A Bond Forged From a Hill

My aunt had called me. She always had so many emotions when she called, ranging from ecstatic, bitter, dispirited, and wired. I always had dreaded answering the phone, but when I did she explained that she missed me and wanted to get to know me again. It had been twenty years since we were last together without another family member being involved. I was a kid then; now I am married with 3 children of my own. I had moved away and lost contact with some of my family for assorted reasons. My aunt had just moved to a lake house. In the winter, the lake association had a ski hill with sledding available. I did not want to go but my husband had talked me into it. He said it would be good for her. My aunt’s child was eighteen now and was planning to move out with her boyfriend. She was feeling the empty nest getting closer and was feeling more abandoned. I agreed to go. 

It was a two an half hour drive to her new home from mine. I left early in the morning, so I could get back to my house in time for dinner. As I drove, I thought of all the things that we would not talk about. She would avoid the painful discussions of the past, as though they never happened. I would try to avoid talking. I hated small talk and comforting people when they had issues in their lives, and she had plenty of them.. When I pulled up to her house, she was waiting outside all bundled up in her coat, with a smile in her eyes. I shut the car off, got out, and she greeted me with a hug. She grabbed my arm and we stepped in rhythm toward the sledding hill. She tried to make small talk as we walked. My answers were short. She tried harder. Nothing she said interested me. It was a short walk, but it seemed to take forever. I felt as though we would never be like we were when I was little. We had been close when I was just an elementary school child. We had gone sledding before, but that was a long time ago. Life had happened and I grew up. She seemed to have stayed the same, just with more emotions. 

At the sledding hill, they had snow tubes for rent. When she only rented them for an hour, I was relieved. It was cold, windy, and dreary weather, and I was not an outside person and hated the cold. She showed me where to go, all the time the smile never left her eyes. At the bottom of the large hill, the community had a pulley system that you would attach your tube to and it would take the tube back up the hill for you. She let me go first. As I laid down on the snow tube, my aunt gave it a shove. It started slowly but quickly picked up speed. Faster and faster, I went down. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, I was only halfway down. This hill seemed as if one single mountain from the Himalayas had been uprooted and planted in Midwest America. I looked over to find my aunt was quickly passing me. Her smile had taken over her whole face. She was laughing and I had caught myself smiling. I had thought to myself, maybe I should open myself up more. My aunt meant me no harm by inviting me to sled with her. Maybe she really did want to get to know me as her niece or at least as a person. Maybe she really did want to reconnect and I should give her that opportunity. 

We went down the sled hill sixteen more times in that one hour. Every time we sled down, our smiles were bigger and our laughter was harder. Our tubes had even bumped each other quite a few times, and it always ended by us laughing so hard our stomachs hurt. When we reached the bottom one of the times, my tube had gone up in the air and spun. It landed with me with a face full of snow. I laughed the hurt pride away and my aunt had helped me to my feet. When we arrived on the top of the sled hill waiting for our next turn, she would speak to me about our past. She did not avoid the subjects that I thought she would. Sometimes we would have tears in our eyes and sometimes we would be dying of laughter. Every time we went down and back up, you could feel our bond growing stronger. It was cold on the top of the hill, but the chill did not bother either of us. It was like the sunshine was approving of our new relationship and the winter wind had given up tearing us apart. 

On the last time down, we hooked the snow tubes to the pulley to have them go back to the workers, our time was up. It had only been twenty minutes, not an hour, in my mind. I could tell my aunt had thought the same. I looked back as we were walking away, trying to integrate this moment into my mind so it would never leave. The snow hill we used when I was a child was nothing like this one. This hill was so much larger, so much more. Almost as if it were created to bring people back together and restore lost communications. I felt as though I would never be able to recreate this experience again. 

We walked back to her home, hand in hand. She mentioned she was so happy that I had come. She invited me in for hot chocolate and cookies. I happily agreed. We sat and talked for hours. We talked about when I was just a kid and how our lives had changed. We talked about our new goals in life and we remembered just how far we had come. I ended up staying for dinner and not getting back home until late. We had formed a new stronger bond, and it all started when we went sledding, just as we had done when I was a little girl. In the coming years, I did not ignore her calls or fear what she would have to say on the other end of the line. It was wonderful to have my aunt back in my life, and to think, it started by just going sledding for the first time in so many years.