A Dichotomy of Epic Proportions

The concept of living in the moment has many benefits for health and happiness but I’ve never been able to sustain the activity for very long. A day or two at a time here and there at the most…unless I’m under a lot of stress like after my husband’s stroke. Then, I lived in the moment for months on end by intentionally concentrating on what I was doing, whether it was chopping carrots or shoveling snow. With the latter, I’d note the way my face is entirely covered over with a scarf and hat with only a narrow strip in between for my eyes and sometimes the hat slides down so I can’t see at all. I’d focus on using my leg muscles and not those in my back when I throw snow off to the side. I’d pay attention to my heart rate so I won’t power through when I should be taking a break. But even when the living-in-the-moment technique is applied to snow shoveling---which is the smart thing to do for your health---my mind wanders and I obsess about building a snowman once more before I die.

Growing up I spent a lot of time outside in the winter building snow forts and snowmen, ice skating, sledding and tobogganing, even ice fishing with my dad. In my twenties I took up downhill skiing and in my thirties that gave way to snowmobiling every chance we got. Nothing was better for living in the moment than parking our Skidoo on a hill top with a panoramic view of a snowy, rural landscape under a midnight moon. We’d turn off the snowmobile, pull out the thermos and enjoy the silence of the night. Michigan, even back then, has great trails for people who love winter. Don and I even tried cross-country skiing but it was a short-lived interest. While it’s a wonderful way to enjoy the great outdoors it was also exhausting! 

In my forties and fifties I was outside during the worst weather Michigan can throw at its residence because my husband had the bright idea that if I learned how to plow snow I’d get over my fear of winter driving. Not to brag but I was very good at it, so good that Don started hiring and trained more women to plow. He said women didn’t waste time trying to re-invent the wheel like the guys often did. At first glance that could sound like a backhanded insult to women but it wasn’t. On mall parking lots if we didn’t stick with the established plow patterns it could screw things up for the adjoining sections or cause other problems I won’t take time to explain. The bottom line was women listened, guys didn’t.

Now, I’m an inside chick---or more precisely an old hen who is still afraid of winter driving. But I would be very brave again if I was the only person on the road and I still had a four-wheel drive pickup truck with an orange flasher on top and a C-B radio to call my husband if I got stuck. I could do controlled, purposeful skids with the best of them. Wanna see a 180 turn on an icy parking lot, I’m your man. My truck had a fifty gallon gas tank on the back, so in addition to plowing snow I was the mobile service station. I don’t miss those nights of standing out in the cold, pumping gas or holding a flashlight while Don was flat on his back in the snow fixing a hydraulic hose on a plow. Being the first female plowers in the city did have its perks. The guys had to fix their own broken lines, but the girls had Don to do our dirty work. 

That was then. Back to now. So what’s stopping me from building a snowman? I’m afraid if the neighbors see out in the cold that long, they’ll think I don’t need them to run their snow blower across my front sidewalk. I really do need their generosity. Even with their help, I still have to shovel across the front of my two-stall garage where my plow service can’t reach and from my front door down 25 feet to where the walk connects to the driveway. I also shovel my dog’s deck and yard plus I make sure my two back doors aren’t blocked by snow in case I need to escape an axe murderer in the dead of night. Shoveling takes a lot of my time! Still, I debate the idea of building a snowman on my back deck where no one can see me and if I do I’m building a cat snowman that looks in the window to torment my dog.

Christmas time and fun in the snow have always gone together like a right glove with its left. After I out-grew some wintertime activities I still spent the next fifteen years being the aunt who got to take the kids outside to play in the snow while my mom and sister-in-law cleaned up after Christmas dinner. Where does the time go? Those kids are now all grandparents. Looking back at my best wintertime memories is like looking at an iconic village in a snow globe. From the distance of time, the winters of yesterday were sweet and carefree and it was so easy to live in the moment back then. Now, I have too many memories of the past to enjoy and not enough future to build new dreams around to maintain living in the moment for long. The bitter-sweetness of aging is a dichotomy of epic proportions.  ©

After writing this blog, I built this snow "creature" on the back deck..
The photo at the very top is of Levi meeting his new friend..

