The term “wet dreams” used to mean something entirely different to me. Currently, the wakeup-soaking-wet-one-week-before-my-period nights have moved into that realm. As young adults, we used to chuckle over the pubescent concept—half excited—and now I cautiously wait for the night it will happen to my son. It will probably land around the same time my night sweats turn into full-blown menopausal hot flashes. At least I have a few years to prepare.

The same goes for powder dreams. You see, in my twenties, they started early. Real early. Somewhere around the last week of September—when the evenings start to feel more like fall than summer—is when they’d hit. It was as if a switch tripped in the biological makeup of my eat-sleep-work-ride life of a ski bum. White, silent winters filled my days with the kind of snow you literally spit up, while effortlessly carving turns down the Western slope of the Tetons. “Hero snow,” we’d call it. But it was so much more than that. It was a substance that we founded a lifestyle around. I pinched myself all the time—especially when I stopped to compare my reality to that of my peers who chose the cubicle route. But I was young in the 90s, and in-the-moment reflection was fleeting.

I remember the day life got real.

It wasn’t the day I landed a serious job, or the moment I birthed a kid, or anything else like that. It was the day I schlepped my then toddler, Olivia, up to the hill, dressed her in a mountain of clothes, and spent minutes (which seemed like endless hours) on the bunny hill—all in an effort to instill in her a love for the very thing that dragged our Yankee asses out West. Steve Metcalf recounts this concept perfectly in his recent article for Powder, “Kids Will Ruin Your Life.” Metcalf quite candidly explains that having kids will “… alone or in numbers, turn a 100-day [ski] season of plundering first tracks into 17 half-days of power wedges.”

I hated teaching wedge turns.

Just ask my mom. I used to call her and cry after a day on the hill with Olivia—freezing cold temps, messy boogers streaming down her face, tears, yelling, and too many clothes. I couldn’t wait to drive down the mountain while sipping a beer, anticipating my mommy time-out in a hot bath when I got home. We often kept the car running in the driveway to allow our peacefully sleeping toddler to recover from the outing. But even still, the day’s events shot a hole in our Sunday night sleep schedule and any resemblance of a workday after. It was an epic! And nothing short of a true test of will, patience, and dedication. I wanted to move back home immediately.

Jaded as this seems, I write this article just hours away from the season opener at my local ski hill. I am contemplating how to get my butt up to Targhee today to print my season’s pass before first chair tomorrow. With my pass already in hand, I can then drop the kids off at school in the morning, stream hip-hop on the way up the switchbacks, take my time to actually tie my own boots, and sip my coffee in the lift line. All while my husband, Justin, cackles like hens with the droves of frothing locals who wait in line—sans kids.

True—my powder dreams have turned into “wet dreams” and my aging body hopes only for hero snow this year, as I spent the week preparing for this big day. Got my workout on. Had acupuncture on my knee. Went to yoga … But I don’t miss the days of waking up in a cold icebox on Forth Street in Driggs, sticking my thumb out to bum a ride up the hill, and coming back home to random friends crashing on the couch.

What fills me up now is the fact that my husband and son have spent the last week building three drop-ins for our yard’s snow-skate park out of scaffolding, leftover framing lumber, and plywood. Soon the snow in our yard will be thick and worthy. And construction lights will illuminate the course that the two of them will shred nightly, sometimes until way beyond bedtime.

I anticipate my kids’ bummed-out expressions when I pull on my ski pants tomorrow and drop them off at school, snowboard in tow. “I know kids, it’s not fair,” I’ll say, reminding them that Sunday will be their big day. And I’m already giddy about our seasonal family trip over the hill to ride Jackson Hole. As we chat up tourists in the tramline, my kids will explain that they live here, and humbly express that skiing one of the most challenging mountains in the lower 48 “ain’t no big thang.”

So aches, pains, and a sweaty night’s sleep aside, I’m still jittery about tomorrow’s first winter date. I’m hoping it will be white, silent, and stormy. (It’s looking good). And I’m praying I don’t catch the cold-du-jour that’s going around school right now because, quite frankly, sneezing makes me pee my pants and incontinence is a bitch.

But I’m sure no one will notice …