Wrestling With Snow Angels
The guy who abandoned his car on my corner showed up around three this afternoon. He turned out to be a neighbor from a block down and over, a thirtysomething with a brushy haircut failing to conceal a slight bald spot and that rudely slim waist and hipbones all the young men seem to sport, boxer shorts peeking coyly above the waist of his slack-tied warmup pants. He had a spade and a bent snow shovel and was doing a decent job, but it went quicker when I dove in as Second Shovel and coached him about breaking the pack ice into fragments with the spade-point.
We got the car free after I’d been pitching in for about a half hour — I’d been at it out there since midmorning and was on autopilot by then anyway. He was touchingly grateful for what I would regard as common decency. Still, I had to turn my head to chuckle when he got into the car, yanked off his stocking cap and fixed his “hat hair” in the rear-view mirror before firing her up. He was so effusive about asking if he could come back and help me with any of my remaining cleanup tomorrow that when he found his street remained impassable, I just let him use the second slab of my driveway overnight. He called me a “lifesaver” so many times I checked to see if I smelled like wintermint.
Speaking of the driveway: not a bad morning’s work for an old broad. After a while it became a matter of finding a place to put the stuff.
Shrubs, not to mention mature trees, that usually stand twice my height were kissing the ground.
How the mirror ornaments remained in place through all that is anyone’s guess.
I couldn’t seem to get a good picture of the twelve-foot spruce that is too close to my treatment room window (but screens it so nicely that I leave it there); because of its asymmetrical haircut, the thing was weighted on the outward facing side and bent like Odysseus’ bow. I have been wanting to top that thing for months so while I had it at my mercy I gave it a good clip, quitting only when I began to sense that my feet were becoming one with the snow. Wool ragg socks make up for the substandard winter boots that are all our Washington Februaries normally call for, but eventually the laws of heat transfer catch up with you.
I gave the whole thing a last look as the sun started to drop and then went inside and reported to my supervisors.