Not Including Weekends

On Ski Patrol, Lifeguarding, and Forks in the Road

It’s one of the last ski weekends of the year - balmy weather, light wind, good snow. I’m riding up the chairlift with my daughter, Georgia. A few months before, after more than two years of training to be a ski patroller, she had passed her final tests and earned her cross.

It’s like everyone treats me differently since I got my cross, she says. Not just the public, but the other patrollers.

It must be like going from medical student to resident, or resident to attending, I say. Lots of hard work, early hours, late days - with all the humbling of being low guy on the totem pole - and then suddenly you pop out on the other side.

Yeah, she says. Like that guy on the lift line.

While waiting for the lift at the base - to my dismay, she refused to bend the rules and take me on the ski patrol line - some dude pushed ahead and cut in front of us. He looked back, took a double take at Georgia in her jacket, radio and cross, and a look of alarm flashed across his face.

Oh, wow, my gosh, I’m so sorry!, he said. Go ahead of me, please…! We demurred, and right before boarding he turned back to Georgia, put a hand over his heart, and gave a little bow of his head.

Thank you, he said.

So that guy on the lift line, Georgia says. Was that what it was like wearing scrubs during Covid?

Pretty much, I say.

Georgia was stationed at the top of the East peak that day, a little off the beaten path. The ski patrol hut up there didn’t have much in the way of amenities, or even a bathroom, but it did have a makeshift cot. And a couple of folding chairs that you could take outside and sit on the snow in the sun.

This is the best day of the season, Georgia says.

Why? I ask.

I love being on the East peak, she says. It’s chill. Most of the time you’re hanging with your friends. You can read or do your homework. Ski a few runs. Every now and then you get called for a “possible”. And if it turns out to be something, then you get to treat them, take them down in the sled. And everyone is always so appreciative.

It’s like being a lifeguard in the winter, I say.

I’ve always told my kids that being a lifeguard was the best job I ever had, basically for the same reasons Georgia said.

Most of the time you hang out with your friends on the beach. Every now and then you get called. Usually it’s nothing dramatic but sometimes it’s real. And then, despite there being nowhere you would rather be, and nothing you would rather be doing, people come up and thank you for your service.

Then I grew up, took other paths in life, and ended up in medical school. Now I’m a family doctor in New York City, running a busy practice with my doctor wife, and doing the best we can to raise five kids - some of whom, like Georgia, want to follow us into medicine.

No apologetics and no regrets - there’s still no place I would rather be, and nothing I would rather be doing - but when our kids look at us and imagine a life in medicine, I doubt that it includes a lot of sitting on the beach.

One day at dinner a few years ago - she must have been in middle school at the time - Georgia piped up and said, When I grow up I want a job that’s nine-to-five.

We all stared at her, dumbfounded.

This was the girl who wanted to be a pediatric cardiac surgeon. The girl you could always find by following the trail of to-do lists she left like breadcrumbs in her wake. And, like I said, nine-to-five is not exactly our family vibe.

But she just stared back and doubled down: Not including weekends.

Since then, it’s become a bit of a family joke.

The great thing about riding up a ski lift is the intimacy. It’s like being together on a road trip, only closer, shorter, higher, and more exposed.

You could be a lifeguard in the summer and ski patrol in the winter, I say, as the lift approaches the exit ramp at the top. That would be a pretty good life.

Yeah, she says. That would be amazing. Except that it’s never nine-to-five. And always includes weekends.