Winter sports

I've always been a big fan of winter. I like the sight and sound of snow. I love to see the trees with white frosting. I like the way a winter night can be so still. I love walking in the snow.

Last week I packed in the winter sports--skiing, snowshoeing, and sledding. I started to downhill ski as a kid, took a long break when I got married, and started again just long enough to tear up my knee. This winter I feel like I'm skiing better than ever in my life. I think the combination of finally experiencing complete recovery from knee surgery and my hours in boot camp squatting and lunging have made my legs stronger than they have ever been. I am not as afraid of falling, feeling more confident. I have discovered the joys of weekday skiing when the crowds are thin. I'm sold on that!

I went snowshoeing for the first time last week. I could take it or leave it. We rented shoes at the nature center and walked for about an hour along a marked and packed path. It was a beautiful day, great to be outside and all, but I don't quite get the whole snowshoeing part. I could have just walked in my boots. I guess I will need to find a place to get off the beaten trail to really appreciate the experience.

Sledding. Well, my boys are extreme sledders. They create these runs in our backyard that are almost like luge runs--dug out channels down the hill. The crowning feature, however, is the jump at the end. The build a launch that is nearly 90 degrees with a landing 10 feet away. They use foam sleds that you lay on face down. I love to sled and toboggan, spent many happy hours as a youth doing that. I wanted to try the run. My son said, "No, Mom. You shouldn't do this." Of course, the challenge was on, the gauntlet laid down. I had to do it now. I figured I could bail out before the jump. "No, Mom. You can't bail out. You'll go too slow and miss the landing." I had no fear, well, maybe a little fear, but I was not going to let my 52+ years stop me. I launched myself down. I went off the jump. I crashed. I hit the side of the landing, full force on my left side. "I told you so" was all I heard.

Not in the classroom

The spring 2010 semester started yesterday. But, this semester I'm not teaching. It feels a little odd to be out of sync with the campus. I don't know when spring break is, when the students arrive or depart. I still have my advisees, so I'm not totally out of touch.

So, what does a professor do when they aren't teaching? I have plenty to keep me busy. Today I finished the 4th book chapter I've written this year. ENOUGH!! This one was the easiest, demography of obesity, something I know a few things about. I did learn writing the others, but they took too much time. Now I have a paper to write on obesity and caregiving for the Utah family obesity conference, a paper to write on disability recovery for the PAA meetings, and an abstract to write for the REVES conference in Cuba. Hopefully all of those will become actual publications. I really want to work on a new proposal on old age mortality. That is just my own research agenda. I also have some "director" work to do--arrange for a speaker for the fall health policy Lourie lecture; set up next year's speaker series; work up a publication to take to foundations; figure out how to raise the visibility of our group, in general. I'm sure some other items will pop up before long. I've recruited a few undergrads to work as research assistants for me this semester, I need to get organized and find something for them to do.

Sehnsucht

I learned a new word last week--sehnsucht. It is a German word that has no direct translation into English. I ran it across it as I was reading fellowship applications. One of the applicants was proposing to study why older people are more susceptible to fraud. Her theory was that older people have a greater positivity bias, they are more likely to see something as having a positive outcome, so they are more likely to fall for the pitch of a con artist. But, in looking over her qualifications, I saw that she had many articles on "sehnsucht." Curious, I had to google it (of course). According to Wikipedia (for what that is worth) sehnsucht describes a deep emotional state only literally translated as longing, or perhaps a kind of intensely missing. The word can sometimes, apparently, be used to describe a desire for some not quite identifiable, but yet still familiar place. Perhaps like "home." The word is similar in that sense to nostalgia, or even homesickness.

I'm thinking I like this word. It seems to fit an emotion that I sometimes have, a longing or desire for a particular state of being or feeling, for a return to a scene or sense from my past. I wonder how old you have to be to experience sehnsucht? I sometimes hear my sons talk wistfully of some past experience or event. Are those the feelings that build to sehnsucht? Again, according to Wikipedia, sehnsucht was used by C.S. Lewis to describe a joy, almost a sense of hope and yearning which is sweeter than the fulfillment.

Santa

I know that Christmas season has passed, but I overheard a conversation in the lunchroom today that surprised me. Two faculty members were discussing their holidays and where they spent Christmas Day. Like my family, one of these guys spent Christmas Eve night away from home so they had opened presents ahead of time. He joked about needing to let Santa know when they would be home so that the presents could arrive. The other guy said, "Yeah, my 10 year old still says she believes in Santa, but I'm not sure if she really does." I think I could guess. Do any middle class 10 year old kids believe in Santa? How could that be possible?

We never made a big deal of the Santa story in our house. I don't know if my sons ever believed in Santa. We weren't as bad as the mom in Miracle on 34th Street, we didn't completely eschew any fairy tale or make believe stories. But, it was pretty hard to explain Santa's journey.

I've heard friends tell of the devastation they felt the year they discovered that Santa was not real. I had no desire to perpetuate that kind of build / up-let down cycle in my kids. Santa was a nice story, and maybe there was some magic to the season, but the logic was just too strong against him.

But, I ran across a quote from a middle school teacher's blog a few days ago. It really caught my attention regarding the transition from childhood to young adulthood.

"Middle school: It is a wonderful/awful time of transition that is both thrilling and bittersweet. As the innocence of childhood slips away, you can't blame young adolescents for longing for one more year of magic. They may hide behind their blasé masks of indifference, but they still want to be surprised. They still want to believe. "

So, even though Santa may not be real, I agree we could all use a little belief in magic in our lives, a little hope for surprise.

Winter coats

Sometime around age 13 kids start to resist the normal "winter wear" that adults embrace and children are compelled to wear. Something must happen to their metabolism, or, more likely, their sense of peer influence. Wearing coats is no longer "cool." Wearing hats, gloves or boots is definitely not cool. Kids will stand at the bus stop in sweatshirts and sneakers, hands shoved deep into pockets, backs to the wind with red cheeks and frozen toes. Across campus young men and women huddle inside thin jackets and slosh through the snow puddles in open shoes. A few will buck the fashion trend and envelope themselves in down jackets, ear flap hats, and fuzzy mittens. Boys may agree to a pair of workboots, and maybe a hat. But a coat? No. Mittens or gloves. Absolutely not.

Ugg boots are popular footwear for the ladies on campus. I can walk across campus and see pair after pair. Where does such a trend start? No matter, it soon spreads across the campus like wildfire. I'm sure by now they are way out of style, and I'll be anxious to see what new trend awaits me when the students arrive.