The Year of the Big Snow(s)
By Jill D. Montgomery

I moved into my own place last summer and after my youngest child’s high school graduation found myself on my own for the first time in 50 years. I had gone from being a child at home to having a child of my own at the age of 18 and never looked back.

So now, four children and four marriages later, I was ready and looking forward to facing life on my own, knowing that my children and friends were there if I needed them. They were my comfort zone on a grand new venture. This venture included lawn care, mowing, mulching and such in the summer and in the winter, I would probably have to move a little snow by hand.

This winter when the Channel 3 weather man predicted the first snowstorm of the season, back oh so many months ago, I wasn’t very worried. Snow had come and gone rather quickly in the last few years, mostly washed away by the rain that seemed to follow every snowstorm we’d had.

I figured that shoveling snow would fit right into my "Lose Weight, Feel Better" plan, right up there with not allowing potato chips in the house and eating chocolate only once in a blue moon. Not really an appealing plan, but a necessary evil on the way to being in better shape.

So I sent a little prayer of thanks to God for being in good enough health to shovel in the first place and got ready for the first storm.

Which came and I shoveled and thought, well, this isn’t so bad after all. And that storm wasn’t. But it appears that God has a sense of humor!

I shoveled again the next day, and two days after that, and three or four times the next week and on and on and on forever as far as the naked eye can see! I found myself shoveling in the dark at night after work so I would have a place to park. I shoveled before the break of dawn so I could get the car out of the driveway and get to work. I shoveled twice a day on weekends just to try and stay ahead of the storm.

I shoveled off the top of the carport and then shoveled that snow out of the walkways where it always seemed to fall. That gave me the opportunity to shovel that snow not once, but twice. I even shoveled a path to the bird feeder so the cute little chickadees wouldn’t starve in the winter storms.

Then finally the weather broke and snow banks melted and there was even a small patch on the lawn that received the afternoon sun where you could actually see winter grass. I figured the worst was over and I had done a pretty good job keeping up. Luckily, I didn’t break my arm patting myself on the back.

About that time I went on a week’s vacation to sunny North Carolina to see my youngest daughter and found myself able to walk outside in my shirtsleeves with no ice and snow underfoot to trip me up. While I was loving the good weather there, I began to get calls about the not-so-good weather here.

"We got a foot of snow yesterday. We got another four inches of snow and another six are on the way again tomorrow. The weatherman says it’s the snowiest February on record." Every day that I was gone, good old Vermont snowed, sleeted or freezing rained on its citizens. It wasn’t just cruddy weather, it was cruddy weather to the n^th degree.

I came home in a snowstorm to snow banks I couldn’t see over. I came home to a one-car driveway instead of room for three cars, as I have in the summer. And since I arrived home, I have gone back to shoveling every day practically morning, noon and night!

This weekend, a rare one of no snow, I went out and moved my biggest snow bank back in preparation for the predicted snowstorms to come in the new week. I stood on top of the 10-foot snow bank and pushed snow up, over and around me, cutting the snow bank in half. Luckily my oldest daughter showed up unexpectedly and gave a much-needed hand.

We not only moved the snow bank back, we also opened up a spot for a clear view of oncoming cars, so I don’t have to do what a co-worker does. The mountains of snow in her driveway have forced her to jump out of her car, look for traffic, and then jump back in the vehicle and gun it out the driveway, praying no cars have come along in the meanwhile, causing a deadly crash in which she plays a major role! Wow!

So, after many helpings of Ibuprofin for aches and pains and several evenings with a heating pad draped over my shoulders, I am still grateful I’m healthy enough to shovel my own driveway…but I have to remind myself of that often, especially when I’m up before the sun trying to get my car unburied once again.

Jill D. Montgomery lives in Braintree where the snow banks and her patience are about at their limit! Enough already.

____________