7th heaven express

by Noëlle GM Gibbs

February 2025. Whistler, British Columbia. 10:07 a.m.

I’m waiting with my husband and my daughter to board a ski lift called 7th Heaven Express. We’ve already ridden in a cozy, covered gondola to 6,100 feet above sea level this morning, and now we’re in line for the high-speed four-person chair lift that will take us to the tippy top of the Blackcomb Mountain, another 1,929 vertical feet, making it the second-highest vertical drop in North America. Kevin and I are reasonably seasoned skiers, and we love 7th Heaven Express. We had skied the lift earlier in the week while our seven-year-old daughter was in lessons, and now we want to share it with her. We are sure she will delight in it, even if the view this morning won’t be as miraculous as it was two days ago, when the lift transported us above the cloud line, and little mountain peaks poked out from the fog, sunlight glistening off freshly fallen powder. The scene could have been the backdrop for a grand-scale movie, one in the league of Lord of the Rings. Perhaps the two of us haven’t fully considered just how treacherous and scary the mountain could be on a day like today, even for expert adults: one in which the visibility is a measly ten feet. We’re just excited the lift is open; it is often closed on inclement weather days for avalanche control, so we figure if the ski resort is operating it, the conditions might be unpleasant but not dangerous.

Instead, Kevin and I are focused on the joy our little unit of three experienced last ski season, our daughter’s first, and our first in a very long time. The slopes offered a kind of fresh freedom then, requiring full presence of mind and body. They didn’t care about the burdens of human construct, of political turmoil. In a way, the ski slopes saved us by reminding us of this: Fun. We’re thinking if we can just get our daughter to the top, she’ll enjoy the thrill of the ride. We haven’t discussed any of this with each other, but based on our often-aligned parenting perspectives, I assume Kevin and I carry the same assumptions.

Turns out, today is not going to be about what my daughter wants or what Kevin and I want. It’s not going to be about the fun and the freedom of skiing down a mountain in ideal bluebird conditions. Today, the mountain has something else to teach us.

Snow swirls around us at random, and flakes the size of Maldon Sea Salt glitter in my goggles and dissolve to droplets obscuring my vision. My white jacket and powder-blue snow pants blend me into the blizzard, an effect my daughter dislikes because it makes me hard to follow. My husband stands to my left. His black pants and yellow ski jacket act like beacons against the dull sky. My kiddo normally delights in calling the ski getup “Dad’s bumblebee outfit,” but not today. Today, she smolders to my right, shuffling her skis back and forth in place, heaving all her weight into the new poles she begged for last season but has resisted using this winter. A neon pink gaiter encases her whole head and neck. Her helmet eclipses the top of her forehead and goggles obscure the entire region around her eyes. All I can see as she agitates her body is her little nose, pinking in the cold. I know she’d rather not be here by the slump of her shoulders and the tuck of her chin. That, and the urgent memory of this morning still throbbing in my trying-to-be-tolerant-but-losing-patience-Mom brain: her conflicted person flopping onto her bed repeatedly as she debated whether she should come out to the cold slopes with us or stay in the warm hotel with her grandparents.

“My legs hurt!” she had lamented first, feet kicking at the air, dead bug style.

“It’s where my boots hit my leg!” she had howled and then showed me her unscathed shin.

“We can’t fix it!” she had insisted while I adjusted the boot’s plastic tongue.

“I just want to be with you, Mama,” she had whimpered, followed by, “I don’t want to ski.” I was tired of the hysterics and ultimately insisted on her coming. Last night, by her choosing, she sat at a table, body bent over the mountain atlas, plotting out our course in her journal. This morning is a new day, though, and, enchanted by the warm hotel fire and cozy pajamas, she has been struck by amnesia. I thought she’d lose the attitude once we made it outside, but here we are thirty minutes into our journey up the mountain and she’s still sulking.

When we reach the front of the line, my daughter hands her poles to her dad so she can load the lift without worrying about dropping them. She might be in a huff, but she hasn’t lost her self-awareness. We micro-shuffle to the marker where we’ll load, then squat and reach back for the seat behind us. We sit and pull the safety bar over our laps, and my husband offers a magical observation as a means of redirecting the storm cloud from our daughter’s brow, which I imagine is still furrowed underneath all that gear: “Look at the icicles collecting on the chair!”

“Oh, yeah!” my daughter ooos. She snaps out of her pout momentarily and leans over the bar and runs her finger across the tiny fractals.

“Wait! They aren’t icicles,” she reports on closer inspection. We marvel at the tiny piles of snow gathering like bad hair-day static. We rub our hands over the crystals, tap on the stacks of snowflakes. They splinter under the weight of our delicate fingers. We delight in scraping at the snow, watching it collapse then dissipate in an instant, falling down—down—down towards the ground as the lift carries us up—up—up.

