Excelsior!

I can't get past what happened this weekend and the fact that Nazis are thriving in our country. This is a dystopian novel we're living in. But while we're still able to access fun memories, entertainment and fiction, that's where you'll find me. We must hold onto, and recall to ourselves, the good stuff in life.

Last night Aunt Nancy (of the Ashram and Muffinpants family fame) and I had eats and got ready to watch Game of Thrones with Paul. We talked about what risky fun we had as little kids because our parents were busy and not keeping us wrapped in cotton batting. Sledding and biking were our top dangerous activities, and also such happy memories, despite injuries. Nancy told how she once tobogganed home down an unused road in the pitch dark, which was joyful and terrifying in a way only a 9 year-old could appreciate. And then I told her about Twiss Hill.

When I was a toddler, we lived in a small town in upstate NY. Our house was up on a hill with a lazy slope to a dirt road. Across the road were some houses, spaced widely apart. It dropped off pretty sharply there, and the houses were built into the side of the hill. Old Man Twiss (must be somehow related to Stevil) had a big parcel of land around his house right across the road from us. Every January he trudged down his hill creating a curving path. It began by the back of his garage, with a steep drop, and wound around a couple pine trees before hitting the cleared hillside. When he was done he went home and waited a day. Then he scooted down that path on a saucer, packing the snow and creating a sled run. For the finishing touch, he'd run his hose out and water down the whole thing. It was solid ice. A luge run of several hundred feet. I only remember doing it once. But that memory!

Billy and me. The Flexible Flyer. He's 10 or 11, I'm about 2, but tall. Old Man Twiss didn't stop me (which feeds the theory that he did this every year hoping to thin the herd- the run ended on Old Route 17, a highway), so Billy sat with his feet on the steering bar and I climbed in and sat between his legs. I grabbed his legs to hang on for dear life and off we went. I'm pretty sure I screamed the whole way, a crazy laughing shreik. Sandy snow hit us in the face, we were going too fast to see anything but the run, and it was suddenly over as we slowed on the salted slush along the side of the highway. Sheer joy.

Hold onto the crazy laughing moments. They're what makes the rest worth doing.
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