I am thinking about buying a pair of ski boots. And it is my daughter's fifth birthday. You may not think these two things are in any way related (and neither did I until I wrote an e-mail to my twin sister about both of them), but they are.

I grew up skiing. I love skiing. I haven't been skiing in about four years for various foot and womb related reasons, and i am itching to get back. I would be camped on the mountain right now, seats out of the mini van, trying to convince my children that we were having "fun" and myself that seven minutes up on a lift and under three minutes down a run wasn't enough time to consider my children "unattended." The idea of putting myself in ski boots is probably the single biggest reason why I haven't been back. I even bought snowboard gear and spent two days learning because the boots were comfortable. But those were the last days on the mountain before the foot breaking/pregnancy winter chapters and so I wasn't good enough for there to be any associated longing with getting back to it.

I was writing my sister for any advice on ski boots she might have. I still own as my primary boots a pair I inherited when my stepmother passed away twelve years ago. She last skied in them about five years before she passed. They have NEON on them from the first time around for the fad, the foam or padding or whatever inside of them is by now so packed and condensed I think they qualify as a size nine on my size seven feet. But they are less painful simply because their pain is not compounded by the additional agony of a $600 dent in my bank account. It is shocking how much torture devices can run. The last time I tried new ski boots I was weeping on a chairlift in Canada with my sister next to me, I feel little hope for this next round, especially since I've broken each of my feet in the intervening five years, not to mention the double case of plantar fasciitis that still whispers round my arches. And I tried, I really and truly tried to find boots - in fact I am pretty sure that I am on a "no longer welcome" or "do not rent to" list in every ski shop I've been in for the last fifteen years. And I am by no means a difficult shopper in any other regard.

Okay, enough about ski boots, other than to say that the main reason the subject upsets me so much is because of how deeply I love to ski. It gives me a high, a feeling of joy unattainable through any other sport I have tried, not to mention that it's tied to some pretty fabulous (and not) memories of skiing with my dad and my sister and friends and former boyfriends and current (ha! only!) husbands.

Now for the daughter part. I gave birth to my daughter five years ago, at home with both my sisters and my mother present alongside the midwives. Other than the fact that it was MY body she tunneled through, I would say WE gave through because of how involved my husband was with the birth. (WE labored, I provided the canal, thank you very much.) As other mothers know, there are no words to convey properly what that experience was like, what a tunnel it was for me given my emergence as a wholly new person on the other side of it. Given how long, involved, intense and clearly painful it was, my sisters and mother were probably pretty changed for it as well. My younger sister drove the next day to New Mexico from where we lived in California and said she was nearly all the way through Arizona before she'd convinced herself once again to even consider birthing her own children. My gratitude towards my sisters and mother for their part in the birth, my gratitude towards my husband for welcoming them to such a profoundly personal and life changing experience is also monumental.

My brother was there for my son's birth, though somewhat more peripherally (especially in terms of his view of the actual process). Given the fact that Sawyer was faster but sunny side up, my brother deserves the same accolades for helping me through and for bearing witness to the experience, but since he doesn't (and has never wanted to) ski, and doesn't (and has never wanted to) have a uterus, I'll leave him out here: I want to ski. I therefore need to wear ski boots. The comparison? I want my sisters to fulfill their desires to bear children. Therefore I want them to go through labor and delivery. I don't want them to be in pain. But I do want for them to experience the profound and life changing joy that it brings. SO I guess I do want them to be in pain if that's the cost of their joy.

I'll admit, if you're not a skier - or if some sort of sport or art or activity doesn't bring you a feeling of joy or freedom or whatever it is like I am clearly craving, you don't get this. And you might NOT get this at all because, it just occurred to me, I am somewhat distancing myself with this analogy from the fact that five years ago I birthed - WE birthed my daughter. Distancing myself because even thinking about it, sitting here in front of my computer, I am overwhelmed with gratitude and joy and with soul-searing awe at the fact of it, and the FACT of my daughter, this incredible person, this magical thing living and breathing in the room next to this one. It is almost too much to think about in its entirety.

My husband is out of town - I shooed him out when he had the opportunity to visit his siblings who he doesn't see nearly often enough due to distance and time, and with whom he is, as he says, tight. I encouraged him to go now, when all three of them and their families are healthy rather than just visiting in event of emergency or illness or grief. To be alone in our home with the hugeness, the reality of this incredible girl we created and who since we created her five years ago has quite clearly taken the reins and created herself, is somewhat humbling. "Really? Me?," I want to whisper, creeping quietly around the corner to peer into her bedroom., "I did that? We did that?"

When asked what I'll remember most about this milestone (and I can hear her, twenty years from now insisting I remember in detail all about it), I think I'd say the enormity of her passion - for everything. For reading, for friendship, for swimming, for righting wrongs - or if she is the one wronging, for doing it fully, completely and with gusto. I will remember that small pockets of the house smell like strawberry candy or gingerbread or vanilla icing or cherry cough drops because she is so into Strawberry Shortcake dolls. The 8" ones that have their own smell, outfit, insane mane of hair, and long and ridiculous name. I will remember how glad I am that she loves Strawberry Shortcake and not BRATZ dolls that inspire five year olds to start hooking and make the Barbies that were banned from my house look like miniature statues of Mother Theresa. I will remember her clomping around, sans underwear (it's lucky she remembers clothes at all given her early years) in gorgeous dresses with her clog boots and parka on. I will remember the sweetness with which she treated her brother (85% of the time), her symbiosis with her papa, and the fact that I knew without a doubt that Hilary Clinton should feel lucky that she's not in competition with Jordan for the title of the First Female President. I will remember how she seemed underwater finally free from the constant workings of her already fabulous mind. That underwater, even though she was a more advanced swimmer, she was also her most playful and joyful self.

It's terrifying to know how little I'll remember twenty years from now, I know, because of how quickly these five years have passed and how I feel underwater myself, coming up and gasping in breaths of moments to cling to, memories like buoys that anchor us and prove: We've Been Here. We Survived. It Was Fabulous.

I am grateful to be a mama at all, awestruck that I am responsible for having brought this little being INTO being. I am insanely proud, I am dumbfounded by joy. And although I remember the pain of it fairly clearly, I'd take being struck by it each and every time I am with her because the joy of the encounter would far outweigh it's effect.

I guess in the end I should buy the boots, put on the gear, make my way up the mountain. Above all else, my daughter teaches me bravery on a daily basis, and it's been quite clear for five years now that I'm one of the ones she came here to teach. Pain is nothing when the outcome can be this rapturous.