“Ski patrollers don’t last as long as ski instructors, sweetie,” my mom said, in her matter-of-fact way. I didn’t realize, at first, what kind of longevity my mother had in mind. Sensing my concern for Molly’s mortality, my mom explained. Trail groomers were typically men; at Bromley, grooming was mostly a night job. As a night groomer, Molly usually had an eight-hour shift—from when the ski lifts closed at 4 P.M. till midnight. When one of the groomers got sick, Molly would take an occasional night shift, but she’d switched to ski patrol when my mom got tired of waiting up to have a beer with her after midnight. As a patroller, Molly had started out as a strong skier who’d worked hard on her emergency first aid. Molly was a quick thinker who worked well with others; she’d been “the best toboggan handler on a black-diamond run on an icy day when there’s an injured adult skier on the trail,” my mother said, in her breathless way. In my mom’s opinion, Molly was still one of the better toboggan handlers. Some of the older patrollers were “embarrassing,” my mom said. “They shouldn’t be skiing in public with their patrol coats on, sweetie—let them put the Band-Aid on a crying kid in the first-aid room, or let them calm down the distraught mother,” my mother said. She didn’t want Molly to end up in the first-aid room with the crying kids and the distraught moms, or even end up being the patroller who was dispatched to look for the lost kid—instead of being the go-to toboggan handler the old night groomer (for now) still was. “That’s why I’m recommending Molly as a ski instructor, sweetie—ski instructors get better with age, especially at teaching beginners. Molly can be most effective with adult beginners, like those male jocks from other sports—they’re the ones who get hurt or they kill someone else, the first time they go skiing,” my mom told me. “It starts happening with ski patrollers around seventy, or a little older—that’s when they start losing it, sweetie.”