Snow

I’ve just spent an hour-and-a-half shoveling snow. Now, in general, I like to shovel snow. But today, a few things conspired to make the experience slightly less than wonderful. For starters, I miss my Old Faithful shovel. Its replacement is a mere shadow of the shovel that Old Faithful was before his demise. Also, my neighbor’s dog was let out halfway through the job and forgotten by his owner. Said dog quickly determined that I was not a natural part of the snowy landscape and in order to alert everyone in a five-mile radius of that fact, he proceeded to serenade anyone listening (read: me) with a repeating refrain of sonorous Beagle (read: bugle) songs (Arrrr-rooo!!! Arrrr-rooo!!!). But the snow was lovely and light and as I shoveled–as I am wont to do–I considered the many blessings and curses associated with such a morning’s work: Blessing: I’ve been wanting to lose some weight, and I figure I burned about a thousand calories today.Curse: The residual lactic acid buildup from the previous day’s 100 crunches and free-weight training. Blessing: The westerly wind when shoveling to the left.Curse: The westerly wind when shoveling to the right. Blessing: My new, short haircut tucked out of the way, safely under my hat.Curse: My new short haircut after returning inside and removing the hat. Blessing: The edges of the driveway.Curse: The middle of the driveway. Blessing: The snowplow drivers who keep the street cleared of snow.Curse: The snowplow drivers who deposit a waist-high pile of sludge at the end of the driveway just as I am completing my task. Blessing: Light, powdery snow when lifting shovelful after shovelful of the stuff.Curse: Light, powdery snow when throwing it into a prevailing wind. Blessing: The neighbor who approaches with his snow-thrower chugging away–headed right for my driveway.Curse: The neighbor who cheerily waves as he chugs past on his way to some other neighbor’s driveway. Curse: Light, blowing snow down the back of my coat.Blessing: Light, blowing snow down the back of my coat after I’ve been shoveling for 45 minutes. Curse: That I will need to see my chiropractor after this.Blessing: That my chiropractor always throws in a lovely bit of massage with the adjustment. Curse: The 1,000 pounds of snow that I moved today.Blessing: That my husband is coming home and the next 1,000 pounds will be his responsibility. Blessing: We’re going on vacation in three days.Curse: Our main planned activity:...

And I still like it. Shoveling snow is one of those things–like driving the car or showering–that allows me to focus my mind and compose words in my head. It also satisfies some Tetras-like need that I have to line things up and order the universe (preferably with an endless-loop techno-pop score playing through my head). (Of course, one look at the clothes piled on the chair beside my bed or my office desk and you’d be doubled over with laughter at my “order the universe” comment, but humor me here.) There is nothing quite like shoving and sweating for half an hour and then looking back to see a nice neat driveway with a rising pile of snow on either side. Granted it’s a little like building a giant sandcastle on the beach or an inmate pounding large rocks into smaller rocks…or washing the dinner dishes…there’s a built in Sisyphianness to it, but it’s still satisfying to see a cleared driveway and feel I’ve done my job. And frankly? In these hectic, sandwich-generation days of mine, I’ll celebrate that sense of A Job Well Done wherever I can find it. It’s also, conveniently, a fine cardio / pectoral workout. And–since I’m competitive by nature–when I heard my neighbor fire up his snowblower, I made like John Henry, Snow Piling Man, and attempted to prove the superiority of Man over Machine. Unlike Mr. Henry, I didn’t collapse dead at the end, but I didn’t really win either. (My neighbor loves his snowblower and so he did his driveway, the sidewalk up and down his side of the street, his other neighbor’s driveway…you get the idea.) But I “won” in the small world of my own driveway and that’s what matters most. (And, really, it’s all about perspective, anyway, right? I mean, to an ant, my driveway is the universe…but that’s a story for another...

I was musing this morning, whilst shoveling my driveway, if the memory of snow is like the memory of pain. For some reason, over breakfast with my kids, we were talking about the fact that as humans we have a short memory for pain. We may remember, “Oh, that hurt,” but we don’t really remember the intensity, the constancy, of pain itself. Not the specifics of pain. (Just like once we are well, we forget how truly awful it was to be sick–until we get sick again.) I think it’s an evolutionary advantage for the species. I mean, who would ever have more than one child if the memory of pain was persistent? We concluded that our brains are actually wired to forget the bad stuff in order to keep the organism alive, functioning, and reproducing (without eating the young). This is another reason I believe that people who suffer from certain types of depression really do have a chemical imbalance in the brain–they can’t forget the shit–no matter what Tom Cruise thinks it is. But, anyway, to cycle back to snow…How is it that every year I look forward to it? I live near Buffalo, NY. I see a heck of a lot of snow in an average year. It’s not a scarce commodity. In fact, by April, it’s the bane of my existence. So why have I been so looking forward to a snowfall (not counting that awful, destructive surprise thing we got in October–on Friday the 13th, no less)? Is it that I have a short memory for snow? And another thing! By the end of each snow season, I am an expert at shoveling. I know just how to do it in the most efficient, neat, productive way that takes into account such variables as the type and quantity of snow, the surrounding temperature, the extended forecast, the amount already at the edges of the driveway…I am one efficient snow-shoveling machine, come April. And yet, at the start of each season, I am clumsy and awkward, relearning it all. Is there no physical memory stored in the muscles of my body–like riding a bike or roller skating–that I can access on demand? If it’s in there, it doesn’t kick in. It’s like I have to relearn snow removal each year as the temperature drops and the white stuff falls. But, I shoveled this morning, enjoying every bit of my clumsy which-shovel-to-use-for-what attempts. I was even happy to see the pile covering the end of my driveway, where the plow passed and dumped a street’s worth of salted, chunky stuff. I know this happiness–this I’m-a-snow-shoveling-beast elation–won’t...

