“WATCHED BY THE FATHER”—SLEDDING.

“WATCHED BY THE FATHER”—SLEDDING. I grew up in Elmhurst, Illinois, a flat town, with little nearby opportunity for sledding. Connecticut has wonderful sledding hills. There was a hill across the street in Darien with several good slopes. One afternoon I spent with Annalisa and Nick tobogganing down the hill became a family story. Annalisa was about six, and Nick would then have been three.

There were slopes of different sizes, and we eventually found one that had a long run into a little wooded area at the bottom. This slope was a little more exciting than the others. When we got home, Annalisa and Nick didn’t say anything about the last sled ride for quite a while, and I was content with that. It was at bed time that I remember coming upstairs to find Annalisa sitting on Mary Jane’s knee, telling her with some excitement: “And I thought we would stop before we hit the bushes, but we didn’t, and then I thought we would stop when we hit the bushes, but we didn’t, and then I thought we would stop before we hit the trees, but we didn’t, and then we hit a tree and stopped.”

Mary Jane: “And where was your father?”

I was at the top of the hill, helpless.