My Life at the Gym: Feminist Perspectives on Community through the Body

13. Women Who Ski With Dogs

Women Who Ski With Dogs 쮿 135 13 Women Who Ski With Dogs Grace D’Alo It’s 2 a.m. on a Friday morning in February and so cold that as my car creeps down the driveway, the tires are loud on the packed snow, and the sound reminds me of Velcro being slowly torn apart. This is the end of a ten-hour drive, and the hum of the highway is still in my ears, groundspeed vibrations resonating in my back and legs. At my request, Phil Leonard plowed the driveway yesterday, and snow is mounded at eye level all around me. When I stop the engine, there is no more interference with the night except for Sparky’s nearly conversational whimpers. For a moment, I take in the absolute cold, clear stillness. Through the trees I can see the surface of the lake and a slice of open sky. The residual warmth from the car’s engine is fading fast. The moon is bright enough for me to see paw prints and a shoveled path to the door. It’s my neighbor, my always prepared and warmly dressed Canadian friend, who has thought to do it. She regularly walks her dog and keeps an eye on the place after Tom and I shut it down in late September. Nine other women are coming from Pennsylvania; seven of them are not far behind me in two cars. I imagine them going through border security; declaring to those serious, earnest, young men and women with French accents that they are not carrying any guns or drugs. Or maybe they stopped in Watertown, New York, to fill up on gas or pick up groceries at the twenty-four-hour Price Chopper. I am certain both cars are less than an hour behind me. It is President’s Day weekend, and ten of us are spending four days at my cabin near Kingston, New York. Dubbed the “Women’s Weekend,” it is a feast of unfettered companionship, exercise, reading, saunas, eating, and drinking; all woven together by conversations that only women have. The weekend began twelve years ago and is now written on our calendars like other annual holidays. Unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving, 135 136 쮿 My Life at the Gym however, the weekend does not fulfill familial or religious obligations or commemorate an event. It gives us a chance to celebrate being alive, being together and being women. For months we discuss who is going, what to bring, and when each car is leaving. We exchange cell phone numbers, assign bedrooms, make lists of food, check to see if the number of bottles of alcohol that we are allowed to bring across the border has changed beyond the puritanical Canadian limit of two. We plan in earnest, knowing that any arrangement may be changed in an instant if there is an emergency or a moment of inspiration. Last year, Carol had knee-replacement surgery two weeks in advance of the trip and was ambivalent about going. Like most independent women, she was reluctant to importune others because of her needs. She felt vulnerable; just the words “knee replacement” sounded like an admission of being old and worn out. On the other hand, she instinctively wanted the healing, and hovering, of women friends. When we planned for the trip, we simply reframed Carol’s concerns—instead of determining what had to change in order to accommodate her circumstances, we focused on what had to stay the same to satisfy the rest of us. The most obvious condition that had to stay the same was that Carol had to be there. We also wanted Carol’s chicken salad, the delight of watching her Jack Russell, Pete, bound over the lake like a deer. And we wanted to talk with her around the table, the fire, and the Scrabble board. Viewing it this way made it easier for everyone to take care of the details. The night before we left, Pat spent the evening with Carol and worked in her kitchen as a sous chef assembling the chicken salad. For the drive up and back, Carol was regally installed with pillows and blankets in the backseat of Jane’s minivan, where she could keep her leg elevated. Morgan kept Pete in her car, walked him as needed, and did not kill him for peeing on her leg. Carol may have limped through the weekend, but her spirit was buoyant, floating on a sea of...