"Follow Me, Dad"

Grant and boys in Breckenridge

Carson

My father, Ken Gilmore, took us skiing for the first time when my sister, Lara, was ten and I was nine.  My father wasn’t an avid skier but he enjoyed it enough to think it was worthwhile to take his two daughters to New Hampshire for their first ski lessons. As Executive Editor of Reader’s Digest and the international editor (he would be named Editor-in-Chief in 1984), he was a busy man.  He left home every morning at 8 am with a preppy tie and a wide smile and came home for dinner promptly at 7 pm to watch the McNeil Lehrer Report.  He traveled often and far.  

When he was not traveling, his primary domains were a beautiful corner office at the headquarters of Reader’s Digest in Chappaqua, NY or the living room couch at our house in Mt. Kisco, where he edited manuscripts over a large mug of Sanka after dinner.   Our time with him was not limitless.  We made pancakes on Sundays together; he taught us to swim in our backyard pool; he helped us edit our book reports. When my parents announced over dinner one night that my father would be taking us on a week-long ski trip and our mother, Janet, would be staying at home to enjoy her cats and her magazines, we were happy but stunned.  

On a mild February morning we loaded up our questionably snow worthy 1980 Chevy Citation and headed north to Concord, NH, where my uncle lived.  My father was close to his older brother, Don, and his wife, Nikki, and they lived in a rambling old house that oozed New England charm.  The floors were pine; the paint was white; the ceilings were slightly crooked.  There was a short walk to a small pond where local boys played hockey. While my father stayed up late talking to his brother, my sister and I  dreamed under heavy blankets.  In the morning, we headed to the Waterville Valley Ski Resort to check in for our lessons.

Skiing came easy to us as it does to most kids who are old enough to carry their equipment and follow the person in front of them for hours with no scratch on their ego.  Within a couple of days, my sister and I were racing down the easy green slopes.  My father was an intermediate skier and pledged absolute allegiance to blue square runs.  His favorite runs were groomers that were wide and predictable.  He never took us into the trees and avoided moguls like you would a bad patch of road.  He hated falling down because, at age 50, it was hard to get up.   He wore a navy blue bibbed snowsuit and a royal blue CB jacket.  He was well over six feet and traveled down the mountain like a lumbering bear.  He was always easy to spot.  My sister and I wore thick cotton socks and jeans.  None of us wore helmets and our gloves were definitely not waterproof.  

After a week of ski lessons we were all able to ski at my father’s level.  We were quick learners; his long, thin skis turned with greater effort.  He loved to tell people when we returned from that first epic week that the three most dangerous words in the English language were “Follow me, Dad” after we had steered him away from the blue runs and into tougher black diamond terrain. 

We continued our annual February trips for several years.  It became a father-daughter tradition.  We moved from the Holiday Inn with the indoor pool in to more upscale accommodations at the Snowy Owl Inn in Waterville Valley.  For two middle school students in search of peer company, we were in heaven.  I don’t remember the ski lessons as much as I remember the après ski scene by the pool table and scrabble board.  

These were blissful days of skiing and getting to know another side of our father.  He was relaxed and happy.  My father let us eat, dress and sleep according to the rhythms of our growing bodies.  He let on to his profound love for us in the best and most meaningful way he could:  he gave us his time and patience and did not bring a single manuscript or brown editing pencil on these trips.

My father passed away in 2006 after a 22-year long battle with Parkinson’s disease.  His last ski run was in Toas, New Mexico in 1989.   On the last run of the day, he took a fall.  He couldn’t get up.  He was afraid.  He placed his skis in a deep storage well in the garage.

When we moved to Boulder in 2009, our three boys enrolled in ski lessons.  Three seasons later, my older boys are skiing ahead of me on black diamond runs and my seven-year-old coaxes me through the tree runs in Breckenridge in the same “Follow me, Mom” spirit.  And I feel my father.  He is always watching:  angel in navy blue bibbed snowsuit somewhere in the space behind me.