She has Dove chocolate for eyes and a nose, and pine needles for whiskers.

Levi's view looking out the window. 

Break From Winter

 

This has been a good week here in the land of too much snow. Saturday the gods of goodness shined down on Michigan and made the 82 miles of roads I had to travel to my great, great niece’s baby shower easy to drive. My niece was putting a lot of pressure on me to come out to the boondocks and even offered to send her husband to pick me up and deliver me back home if the roads were bad. And if the roads were really, really bad, she wanted me to stay at her house for a few days, “We’ll have a slumber party of shower guests,” she said. But Levi, my schnauzer, nixed that idea since his kennel is out in the County of Unplowed Roads and who would feed his rabbits if I wasn’t home to do it? He torments my niece’s cat so he couldn't have gone with me. What can I say, it’s in his genes to chase small ‘varmint’ and that instinct is making me nervous these days because the snow is so deep---and the rabbits so plentiful in my yard---it wouldn’t take much effort for him to crawl right out of his dog pen. Only 14 inches of his 3 foot tall fence is showing above the snow pack. My only saving grace is that he’s an agility course drop-out. When the jump bar gets set over five inches high, he chickens out.

It was bright and sunny when I arrived at the golf course where the shower was being held and the minute I pulled into the overcrowded parking lot I got excited. There were easily 100 snowmobiles in various states---some parked, some coming and going from the state trail, some circling the parking lot and others taking part in a vintage snowmobile show. The annual winter-fest was on and its sounds and sunshine was like taking a tonic! I was quite early for the shower and even though I felt half-dressed walking about in the sea of helmeted people wearing one-piece, playtime snowsuits I looked over the vintage machines, enjoying all the great memories they conjured up. I’d been on that trail, to that course golf, on machines like those in the vintage parking area many times. I was almost sad when I got inside and realized the shower was booked in a private room, and we wouldn’t be mixing it up with all the exhilarated snowmobilers in the main dining room.

The shower was a big one—55 of us---and my great-great niece got a mountain of gifts but mine was the only one that included handmade items. I guess knitting has gone out of style. This winter I’ve knitted up a pile of stuff---mostly hats, scarfs, cowls and baby car seat blankets. Most winters I usually knit just one or two things. I blame that darn cable upgrade I got 5-6 weeks ago and the unending snow because I’m spending more time in front of the TV set than usual. Is this how it starts? Pretty soon will the table next to my chair in the living room have that “old person” look? You know, an unruly pile containing things like a magnifier glass, a box of tissues, toenail clippers, paper and pen, maybe a crossword puzzle book, a bottle of liniment, and a few back issues of the TV guide---all overflowing and tempting the dog to steal stray candy wrappers and used Kleen-x. Will my next addition to the room be a TV tray where I can eat or do small jigsaw puzzles?

Thursday I went to a lecture at the senior hall titled, Warm Winter Reads. The librarian who puts on the program is so energetic and enthusiastic about the books she recommends that it’s hard not to get intrigued by some of those she features. I used to belong to the book club at the hall before my husband died and I never really got back into reading with the same pleasure and intensity. But when I got home from the lecture I downloaded one of her recommendations to my Kindle and so far I’m enjoying The Humans by Matt Haig. It’s probably the lightest read on her handout but I couldn’t resist the premise of an extraterrestrial who comes to earth to assume a man’s identity in order to carry out an important mission but he ends up falling in love with the man’s family and their dog. The book has some intriguing passages like the one below where the extraterrestrial is describing love to those on his home planet: "Two mirrors, opposite and facing each other at perfectly parallel angles, viewing themselves through the other, the view as deep as infinity. Yes, that is what love was for. Love was a way to live forever in a single moment, and it was also a way to see yourself as you had never actually seen yourself, and made you realize---having done so---that this view was a more meaningful one than any of your previous self-perceptions and self-deceptions.”

