Adversity schmadversity

Just like every family, mine is faced with challenges — big and little — every day.

And you know what? For the most part, we’ve been kicking some challenge booty. And I like it.

I mentioned recently that my mom has been improving and battling back against her cancer. Each day she’s getting stronger. And now she’s even driving.

Driving! Driving herself in her own car, her brand-new car that I was certain she’d never drive again.

So, suck it, cancer.

My husband is on his path to becoming a non-smoker (again), thanks to the miracle drug Chantix and his own perseverance and determination to become a healthier person.

Bill has been an on-again/off-again smoker for years. He likes smoking. He likes hanging out with his smoking friends and smoking. So it has been hard for him to quit.

He knew he needed to quit and wanted to quit, but could never do it cold turkey or even with the patch or gum.

But this Chantix is a different story.

Of course, it doesn’t work for everyone and it does mess with your brain chemistry so if you have to be careful with it. But it does work in a most profound way.

Bill hasn’t had a cigarette in almost two weeks and doesn’t even want one. He doesn’t even want to be around smokers. He came home from a friend’s house recently where there was much smoking and he was disgusted by the smell on his clothes and hair.

A good sign indeed. So suck it, cigarettes.

And then there’s Margaret. She demonstrated her strength of character yesterday in spades.

The three of us decided the snow was too delicious to pass up and starting gathering our gear for a day on the slopes.

Bill (as usual) couldn’t find half his stuff. He thought (as usual) that I’d moved it. Being that I was suffering from my monthly lady malady, I freaked out and spent a fair amount of time stomping around and yelling (oh, I’m such a delight — but really, I’m a hormonal being. I know we’re not supposed to admit such things as it threatens women’s fight for equality, but it’s true. I could go on about this, but I’ll refrain ... for now). Mar kept her disposition sunny and tried to smooth things over.

I got over my bad self and we headed up to the slopes — powder days are too few to let stupid hormones mess it up, even if I didn’t even touch Bill’s gloves.

We arrived at Powderhorn, jumped on the bunny slope lift and headed up the hill.

Just as we were nearing the top, the life ground to a halt. There we sat for 30 minutes getting soaked by the beautiful, yet wet snowflakes. We eventually got off, but the lift was broken down. We headed over to the Take Four lift. The three of us lined up and sat down, but only two of us made it on to the chairlift.

Mar took a scary tumble off the lift and faced planted into the fresh powder. I screamed, Bill jumped off and Mar shouted, “I’m OK mom!”

The lift operators were there immediately, got her up and checked out and the lift was going again. I got off at Midway and waited. No Mar and Bill.

I called Bill (thank goodness for cell phone service on the mountain) and they weren’t coming. Mar was too scared to get on the lift.

I couldn’t blame her.

I skied down and found them, skis off at the bottom of the run. Mar wanted to go home. I wanted to go home.

But the snow was awesome and we had just got there.

I pulled myself together and gently encouraged Mar to get back on the bunny-hill lift which was running once again.

She resisted.

But not for too long and we skied on over to the lift. We got on and that led to a fun day of schussing.

I’m so proud of her. So suck it, fear!

There’s always going to be illness, broken down lifts and missing gloves. But our days and our lives, for that matter, are what we make of them.