A fresh snowstorm temporarily changes the way I perceive the world. I say “temporarily” because I fear change and immediately start shoveling once the last flake falls.
Before I set my shovel to the ground, however, I enjoy taking in my home and neighborhood through its new veneer.
Everything’s different. Snow weighs down trees, bending their branches and pulling down the sightlines of my horizon.
Light bounces off the whiteness in new and unexpected ways filling in places where shadows normally go. The wind comes alive sending fine powdery drifts off the roof and trees.
The air smells different – like the inside of a plastic cooler mixed with faint traces of a neighbor’s wood-burning stove.
Sounds are familiar but intensified by their overall scarcity. Birds chirp differently, sounding an all-clear coupled with distress that their food sources have unimaginably disappeared.
The few passing vehicles proceed tentatively, their coasting engines silenced by a restraint more reminiscent of a trotting horse than a gas-powered innovation until the town plow roars through scraping us back into modern times.
Mechanical beeps echo on the horizon. Plow trucks backing up. Snowblowers sputtering a few doors down like little engines that could. Shovels scraping concrete walkways and driveway blacktops before the freeze sets in.
The experience has been the same in every winter-weather location I’ve lived. And I’ve lived in many ranging from my suburban childhood home to college town shanties and now my own home tucked into the middle of a tiny mountain where wind squalls can turn five inches of snow into a foot swept into the alcove between my house and garage.
Each location allowed me to peacefully take in the world before methodically plotting a path out and proceeding with care. Except for one: a free-standing house I rented with a shared driveway in Norwalk, Connecticut.
There was no time for contemplation because my competitive spirit compelled me to get my half of the driveway clear before my neighbor did. This task was daunting because I only had a cracked shovel and he had a thousand-dollar snowblower.
I wasn’t going to invest money in snow-removal technology for a rental property so I instead imagined myself as Rocky Balboa training in the frigid Russian winter to defeat the Soviet imperialist.
This fantasy was fueled by my evil neighbor using his roided-up snowblower to make a clear line between where his nest-egg investment ended and my rental agreement began.
Snow would seem to be democratic in that it falls on everyone equally, but after the first time he beat me to clearing out his half, I bemoaned it as one more example of the rich turning their privilege into an unfair advantage.
While I loathe the lazy snow-remover who fails to clear the top of their car sending projectiles flying on the highway, I more-so resent the luxury car flashing it’s untouched wax job in the first hours after everyone else digs out.
At least have the decency to keep the last storm’s corrosive salt stains on your car to show some solidarity with the rest of us.
On our second winter in Norwalk, a weekend storm hit hard dumping nearly a foot of snow overnight. I sleep in on weekends.
I listened to my neighbor’s snowblower effortlessly churning his half away and drifted back to sleep imagining myself as Rocky bloodied and bruised, leaning on the ropes.
I dreaded lifting up my window shade that afternoon expecting to see my neighbor gleefully dancing on his freshly-cleared driveway. To my surprise, he had proven himself a true comrade and cleared both halves.
Rocky’s closing speech immediately jumped to mind: “During this fight, I’ve seen a lot of changing, the way you felt about me, and in the way I felt about you. In here, there were two guys killing each other, but I guess that’s better than 20 million. I guess what I’m trying to say, is that if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!”
It’s true that fresh snow storms temporarily change the way I perceive the world, but one time, that change lasted a whole lot longer. My neighbor quickly gave me further reasons for complaint, but after moving into a home of our own, a snowblower was one of the first things we bought.
Which brings to mind one final Rocky quote: “Every champion was once a contender who refused to give up.”
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