Thanks Mom and Dad

Our parents' greatest gift was introducing us to sliding down a snow smothered slope, our feet guided by gravity

Little Christmas Greetings!

Many years before January 6 became associated with a brainwashed zombie insurrection, I knew it as Little Christmas. My late Catholic mother told us the date commemorates the visit of the three kings, bearing gifts for the Baby Jesus. Twelve days after the celebration of his birth, we’d find a simple gift for each of us under a dry Christmas tree ready for retirement. My mother passed on Christmas Eve three years ago. On a full Supermoon December 4, 2025, my father joined her on the other side.

Two days prior my sister, Kristi, placed a favorite ski hat on our dad’s balding head. She asked him to close his eyes and imagine a perfect ski run. A beatific grin spread across his face. Perhaps I felt a similar joy one month later. My friends and I rented the Hilda Dam public use cabin at Eaglecrest Ski Area. From there we hiked and skied without the need for headlamps, the full Wolf Moon lighting the heaps of snow.

Today I am re-running a slightly edited newsletter initially posted December 22, 2022, two days before my mom’s passing. The following is in grateful memory of my parents.

Gifts Past and Present

Katie Bausler

Dec 22, 2022

With the return of the light, the Winter Solstice, snow sliding season is officially back. The weather lately feels like we live in Alaska or something. Single digits are just a bit much for this perennial California girl. But according to the weather service, a white Christmas is imminent!

I spent time in California over the past year with my parents, Bobbie, 90 and Dave, 92. Mom is making her way to the other side and dad is into bocce ball, long walks on the coast, and the occasional tai chi class.

My dad learned to ski growing up in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. In his twenties he was a competitive ski club racer at Pike’s Peak in Colorado. Dave taught Bobbie to ski in the Swiss Alps. They were Americans living and working in Rome, Italy when they met in 1960. The visual that comes to mind when I imagine my future parents at that time is the cover of Dean Martin’s 1959 Christmas album, Winter Romance, all Norwegian sweaters and black Head skis. Cue sweeping orchestra intro:

I never will forget, the station where we met, you dropped your skis, a happy circumstance. No one would have guessed, we had started a winter romance….

Like many of us, I look back at my childhood over the holidays. I could share stories of tinsel that showed up in the weirdest places all year and Christmas stockings busting with surprises. But my parents greatest gift to my siblings and me was how to slide down a snow-smothered slope, our feet guided by gravity.

As a parent and grandparent, I know that introducing your kids to skiing is like handing them a superpower. Negotiating your way down a snowy slope on your own initiative at a young age instills a rare independence and faith in oneself. It can transform clingy preschoolers to independent athletes riding their own empowered world.

One of the framed photos lining the walls of the stairwell in our Douglas home holds my parents and their three girls and three boys, big smiles on our spring sun-warmed faces. The peak of the mountain behind us is cut off by the frame. We’re all on skis, the bookends my youngest brother Kelley, 6, and sister Julie, 8, the only one wearing a hat. Kelley’s twin Kristi is to Julie’s left. At 14, I’m the oldest and the only one with my eyes closed. Our clothing is circa 1976. Mom’s sporting a cool blue with neon rainbows ski jacket and pants. Brother John‘s wearing a ski sweater with bright stripes down the arms, and like dad and brother Kevin, stretch wool ski pants. I’m donning the new fangled “water resistant” quilted nylon bib overalls. On the tips of John and my skis are matching Olin logos. I recall them as quite the upgrade from our first ski swap acquired pair with “bear trap” cable bindings, invented in 1929!

A few weekends a year during ski season, mom and dad woke us up in the middle of the night. They’d load up their six kids (and sometimes a few of our friends?!) in a dull beige Chevy van with an air conditioner on top. We’d take off at five in the morning for the four hour drive from our suburban San Francisco Bay Area home. That is, unless it was snowing on Donner Pass, when between a snow storm road closure or the onerous requirement of chains on the tires, it took much longer.

A few guaranteed farts and possible arguments later, we’d end up a magnificent world away: the Sierra Nevada mountains.

We’d pile out of the car and into the lodge, where my sister Julie has the distinct memory of us all lined up for our parents to buckle our ski boots.

I was six when my father took me on my first chairlift ride. “I can’t get up,” I wailed, awkward slidy things attached to my feet. “Yes, you can,” implored dad. He pretended to fall himself. Then showed me how to swing my skis under me, lean forward, and pull myself up to standing.

A few years later he demonstrated the “1-2-3, 1-2-3” waltz down the hill for us kids. Then he’d turn up his nose, shiny with Sea and Ski sunscreen towards a run called Ball Room. “Love that ballroom skiing,” he’d exclaim.

When I was in high school dad brought me to a more challenging run at the ski area formerly known as Squaw Valley. It followed the path of the women’s Super-G in the 1960 Olympics, covered with Spring ‘Sierra cement’. “You did it,” he congratulated me, “you skied Olympic Lady.” Good training for Southeast AK “powder”, way before fat skis.

Here in Juneau and Douglas our “world away” is the winter wonderland of Eaglecrest. Mere minutes away from home, we can head up for a day or an hour, no waking in the middle of the night required.

Another greatest gift, for which we are grateful all year.

Happy New Year!

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Peace and Love Always, Katie B.