After Monday's storm, we are supposed to have a week of thawing here and with it will come fog and flooding but it’s a necessary evil in order for us to get rid of some of our massive snow piles. I can’t wait! I just hope my sump pump can keep up!  Our hundred year flood, last year, found my basement and I don’t need another disaster like that again.  ©

Snow Days and Widow Wishes

Years ago when my husband had a commercial snow removal business he called snowflakes pennies from heaven. If that were actually true I’d have a million dollars stacked up in my yard, on my deck and straining my roof. It’s well over two foot deep in areas that haven’t been touched by a shovel, even deeper in the drifts. We haven’t had a plow come down my street in almost a week and they say it will be a few more days before the city gets to all the side streets. The list of cancellations keeps crawling across my TV screen and it looks like the entire city is staying home with me. Even my hair salon called to cancel about two minutes before I was going to call them to do the same. Needless to say, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.

The first day of our snow storm, a couple from down the street who I’ve never met before rang my doorbell. They were on the way to the grocery store and wanted to know if I needed anything. They said they hadn’t seen any activity around my house in recent days and wanted to make sure I was alright. After I thanked them for stopping and assured them that it was just a bad cold keeping me inside, they handed me a piece of paper with their phone numbers on it. They’d also been down to my mailbox and handed me several days’ worth of mail and newspapers. As they left, I couldn’t help tearing up---tears of both gratitude and sadness. I’m grateful that people do notice and keep track of me, even if I’m not aware of them doing it. Since Don passed away there have been many times when I’ve thought that I could be died for weeks before anyone would miss me.

But the neighbors stopping made me sad as well as grateful because it signals that I’m now officially old enough that others feel the need to look out for me, the elderly woman living alone on the block. It doesn’t seem like all that many years ago that Don and I were the ones looking out for the elderly people living nearby. I used to have a clock that had an inscription on its face that read: “The seeds of today are the flowers of tomorrow.” I guess those seeds we planted in the universe so many years ago when Don and I would rake leaves or shovel snow for elderly neighbors have bloomed and it’s time to tend my garden. Next summer, I decided, I need to spend more time on my front patio instead of my back deck. I need to walk the dog on my block more often instead of always going to the nature trail. I need to get to know my neighbors better. I can’t get any younger and someday a kind neighbor keeping track of me from afar could save my life.

When I was a kid snow days meant we’d get to put on our snowsuits and built snow forts in the yard or go sledding or ice skating. As teenagers my brother and I went tobogganing, ice skating and even ice fishing. In my twenties I took up downhill skiing---mostly for the social life at the lodges--and snowmobiling. When I first met Don in my late twenties he bought a snowmobile so we didn’t have to keep borrowing one from my folks. We even tried cross-country skiing. I loved, loved, loved snowmobiling especially at night when we’d go on the groomed trails through the woods around Michigan. Along the trails were places we could stop for chili, hot chocolate, etc., and we often traveled in groups of five to ten snowmobiles. Sometimes we'd turn our machines off at the top of high hill and just enjoy the tranquility and beauty of the moonlit, snowy meadow while drinking coffee from a steaming thermos.

A snowstorm, in the past, meant fun was coming close on its heels. But as Don’s snow removal business grew we could no longer burn the candle at both ends by playing and working in the snow with no time to sleep in between. Everything has its season and my season of snow related fun is now limited to good memories and maybe a horse-drawn carriage ride at the sculpture garden should I find someone to go with me. But I’ll admit that when I was at the L.L.Bean website this week and I saw some adult snow pants, for a fleeting moment I thought about buying them so I can revert back to building stuff in the snow. There are some amazing snow sculptors out there and wouldn’t it be fun to be one of them? Wouldn't that give the neighbors something to talk about! The crazy, old widow who wishes she could be a kid again. ©

* The photo above is of me, my brother and his friend, taken in 1952.