The Idea vs Reality

A lesson for the first day of the year.

Today, it was decided we should go sledding.

The Dream

Photo by Lan Gao on Unsplash

You’re sledding with the the child in perfect weather, with no wind and warm enough that the snow doesn’t melt, or if it does you don’t notice because there’s lots of snow.

Somebody is waiting for you at the bottom with hot chocolate and your sled appears magically at the top of the hill waiting for you. You take the lift up, of course.

Your child comes completely clothed with coats and hats and boots on and ready and magically arrives at the top of the hill with her shiny white smile glistening in the sun. No sweat and not tears.

You hear about this because some sledding fairy or maybe an au pair takes your child sledding because in your dreams you never go sledding - especially at your age - so there must have been a nanny or some other caretaker in this dream of yours.

The Reality

You have been voted to take the child sledding. You check the outdoor temperature. 15 degrees. This is not good.

“At least there’s no wind”, your mother-in-law chimes in. It’s easy for her to be so optimistic because she’s not the one going sledding.

You admit defeat and start to get ready and get dressed for the frigid temperatures, but here’s the thing - there’s a time limit between getting dressed for temps in the teens and still being inside wrangling boots and mitts on - and when that time limit is reached where Dad is dressed for 15 degrees but he is still inside wrestling boots or negotiating about whether she should wear 2 sweaters or three, Dad gets cranky because he’s still inside but now he’s hot and sweaty in 3 pairs of insulated pants and 3 hoodies and a winter coat.

The ladies manage to get her snow panted and gloved and hatted and out the door and we’re off.

Wait. I have to de-ice the car first because it’s been days since we went anywhere so this will take some time. The child wants to go sledding because it’s her first time and she too has been cooped inside for too long.

We get into the car and drive the five minutes to the park behind the public library where the big hill in town lives. This is the hill with the sign that states: NO SLEDDING and the city/town is not responsible to anything that could happen to you as you slide down a hill at uncontrolled speed for your first time ever.

We get there and there’s a few other families breaking all the rules and we realize that due to this and the lack of snowfall there’s very little snow on the hill itself. This actually turned into a good thing for our solo sledding because the grass lumps poking through put the brakes on.

As far as speed:experience ratio, this worked in our favor and we had the golilocks effect on this hill - not too fast but not too slow - juuuuust right.

As a preliminary, we went up about 1/3 of the way for a trial run. Success!!

Okay then, we go all the way to the top and I get her all setup on the very dangerous piece of plastic that she will be travelling on at speed and I did what every responible parent would do : I push her down.

She screams all the way down. I don’t know if it’s fear or fun but she makes it to the bottom unscathed and wants to go again. She hasn’t lost her mittens yet and though her hood flew off with all that speed, it’s fixable.

We go to the top and we go again to the same effect: No issues other than the screaming on the way down.

I tell her that the sledding rule is you drag your own sled up the hill. I’m no snowplow parent and she can pull her own sled.

On the seventh attempt she told me she wanted to deviate from what was working: holding onto the handles on the side of the sled. This time she wanted to hold the rope . I told her it was a bad idea, but she would not listen.

Okay then…

She made it to the bottom.

Almost.

On the last 3 feet of the run she leaned over a little too far and every kid that’s been sledding knows what happens next: you get a face full of snow.

“I’m so cold!!, I want to go home” she cries

“Huggie!”, she pleads.

I take her sled from her, resist the urge to tell her “I told you so” because this means she is done and if she is done so am I! and the sirens call of my warm couch beckons.

We walk to the car, me dragging her sled and her face bright pink from her bad choice and we get in the car where she pleads to get the car hotter and faster than physics can make it happen.

Home. She kicks off her boots, and snow pants and gloves and runs to her tablet because it’s been a while and watches her cartoons or whatever she watches.

I follow her around and pick up and hang up the coats and the gloves and the pants and find a towel to dry up the big puddle in the middle of the floor. When that’s done I make her a hot chocolate with whipped cream on top (don’t tell mommy) and she slurps and spills happily while I finish cleaning up the mess.

It’s then that I look at my watch. Total elapsed time was about 30 minutes from leaving to arriving. It took us longer to get dressed and undressed than we actually went sledding.

And that’s the reality of sledding on this first day of the year 2026.

3 more days until school starts

TH and Co.