If you were reading my blog last winter, you know how much I usually gripe and complain about winter, snow, etc. I live near Buffalo, NY and get a lot of the stuff, for a long time. Except for this year. We had a short stint of snowy weather in December, but had a green Christmas and no appreciable snow since then. Until today. We still only got about three or four inches, but it was enough to require shoveling and it made the world beautiful again. I know, I know, “Who am I and what have I done with Mary-the-winter-hater?” Well, maybe I’m feeling so optimistic because I’m going to the ITME field station in Dominica on the 15th. I can’t wait to see the Caribbean in February. I’d always been going down in July–what was I thinking?? And my middle daughter is going with me this year. Each child gets a chance to make the trip with me when he or she turns 13. This year is Cady’s turn. We’re getting very excited....

No, it isn’t predicted. And today it was in the 50’s–nice, but a little weird for Western New York in February. Nonetheless, I took a chair outside and sat in the sun to get my Vitamin D. I crave the sun, get SAD without it, have a light above my computer with a full-spectrum bulb in it. I also took out two pots of spring bulbs that I planted and brought inside to force. They sat at my feet, companionably absorbing sun for their own purposes. They have been getting leggy from lack of sun–even the best, sunniest window in my house only gets a few hours a day–and seemed to enjoy the sun as much as I did (one of the daffoldils is about to burst a tiny yellow bud). This lack of sunshine in my house may be good for the furniture and paintings, but it’s something I will remember to check out in any future houses I may buy. (“The first time you buy a house you see how pretty the paint is and buy it. The second time you look to see if the basement has termites. It’s the same with men.” Lupe Velez) Anyway, sun and warm weather aside, I find that I would like just a tad more snow. I’m not missing shoveling, mind you, but, well, here’s a northern truth: snow is pretty for about the first two days. After that, it’s like a flashy woman–it needs a little upkeep. Yesterday, when walking, I passed compressed, jaggedly evaporating piles of greying, blackish snow with streaks and drippy yellow spots at each corner where dogs relieved themselves, plus little piles of excrement (vividly dark against the snowy backdrop) that had sunk a few layers down before cooling. Ugh. So just a thin dusting would be nice–an inch or two, no more. It would transform the neighborhood into a pristine fairyland once again. Yes, I know that underneath it all would still lurk the urine and feces and trash and other various and sundry post-winter lovelies, but I wouldn’t have to see them. And, yes, eventually spring will come and reveal the piles of twisted, rusting shopping carts in the Wal-Mart parking lot, pushed there by careless late-night snowplows, and the discarded, curbside Christmas trees that got covered before the city could recycle them, but by then my yard will be full of real bulbs, bright and beautiful, waking from a long sleep, bursting forth in smiling...

Okay, snow. You can stop now. We have over a foot of snow on the ground at this writing, and it’s still falling. Collectively, we, as a family, have shoveled four times since yesterday and we’re due for another any minute. I know what those of you safely in the south are saying. “Why shovel? Why not just let it pile up and enjoy it?” Well, for those of you not in/from the snowbelt (I’m a southern girl myself, but learning fast), you can’t just not shovel. Well, technically you can, but you’d better lay in supplies beforehand and cancel all activities until the spring thaw (read: late May). Up here, snow doesn’t just go away in a few days. It accumulates. And, if you don’t own a snowblower, you have to shovel the driveway every three inches or so. Why? Well, think of the simple math: one inch of snow pushed one inch makes two inches of snow. My driveway is roughly twelve feet wide. So I start by pushing a path all the way down the middle of the driveway. “Pushing?” you say. Yes, pushing. In the north, there is no logic such that, “A snowshovel is a snowshovel is a snowshovel.” It is not. First there is the snow-pusher, which looks very much like the front end of a snowplow attached to a long handle. It does just what you would expect. Then, after a path is cleared down the middle, I proceed–using the snow-pusher–to push snow to either side of the driveway. Over a five-foot span, three inches of snow becomes 180 inches. You physically can’t push much more snow than that by hand. You can’t. Not even Ah-nold could. Enter the snow-scooper. Its large, flat-edged scoop is employed for lifting the massive piles–made with the snow-pusher–and throwing them, scoop-by-scoop as far from the driveway as you can. Then you stand back and admire your clean-scraped handiwork. “Ahh,” you think. “Snow!” It is beautiful. And you have conquered it yet again. You are happy. And then, while your back is turned to the street, the snowplow passes. I don’t know about snowplows in other parts of the world, but the Western New York snowplow is an amazing, efficient machine. It can push/throw massive amounts of snow, at great rates of speed, for miles, only to then casually toss a short-ton of it into each open driveway, roughly six feet in. And after the snowplow passes, and you have lowered your shaking fists, you find you have a retaining wall of snow at the end of your spotless driveway. Don’t even bother trying to utilize the...