moment is mine.
Except that all is suddenly shattered in a violent flip that unleashes a cloud of white dust. At once, I am hurled forward, sideways and upward. In a stitch of time everything blurs. My head whacks the packed powder. The line bifurcating the blue sky and white earth is tilted sideways. The sharp twist is my knee. The popping sound is my ski that releases a split second too late and goes flying over my head. When it lands a moment later, I am no longer near it; the momentum of my fall propels me downhill. My body is tossed over moguls. My left leg, already twisted, locks under me. It digs into the snow.
In the flurry of my spill, I’ve lost my hat, goggles, mittens, poles. In the silence that ensues, I hear horrible groans, and I realize that they are heaved out of my own throat.
Downhill, my husband and two daughters, their backs to me, pause above a new set of moguls. They must be figuring out the lay of the hill. They’ll take off in a minute, and I’ll be lying here for hours, all alone with my pain. Not hours, merely minutes, as in my mind’s eye I can see the sharp tips of unaware skiers perforating my skull. I put more force into my groans than I believe myself capable of, hoping the wind will carry it. And it does. My family freezes in stunned poses, then hurriedly remove their skis and launch a penguin-style uphill dash.
Still lying on my side, I manage to release my locked leg and rest it on top of my well one. I hyperventilate. The adrenaline pumps through my veins. Now my head is in my daughter’s lap.
“Shhhhhh,” she says, her fingers stroking me the way I used to do to her when putting her to bed. From somewhere, the garbled sound of a walkie-talkie is getting near. My husband bangs on my other ski to remove it, sending a jolt through me. My other daughter takes a guard position several feet uphill to warn skiers from running into me.
“A lady had a yard sale and hurt her knee,” the ski patrol says. I begin to laugh. Suddenly I feel good, relieved that I won’t be forgotten on the mountain. The knife in my knee has subsided a couple of notches to a throbbing that threatens to lash out in fury should I attempt to test it.
A young man with blue orbs and chiseled cheeks bends over me. His lips are carved as by a sculptor. “I’m John,” he says. I give him the kind of smile I wouldn’t have dared at a bar. His expert fingers search my knee, tenderly, but manage to extract a couple of yelps from me. I clamp down on them. Hard. For the first time I understand women in the delivery room showing bravery; their OB/GYN must look like my John. “Pain is a good sign,” he says. “The ligament is not completely torn. May I check your back?”
I smile. Check anything you want. His fingers climb up my spine one vertebra at the time. “It feels good,” I mumble, “Don’t stop.”
Someone collects my “yard sale” items. John wants to know how old I am. Oh, no. Just half an hour earlier I had sworn I would never again reveal my age. I tighten my lips. “C’mon, Ma,” my daughters urge. “C’mon, Ma. Go for it!”
I sigh. “Okay,” I tell him, scrutinizing the blue of his eyes to detect dimming of its brightness. But John takes my information well. No disappointment, I notice. He asks me about my medications. Must I also tell him about my hormone replacement therapy?
A few moments later, he introduces me to Josh. Blue orbs over chiseled cheeks. Carved lips. How has God made two with the same perfection? I sit up with as much dignity as my condition allows. “How do I look?” I whisper to my daughter and fluff my hair. Earlier she had remarked that the spongy part of my goggles was disintegrating. She brushes what I know looks like charcoal powder from my cheeks. “You look beautiful,” she whispers. The men lift my leg and rest it between two wooden boards. I stifle a scream as the top of the splint carves into my hip flexor. My leg looks like a hero sandwich with wilted lettuce.
My husband’s cell phone rings. He answers it and walks away, but I can hear his business voice thundering along the open slope, riding the mountain, taking away from my moment as the center of his universe.
I smile at my angelic saviors. “You’re terrific, guys.” I read their name tags. One is from Milwaukee, the other from Oregon. Twins separated at their parents’ divorce, I figure, except that they don’t know it. “How do you feel?” they ask in unison. “Wonderful,” I reply.
The stretcher is padded with a comforter. Josh tucks its edges like I’m a papoose. I stare at a bright, delirious sun. I am happy to be snuggled like this, saved from the slope, spared of any worldly responsibilities. Josh suggests my daughter put my goggles on my face. Like a coolie, he takes his spot between the two handles, positioning my head downhill. As he begins to ski down with the stretcher behind him, I hear the familiar swoosh, swoosh, except that now it is right below my ears. The powdery spray of snow from Josh’s skis sprinkles my face. I had just colored the gray away, and now my hair is flecked with white snow. The bottom of the stretcher is flexible, absorbing every ridge and bump of the slope. My injured knee protests each assault with its new vocabulary, but I tell it to shut up.
We come to a stop. John and Josh hover over me, four eyes so blue that for a second it seems that the sky peeks at me through holes in their heads. Just as I am about to inquire about the selection process of emergency services personnel, a third identical head pops above me. “I’m Judd,” the young man says, “and I’ll take you to the hospital.”
He can take me anywhere he wants. My husband, who has followed Josh and John’s tracks, kisses me goodbye and promises to meet me at the hospital after he sees to my equipment. I dismiss my daughters. “Go enjoy yourselves while your Mom is in the hospital,” I say, and they grin at me.
My three J’s slide the stretcher into the back of a Suburban, reminding me of the hundreds of rides my dog took in this section of our truck. I sniff for her smell, but of course, this is not the same vehicle. And as if to confirm my brilliant observation, my glance lands on a series of cartoons taped to the ceiling. I am just one of many who have taken a ride here, lying on their backs.
The cartoons are all of injured skiers. I laugh softly, when my knee sends me a painful reminder that nothing is funny. You’d better face it, I tell myself. Time to hang up your skis the way you once hung your ballerina shoes. Finito.
But as the Suburban pulls away, I catch through the windows the sight of white peaks against the pulsating blue sky, and I want to run back. Tied up like a mummy, I miss the freedom of the outdoors. I imagine my daughters back on the slope and realize that in their certainty that I’d be fine, so I shall.
I close my eyes. “I will return,” I say to the white mountain that will forever remain a part of my internal landscape. “I promise.”
© Copyright 2009 Talia Carner. Used by permission of the author.
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Filed Under: Baby Boomers • Books • Exercise & Sports • Featured Story • Talia Carner
