Chairlift to HELL

Poor Kid. Driven into heart of splendid Canadian Rockies on a warm and bright winter day, for his private ski lesson. Dressed warmly, equipped professionally. Fed generously. Allowed to flirt with small girl instead of drinking his milk. Allowed to ride the chairlift, not for the first time, because he was now judged old enough and a good enough skier to do so.

As I looked into his huge gorgeous blue eyes, with the crystalline tears brimming in them, and watched his bottom lip tremble, and saw his small boy hands clutching passionately the line-up railing, and saw too the trust he placed in me to make everything better and take him back to the lodge and give him hot chocolate and tell him he was a brave boy for even considering taking the chairlift up the mountain, I kind of felt like the worst mommy in the world for putting him in the headlock and hustling him onto that mechanical contraption of certain child doom. His screams (not of terror, of rage) rang and echoed through the Banff-area skies. At one point he called upon Zeus--I kid you not--to strike me down with a thunderbolt.

And to that mom in line behind us, you know who you are: Your turn will come. Consider yourself served a heaping tablespoon of instant karma.

Scared of Everything

Kid is suddenly afraid of everything: getting his face wet, Zeus, airplanes, boats, the chairlift, the world running out of Chaotic trading cards before he gets that one that he really wants. I make fun but it's a big deal for him--he's also obsessed with what happens when people go on to the next world. Every time I stub my toe or sneeze he wants to know if this means I'm dying. Five years old and already slugged in the solar plexus by our sad earthbound situation.

This situation clearly calls for breakfast chocolate cake. I don't care if it's practically midnight already--Kid is having a reassuring, dense, mother-loves-you-forever-and-always chocolate bomb for breakfast.

Note to self: do not actually say the word "bomb" out loud in front of him.