Photo by Paul Fredenberg

Editor's note: Paul Fredenberg of Ann Arbor, a father of seven young children, submitted this story for AnnArbor.com.

“I think you should drive.”

The advice from my wife was simple, yet I refused to acknowledge it. The kids did. “Yeah, daddy, that seems like a good idea,” they chimed in unison.

I held my ground. I had never, ever in my life driven to a sledding hill. The preferred venue of my youth — Suicide Hill — was miles from home. I always walked, which explains why sledding was not so much a spontaneous activity but rather a serious, all-day affair.

“C’mon guys, toughen up,” I challenged the kids. “Don’t be such wimps,” I said, “we’re just going down the street and we’re going to walk.”

Clara, our four-year-old, nodded her approval. “I won’t be a wimp, Daddy.”

With that settled there was just one last item of business. As a father of small children there are two tasks that I dread: dressing them up for outdoor winter activities and buckling them into car seats. Both tasks are physically and mentally challenging. Both involve enough jerking, twisting, prodding and stretching to cause serious personal injury. To the parent.

When successfully completed, both activities are also iron-clad locks to induce the familiar, anxious phrase: “Daddy, I need to go potty.” From there, things tend to either escalate quickly to “Daddy, I need to go really bad” or just sort of, for lack of a better term, fizzle out.

So, after admonishing the kids to use the restroom not once but twice, and after successfully bundling everyone against the cold, we were on our way. Google Maps put the hill exactly 0.5 miles from our front door. The five kids, three sleds and I were in good spirits as we walked briskly, swapping tall tales from past sledding adventures, including several of my own from Suicide Hill, toward our adventure. In no time, we arrived at the pristine hill to find it gracefully wrapped in a glistening, almost dreamlike blanket of snow. As I surveyed the contours above I thought I heard a little voice say “Daddy, I need to go potty,” but with such a low tone of urgency as to barely register.

The kids dove straight into the action. Not to the sledding, but to the eating. Like unspoiled frosting on a sheetcake, the fresh layer of snow proved too tempting. First, they cautiously dipped fingers, then brazenly grabbed larger handfuls and soon had fanned out, each to a separate dining area, to gorge themselves in solitude. Maybe we’re not feeding them enough at home, I thought to myself. “Save some for the sledding,” I pleaded, barely audible above all the noisy munching and smacking of lips.

Over the years our family has grown, adding dozens of children and goldfish, but we are still just a two-car family. As we trudged up the hill together, however, it became clear that we are no longer a three-sled family. I made an appreciative mental note to procure more for the next time, happy that we were talking sleds and not cars. If it were possible, I would hang onto these little kids forever, and being a two-car/six-sled family seems preferable in sentimental terms to being a six-car/two-sled family. Plus it’s cheaper. And safer.

As we patiently took turns heading down the hill the track progressively sped up, and each successive run ended further and further down the hill until we began to bottom out on the pond below. I am 6’6” and built like a Zamboni. The ice initially felt solid under my feet until I did a little hop and heard a familiar crackling sound beneath me. The sound of ice about to break is remarkably similar to the sound of a wooden chair about to snap in half. I have a deep, rich set of experiences to draw on in these circumstances, and my reaction was swift, almost reflexive, as I nudged the kids to safety and then dove myself headfirst toward the bank.

Exhausted and stuffed with several courses of snow, the kids were eventually ready to head home. The wiser, but smaller, part of my brain briefly considered radioing for a pickup. Google says the trip is eight minutes on foot, but just one minute by car. I always consider myself much faster than the average Google user, but the average Google user also isn’t supervising and hauling 300 lbs. worth of kids. It was a wash, I thought, and so we started on foot toward home. I wasn’t going to bend my principles for the sake of seven measly minutes.

It took us a full 40 minutes to walk that half mile. I imagine the sidewalks and roads were laid faster than we walked them. Little kids dropped like colorful little boulders to either side of our path, citing exhaustion, cold, hunger, or some combination of the three. I negotiated as best I could, but each time lost, and so, one by one, they piled onto the sleds. Sometimes being a dad means being more Clydesdale than Ward Cleaver and this was one of those moments. I pulled them along until we finally arrived safely home.

By the time the kids had all stripped off their gear, dashed to the potty and begun quietly sipping their hot chocolate around the kitchen table, those last few moments of struggle were but a distant, fond memory. At least to them.

“That was fun, Dad,” one of the boys said through rosy cheeks. “Let’s do it again.”

“Yeah,” I said, doubled over in a creaky wooden chair, head in hands, chest still pounding from the effort. “But next time I think we should drive.”