Lifelong skier: teaching my husband and kids to ski was brutal — and worth it

I grew up skiing and always wanted to share it with my husband and kids. Teaching beginners to ski, I found, was far more frustrating and costly than I expected.

I first tried to teach my husband at a small Midwest resort, Alpine Valley: we rented skis and hit the bunny hills. He immediately spun wildly out of control, barreling down the slope and screaming "stop, stop, stop!" until he hit a fluorescent orange snowmaking turbine and walked off, yelling, "You know how you don't play basketball? Maybe I just don't ski!"

We later enlisted a professional instructor at our home mountain, Sunapee. A calm, 65-year-old pro with "encouraging-grandpa vibes" worked with him; after a long Saturday they were beaming. "He can ski!" said the instructor.

Teaching our kids proved even harder and more expensive. My strategy was sheer hours on the hill — sacrificing gorgeous bluebird days and many, many hundreds of dollars' worth of adult lift tickets to cold, crabby ingrates between my skis — until they finally got the hang of it.

When we finally cruised a groomer as a full family it felt blissful: big wedge turns, ear-to-ear smiles and singing at the top of their lungs. "Truly, all is worth it." Now my husband skis as well as I do, and both kids regularly leave us in the dust.

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