The Skier

The brass chandelier in the dining room downstairs sways and its six blown glass globes clatter as they rock in their bases.  Plaster dust falls onto the dark wood table with each pounding thud on the bedroom floor above.  

Upstairs, the carpet in his bedroom is strewn with damp towels, worn tee shirts, muddy sneakers and smelly socks, inside-out sweaters and a well-worn baseball cap.  Three of the four corners of his room are staged with sports equipment.  In one, a set of golf clubs, in another, a lacrosse stick topped with a helmet, shoulder pads and gloves, in the third, a baseball bat and two fishing rods.  His platform bed is pushed up into the fourth corner to support its wobbly frame, and make some room for play.  The bed, of course unmade, is littered with books and wrinkled homework papers.  

The top of his dresser holds a left-handed golf glove, a ripped nerf football, three drinking glasses caked with dried soda and juice, and an autographed photo of twin brother athletes from Syracuse University’s varsity lacrosse team.  And old shoe box on the dresser is filled with assorted coins, movie ticket stubs, chewed up pencils, and the sticks from eaten tootsie roll lollypops.

The walls are scattered with academic awards, his team portraits and framed photos of him holding up large fish and smiling proudly into the camera.  One wall sports black half-moon scuff marks, the scars of repeated battering with a basketball.

He stands in the center of his room, in a clearing just wide enough for his skis to lay parallel.  He is anchored to his skis by black molded boots which force his shins forward at an angle and cause his knees to bend.  He is crouched like a racer at the starting gate, bent over at the waist till his chest almost meets his knees, poles held horizontally under his armpits and eyes fixed on a snowy place in his memory, far beyond his bedroom walls.  He is wearing mirrored sun glasses.

He raises his arms, plants his poles upright in the carpet and moving only the lower half of his body, jumps into a parallel turn to the left.  His skis land in a dull crash on the carpet.  He repeats the turn to the right and then to the left again and again.  Plant, jump, turn, land.  Plant, jump, turn, land. The floor shakes, the walls rattle, the chandelier clatters, the dog barks.  His rhythm is unbroken.

My car pulls into the driveway and I step out.  He looks quickly toward the window.  Before I reach the front door of the house, he speedily and quietly unlatches his boots, jumps out of them, and stands the skies with boots still locked in the bindings up against a corner of his room.  He leaps onto his bed and opens a book.  As I climb the stairs, I notice the swinging chandelier, the dust on the table – again – and wonder.  “What are you reading?” I say as I greet my smiling son at the bedroom door.