A Mother's Nature

I don’t remember learning to ski. My parents took me out for the first time the winter before my second birthday, determined to raise a child they hoped would share their deep love of life in the mountains.

As a teenager, when classmates’ approval ratings and social calendars started to take priority, I resisted family ski trips. I looked for excuses not to ski with my mom, one of which was her very unstylish jacket. It was the jacket she wore year after year after year to be able to afford my season pass, new skis for my brother, gas for the drive to the mountain. I was either unaware or uninterested that my mother had given up so much of herself to share something with her children as brilliant and magical as skiing.

It wasn’t until much later in life, skiing on my own, I realized what a lottery my brother and I had won to be born to a woman who was up before the sun to chase first tracks in the mountains; a woman who would give that up for a time to carry a child, patiently waiting for the chance to impart her love of skiing to her two ungrateful children. I realized the gift we had been given by someone who expected no thanks.

That’s what mothers do. They set aside their own ambitions, time, and bodies. To give us life, our mothers endure their own uniquely beautiful, brutal experience— an effort that should be rewarded with a long rest. But there is no rest. Instead, without pause, mothers are initiated into an elite order of caregivers who will know no end to their sacrifice, no end to their love.