I have always lived where it snows in the winter and I've loved the snow. I went sledding in the winter, build snowmen and had snowball fights. I learned how to ski when I was eight and dreamed of learning how to snowboard before my enthusiasm for skiing waned. As a kid one of the few winter sports I didn't try was ice skating, I didn't do that until I was 12 or 13, but I took to skating pretty well because I'd learned to roller blade in younger days.
I didn't give to much thought to these things for much of my life, the people I knew lived the same place I did and had a lot of the same experiences. In my freshman year at college I had some experiences that made me think more about my winter experiences; one day my roommate came in and excitedly told me that snowflakes really did have those patterns on them. I looked at her like she was stupid, did she think that people had made that up? She was from California and had never seen much snow. How curious it is when other mind frames or points of view collide with our own.
This week I was once again made to think about the differences in my experiences and the experiences of others. My ward went ice skating for an activity and it was a first time for two of the people in our group. The two first timers had unique differences, one was a guy who'd grown up in the states, and the other was my friend who grew up in Ghana and then lived in Arkansas when she moved to the states. The guy was a shaky skater but he was skating pretty well on his own by the time he left, he'd roller skated or bladed at some point in his past. My friend had a very hard time, she'd never roller skated, etc. and had a hard time getting used to the feeling of being on skates. She was a good sport, she made it once around the rink going slowly and holding the rails and later in the evening she let us take her around being pulled by one friend skating backwards and someone to spot her from behind. It was interesting to think about, and hard to try and think how we could help her get the hang of skating, I couldn't remember how I really learned how to skate because I'd done it so long ago.
I was talking to my friend and she thought maybe skiing or snowboarding would be easier since there wasn't a blade to balance on, remembering my own experiences skiing I wasn't so sure but I suggested that she might like sledding, no balance required. She agreed to try sledding and we went yesterday, she loved it! It was fun to see it through her eyes and remember sledding when I was little, how thrilling it was and still is. It's interesting the experiences that we take for granted, for me skating and sledding were a part of life; my friend baffled me when she told about things that she'd taken for granted in her life, walking to the store/market every day and cooking from scratch.
I think its good for us, good for me when I can see differing realities from my own.
PS A friend took that picture in Alaska
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