Shovel

I wake with a strange joy when I hear the snowplow pass. I can’t get him coffee or make them eggs. No reminders about school-work or breaking up fights. Shoveling is my job.

I lace up my boots, newly purchased from Walmart, one of my few indulgences along with the fuzzy, post-shoveling slippers, and head outside.

I push the snow into piles and clear a path to the car, in case we need to get out. I shovel the walk for visitors we will never receive and make the house presentable. The outward appearance of our family is more important than what is really happening. Our family is falling apart.

I shovel with my weakling arms and remember to bend at my knees and avoid twisting so I don’t injure my back, too. The thought of sitting in a chair beside him propels my shaking arms to shovel more. Sometimes during the longer storms I shovel every few hours, breaking the task into lighter loads, protecting my back and increasing my absence.

That we cannot afford a snowblower or even an adolescent back brings me pleasure. We are barely surviving and I must shovel to keep us going.

The job is lengthy and concise. I am careful to get down to gravel by the road so it doesn’t freeze in a speed bump at the end of our driveway. I take pride in this job because there is no pride in motherhood, in being a wife, right now.

Sometimes the snow is light and my job is quick and I enjoy watching the flakes spill from my scoop onto the pile at the end of the driveway that I have made. I have made. Alone. Other times the ice rain follows and turns my job to heavy slush. I shovel smaller armfuls and lift my face to the falling rain, letting my tears mix with the cold ice pellets. If I don’t get out in time the ice rain forms a crust on my job. I must use the corner of my shovel to crack it, the downward jerk a welcome, angry task.

I hide behind the car when the neighbor passes in his truck. I do not want him to stop with his friendly plow to do my driveway in one un-martyr-like swoop.

I plunge my tool into the piles, dig away little by little. The task broken down into small shovelfuls is manageable. I can do the stairs and the walk and the driveway, but my entire property as a whole is unmanageable. My life as a whole is unmanageable. Mother, wife, partner, maid. I feel torn, split, fragmented like shattered, crackling ice.

This is the winter I will develop muscles. I shovel because he can’t and they won’t and it is the one job I can handle right now. And maybe when spring comes, I will be a stronger woman.

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