Shoveling Snow

"I can shovel by myself."

I don’t have to shovel snow much anymore. Connor Pilling does my walks. And sometimes Harry Kristen goes out with the snow shovel. It is not just that he likes rock climbing and skiing. There is something inside of Harry that really doesn’t mind taking care of the snow on the sidewalks.

... just resting for a minute ...

There was enough snow that there should have been two people out doing the walks.

Between snow falling and the wind, drifts had occurred that were knee deep in some places. Now on our block, Richard is just to the east of me, and next to him is Dave, a guy who not only shovels his walk, but then he takes a broom to it. So it pretty much looks like a Chinook has hit the sidewalks in front of Dave’s place.

"I still haven't figured out how to get this snow off of my gloves."

Richard and I are not that fastidious. But I was out doing some intermediary snow shovelling, just touching up the walks, taking off that last skiff of snow that had fallen since the big dump. I knocked on Michal’s door to see if he wanted to come out and shovel with me. His dad had left a blue handled snow shovel at the front door and I had my red handled snow shovel. He loved pushing the shovel. He is not able to lift the shovel and throw the snow onto the yard nor off into the road. “Dump it now, Grandma.” No one will know how many times I heard that phrase in the ensuing couple of hours.

"I don't want to go back inside the house, Gwama."

After our sidewalks were cleaned he wanted to do the neighbours’ walks. An older man in a silver jeep stopped his vehicle in front of us, rolled down his window and called out, “Now that looks like fun – having a helper.” Since I have unlimited hours and a little boy beside me who is trying to remove the snow from every house in his block? Yes, it is fun.

Arta