Once my daughter smashes the mounds within her reach, she collapses her shoulders again. We ride in silence after that, two of us wanting to be here, one who would rather not. Or maybe—if I’m honest—I don’t want to be here, either. Rather, I do, but I wish the conditions were clearer, that the wind wasn’t blowing, and that my daughter would show some desire to share the moment with us. But I’m here by my own insistence. I dug in my heels rather than freeing them from the mud, and now the three of us sit shivering, our butts glued to a thinly padded seat, the overnight freeze yet unthawed.

My mind darts between the wish that my daughter would pull it together and the weight I feel lately in being a U.S. citizen a month into a presidential administration I don’t support. I wonder how the two are connected, what my responsibility is as a parent in this time and place. On the one hand, maybe my daughter needs to stay home and rest. Maybe the three days of lessons have taken a toll on her little body and she requires down time to recuperate. Such a need would be understandably human, one aligned with listening to one’s body and practicing self-care. Maybe I should have shown some empathy instead of pushing. On the other hand, I want her to realize how lucky she is to be here on an international ski vacation in Whistler, Canada, and to have access to this sport that has become a luxury as prices have crept upwards. I want her to appreciate what she’s been given and find the gumption to get over herself and make the best of the present.

My mind wanders to the latest headlines on my phone, what I view as indicators of the erasure of American democracy. My heart breaks for people losing jobs, stripped of funding, ransacked of vital support that provides food or health care or shelter. I’ve been telling my daughter about the news, and I’ve also avoided telling her everything. I’ve censored and practiced testing the threshold of what’s too much truth for a second-grader. What isn’t enough. With each day that marches on, I know that the little bubble my daughter lives in—a world fueled by curiosity, respect, one in which dreams come true—will have to give way to the tough reality of a world from which I cannot protect her. My whole life I have been able to count on certain givens, like a Department of Education. The promise of Social Security. Freedom of the Press. Of late, these givens have become as crushable as the stacks of snowflakes on our ski lift bar, easily brushed away by a haphazard hand who hasn’t considered the consequences. I am filled with doubt about the future—mine, yes, but more urgently, hers. Will my daughter be able to pursue her interests and passions? Will the investments her dad and I have made for her melt into a pile of chaotically mismanaged bureaucracy? Will she be dispensable, disrespected, disregarded? I feel deeply that if she is going to be equipped for this unpredictable world, my daughter has to learn to cope with circumstances outside of her control, to grasp that life won’t always go her way. I feel acutely the phrase nothing is guaranteed.

The chairlift creeps upwards, wind slapping against our faces, tiny noises of complaint escaping my daughter’s mouth. Is the unfamiliar dis-ease of dissolving democracy the reason I felt so compelled to get us out of the house this morning? I sit here loosely held in place by a thin metal bar at a ski resort in British Columbia, where the local population seems either disgusted or empathetic towards us when they find out we’re from the U.S., I wonder if I’m here because I need my child to know that she can survive the things that make her want to stay in bed. Things that are cold. Uncomfortable. Undesirable. When her innocent eyes open to a history—and it appears now, a future—in which the darkest underbellies of human capacity expose themselves, I want her to know that she can endure. I want to equip her with the confidence to carry on because the people who love her have taught her grit. Maybe in some trying future, she will recall that though I hesitated to open my mouth three-quarters of the way up the chair lift, worried that my worries would be too heavy for her, I didn’t stay silent. Perhaps she’ll realize that I found myself more burdened by the worry that if I didn’t speak up, I would let her go on too long thinking of the world only as rainbows and sunshine. She might wake up one day and ask, accusingly, Why didn’t you tell me how it is?

And so—from forty-some feet above the ground—I venture, after a long inhale, a pause, a calibration of the right words at the moment for an exuberantly trusting soul: “I know you don’t want to be here right now, but I’m thinking of resilience.” I brace for a dramatic turn of the shoulder away from me, but she leans in.

“Mom, ‘resilience’ was a Lifeskill of the Month!” A connection! My daughter loves connections. I feel a kindling of gratitude for my kid’s school.

“Well, I’m thinking of resilience because Mom and Dad can’t always control what’s going to happen in your life.” I glance at my husband—or rather, his helmet. We didn’t plan to have this conversation, but I know I have his support by the way he twists his body towards us.

“You have a wonderful life. We hope you always have access to the opportunities and experiences you want. But the world is changing, and we don’t know what’s going to happen next.” I wait for her response, knowing her ears catch everything these days, her sponge-mind quick to pose questions when she hears us speak of ICE raids, of deportation, of the dismantling of USAID.

“You mean like how we aren’t printing pennies anymore.” A statement, not a question. That one has stuck with her.

“Yes, we’ve stopped printing pennies…” I’m committed now. We have nowhere to be other than here, lap-barred to a bench, partway up the 7th Heaven Express.

