While my mother believed that beginner or intermediate ski trails were the safest for snowshoers, because the skiers didn’t ski as fast on those trails as they did on the expert runs, she also said that the snowshoers would still get in the way of skiers—even if the snowshoers stayed to the side of the piste. “Make the snowshoers stay off-piste, on ungroomed trails—where the climbers and hikers and some telemarkers go,” my mom said.

In one of Elliot Barlow’s conversations with my mother, concerning what was allowed or not allowed at ski resorts, I learned that Nora had been barred from skiing at Cranmore Mountain. Nora hadn’t told me; I assumed she’d stopped coming to Cranmore because she’d had it with the girly-girl blondes, and Nora was old enough to make her own decisions.

“Nora hurt too many people,” my mom told Mr. Barlow and me. “The ski patrol barred her indefinitely.”

“I’ve never heard of a mountain barring anyone indefinitely!” Elliot Barlow cried. “Not even in Austria.”

To my mother, the most enchanting of the ski towns Elliot had grown up in were Austrian: Lech, in the Vorarlberg, and St. Anton and St. Christoph in the Tyrolean Alps. Little Ray revered the Arlberg. She spoke of these three mountain villages and ski destinations in hushed tones, by their full and sacred-sounding names: Lech am Arlberg, St. Anton am Arlberg, St. Christoph am Arlberg. When the little English teacher complimented her pronunciation, my mom admitted that Uncle Johan had helped her with the German.

It is strange to be a teenager before you ever see your mother flirt with someone. Additionally, it was awkward that my mom’s first meeting with the snowshoer took place in my grandmother’s house. It was unheard of for my mother to have made the long drive from Stowe at the height of ski season, in early February. She came home immediately. Nana did her best, but she failed to keep my busybody aunts away.

“Ray should be forewarned of the fairy factor,” Aunt Abigail had insisted to my grandmother.

“Mr. Barlow is too small to be believed,” Aunt Martha chimed in.

“Girls, girls—let Little Ray and Mr. Barlow have some privacy, please,” Nana said to the sexually vigilant harpies.

Ah, well—privacy with those Brewster girls was a one-way street. There were the things they wanted you to know; there were the things they kept from you. Besides, my mom and Elliot Barlow weren’t afforded much privacy by me—not on the occasion of their first meeting, what my mother would later call her “one and only blind date.” Add to the mix the random intrusions of Grandaddy Lew. Even deluded, the mustache-chewing emeritus possibly sensed it was highly irregular to see Little Ray at home in the ski season.