Slow and in control

Mazin blew my mind today. Only his second day riding the lift, and he's already shredding the slopes! I'm not exaggerating, either. He's completely confident, has his turning skills down, and can get up by himself after falling (most of the time). I guess I never expected him to get so good so fast at only age four! I feel so proud of him--and proud of myself at the same time for devoting this vacation to teaching him to ski, for having the courage to let him go down the hill on his own that very first time, for having the gumption to take him up the lift. It seems that he is a natural athlete. I wonder where that will take him in life. It is such a wonderful thing to see your child acquire a skill through effort and determination. At a certain point today, I was able to stop watching his every move and simply enjoy myself, feeling my own skis swishing beneath me. We were almost like peers on the mountain by the end of the day. Mazin is now my skiing buddy! I do have to remind him not to simply bomb down the hill--to keep turning back and forth. He likes to follow me, but on the last couple of runs, he was more interested in chasing other kids down the slope than sticking behind me. This is certainly not the pace I envisioned when I imagined skiing with my four year old! I kind of thought we'd be a little pokey, a little conservative maybe. Not my child! His first (and only, so far) crash landing happened when he tried to go straight down the hill as fast as possible, without turning back and forth. He wiped out--both skis popped off and he got a face full of snow. (And it terrified his mother, who had visions of broken bones.) I think he learned his lesson, because he hasn't tried to do that again. Now our mantra is, "Slow and in control!"