“I’m talking about more than that. I’m talking about systems in our country that are being undone.” How to explain the latest iteration of the upside-down political insanity to a person who hasn’t yet lived a decade, who has no frame of reference for “democracy” beyond the loosely illustrated concept of voting for a game at school?

“I’m worried that a lot of people are going to lose their rights. We don’t know what will happen.” I’m a parent who likes to provide assurance, not stoke fear. But I’m scared myself and I believe in transparency. I wonder if I can articulate my concerns without my fear imprinting itself on her.

“You will encounter things in life you won’t want to do. It’s part of living.” Though this statement can apply to significantly low-stakes situations, like cleaning the toilet or tackling a pile of laundry at the end of a long day, my brain is cycling through authoritarian mandates throughout history and their impacts on every day citizens. On women, in particular.

“Sometimes, you’ll encounter a situation that goes against what you believe.” She can relate to experiences at school when one particular kid says something she perceives to be unkind and she struggles to speak up. Beneath the armor of my parka, I’m aching at a more global level, for communities being unrightfully demonized for their identities and for federally supported aid organizations, nonprofits, and academic institutions forced to choose between their values and their funding.

“We can’t always control the outcome. But we can control how we respond. We can make a choice about our behavior.” I flash to a recent interaction I had involving the DMV. I was awaiting a callback from the main office in hopes that they might help me resolve a frustratingly dead-end issue. When the phone rang, I was so relieved to connect with a human that I blurted out, “I’m so glad to talk with you!” I could hear something akin to amazement in the DMV agent’s voice when he replied, “No one ever says that to me!” I could only imagine the types of frustrated and possibly belligerent clients he’s used to dealing with. He ended our call with “Thank you for being so cheery.”

I turn back to my daughter and reflect that I have spent much of my adult life trying to separate being frustrated at a situation from being frustrated at a person.

“I want you to work on your responses when you feel upset or uncomfortable.” My impromptu mini-lecture is my attempt to use my voice, to refuse to take an easy stance as a parent, as a human. I straighten my shoulders. Sandwiched between the two people I love most in the world, the ones I would most passionately fight for, I’m finding the words, finding the courage.

“You don’t have to like being out on the ski slopes today, but we’re here. I’d rather you learn to practice resilience while Mom and Dad can help you through it, than when you’re out there in the world where we can’t always be there with you.” It’s a lot, but I reason it’s better for her to face a situation that feels to her like the world is ending when it is not—in fact—ending.

I can’t see my daughter’s eyeballs. They are blocked by her tinted lenses, as mine are from her. But she turns her face towards me.

“Ok, Mama.” She chews on her pink neck gaiter. Did I get through?

After about six minutes of ride time, we reach the top of the lift and exit to the right in a pack of experienced-seeming skiers. There aren’t many other kids in sight. As we ski into whiteout conditions towards a run named Cloud Nine—really, you can’t make these names up!—my daughter’s moping seems to have subsided. Perhaps the words have seeped in. It’s not that she is all-in for the ensuing forty-five minute descent to the bottom of the mountain, but she seems more willing to try. At first, she skis gleefully, unfettered by the poor visibility. A few minutes in, she hits a hidden snow drift and collapses down. She’s not hurt, but snow splashes under her gaiter, and she laments the cold on her neck. Eventually, she realigns her skis and makes another swooping pass, one in which she hollers with glee. Twenty minutes later, her legs tired, she throws her body into the snow and refuses to get up. When I remind her of resilience, she sighs, realigns her skis, and rises to resume her venture.

Three thousand feet from the bottom, the mountain is so fogged-in that we only have about twenty-five feet of visibility. She complains, “I can’t see!” but she keeps going, following her dad in making long calculated turns. Another ten minutes on, the temperature rises to above freezing and a moderate rain turns the snow to slush, making our skis catch drifts in surprising and uncomfortable ways. She tells her dad, “My skis aren’t working.” He stops to knock some of the sticky snow off her tips.

We finally reach the bottom. By this point, we have skied 7,348 vertical feet without running into any trees, rocks, or other people. We’re cold and tired, but we made it.

"Now can we go in, Mama?” My daughter is already releasing her skis from her boots.

“Only if we can grab a hot chocolate,” I say and pull my goggles up so she can see my eyes. My husband reaches down to collect her equipment; unlike most days, we aren’t going to ask her to carry her gear. She’s worked hard enough.

Parenting does not come with a mountain atlas. A decade from now, my daughter may not remember skiing boldly into a blizzard off a chair lift called 7th Heaven Express, but I hope the experience imprinted itself into her neural network. I hope the metaphor carries her through. I hope she bundles up and charges the storm.

About the author:

Noëlle GM Gibbs (she/her) wears many storytelling hats including essayist, playwright, theatre director, dancer/choreographer, and poet. When not writing or creating in community, Noëlle enjoys travel, cooking, and spending time with her family. She is an MFA candidate at San José State University where she serves as managing editor of Reed Magazine.