Wintersault

My son, five years old, three feet tall, was skiing alongside me. A friend of mine, and his daughter were just behind us, skiing down the snowy tree-lined trail.

“Hi-ya! Ha ha BANANA!” my son cried out joyfully. (He adds the word ‘banana’ to everything these days.)

The trail was steeper than usual for the kids but they were handling it well. They slid over scratchy patches from one snowy mogul to another, slow motion bouncing, with skis in strong pizza-wedge formation.

We were going along like this, when out of nowhere, Jackson slowed to a stop and tipped over. Well, actually, it more like he just sort of unintentionally stopped and placed his head on the ground facing downhill. Me, my friend, and his daughter, all stopped.

“You need help getting up, buddy?” I called to him.

Strangely, he didn’t call out or struggle. Instead he simply leaned forward, and his skis rolled right around in a perfect forward roll.

“Whaaaaat?!” All of us watching started cheering and shouting. “Dude! How did you do that? That was incredible!”

I slid over to Jackson to help him get going again. “Buddy, you rolled over and did a summersault on your skis, did you know that?”

Still strangely calm and serene, he looked up at me through his goggles and said said, ‘No, Mommy. That was a wintersault.”