Gates

I stashed my snowboard in a tree well and hiked down to the race start – a lip of snow between the trunks of two tall hemlocks – where several kids stood in line waiting for their turn. They looked like little warriors. In those helmets and goggles I couldn't recognize any faces. Luckily I knew my son's bib number.

"Hey, Number Seventy-seven!" I said.

Two boys looked over at me but my boy didn't. I chucked him on the shoulder. "Hi, B!" He saw me then and smiled and hugged me.

"I have a treat for you," I said, and he cried joyfully, "Gummy bears!" Then he looked with consternation at his hands, be-mittened, with the straps of his poles wrapped round them. "Here, open up," I said, and fed him like a baby bird.

A parent volunteer walked by, reading off the boys' bib numbers and then going back to the start and reading them off again. "Seventy, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75 – Where's number 76?" He looked at me, but I shrugged. We glanced uphill, where a few kids were scrambling up an outcropping to leap off in a heap, and some kids threw snowballs at each other, shouting, and some dug in the snow – building a cave, I suppose, or a castle. The parent volunteer shrugged, too. He looked back at the start. "OK. Seventy-one's up, there's 72, 73, 74, 75, no 76, 77. Oh, there you are, 76. Back up, boys, make room." Pause. "Seventy-two is up. Seventy-three, 74..."

I stayed beside my son but I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to make him nervous. (He didn't look nervous. He looked like he was waiting his turn to ride a chairlift.) I gave him another gummy bear. His coach came by and put his hand on my son's shoulder, giving him a quick pep talk, and then suddenly it was my son's turn. He took his place between the trunks of the two hemlocks, poles in front skis in back, and the starter began the countdown and whoop! Go! Go!

He is, of course, just nine years old. When I watch him ski around gates, I remember watching nine-year-old gymnasts (and being one myself): able to do an aerial and a layout backflip but forgetting to point her toes. His skiing is like that. Ski racing, however, is completely different from gymnastics competitions. Gymnastics competitions can be so boring while you're waiting your turn; and then when it is your turn, you know everyone is staring at you. In ski racing the kids build snow forts while they're waiting, and when it's their turn, only the starter notices. They don't watch each other because there's nothing to see; the course curves; it's hidden by trees. Also, in gymnastics the equipment is what it is. I mean, another team's spring floor might feel different, but a beam is a beam. In ski racing the conditions are always different. This weekend the course was crazy icy – I was spooked by it myself, and though it was sunny and warm, there was absolutely no way I could have brought Sasha along. Nearly half the kids failed to finish. At his last race, on the other hand, it was snowing.

So keeping in mind he's just nine: Whoot! He did totally awesome on a course of super death ice. That's my kid!

"Yeah," he said afterward, "it was fun." Proud and nonchalant, just like a guy.