The thing about digging out of a foot of snow is that you can’t do it fast.
No, you’ve lived long enough to know that some things take time, and this job is one of them. So you get your shovel and salt, as I did after a recent snowfall, and you get dressed in your warmest layers and sturdiest boots, so that you feel overheated clomping around your kitchen. You brace yourself with a good attitude – or you do if you’re my mom – and then you step out into it all.
And you remember what you learned about Safe Removal of Snow and How to Avoid Heart Attacks While Shoveling, so with warm, fresh gloves and comfortably toasty feet – for, after all, you’ve only been shoveling a few minutes – you commence. You bend your knees and lift with your back (or maybe that was bend with your back and lift with your knees). And shovel by shovel, you clear a space to walk in and another in which to park your car.
And you realize you’re dealing with the presence of a foot of snow just as all your neighbors around you are doing, only they’re using their own approach, their own style, their own way of accomplishing their need for snow-free paths. Some manually lift and throw, lift and throw, lift and throw. Some have high-powered machines that send the cold white stuff effortlessly into the air at a most impressive rate. Others enlist family members to help out. There are those who go out every hour or two, trying to keep the accumulation at bay. And occasionally you have the guy who kicks back inside, content to wait for spring.
But in any case, it takes some time. Whatever you decide to do, you have to keep moving at it (unless you’ve joined the guy waiting for the thaw). You may work more efficiently and rhythmically at certain times than at others, but you do have to keep moving. It requires something of you. Snow shoveling cannot be done on its own.
So you muscle on. And over the course of time, you realize parts of you that once felt alive now feel numb. You have to stop from time to time when the wind blows. You hunch your shoulders, duck down, wait for it to stop. You feel the ice crystals tickle down your back and feel colder than ever. After a while, it’s as if all you have ever been is cold, and that there never was a time that you had a warm kitchen to step out of.
You know better. At least, intellectually. So you take breaks when the chill gets too much. You go inside, wipe the fog off your glasses, stamp the circulation back into your feet, get a fresh pair of gloves, and thaw out as much as you are able. Then head back out when you are ready.
Though you may not feel as if you have done much, satisfaction comes when you straighten your tired body and look behind you at the sidewalk you’ve just come down. Well…there is progress after all! All this long stretch of sidewalk is clear now! And so is the driveway! And they weren’t before! So even though you are cold, and tired of the whole business, the fact is clear: you’re not where you started. You have been digging out!
In its own way, grief is like digging out of a frozen blanket of snow. You see slender icicles, dripping off your frozen car, and you realize the thaw is coming.
And just to prove it, you go inside to discover your red amaryllis has started to bloom.
