Chapter 2

An hour later my back and legs were aching, my ears and nose and fingers and toes were freezing, and I’d only managed to clear the first ten feet in front of the garage door. That might not sound like much, but the driveway is eighteen feet wide at the top. You do the math.

No matter which way I turned, the wind seemed to blow the snow right into my face and down under my collar. I stopped for a minute to rest, breathing hard and wondering how I could possibly be sweating so much when I was so damned cold. Looking down the length of the driveway, I groaned when I realized I still had at least 100 feet to go!

Ruefully I remembered curling up in my bed early this morning while the sounds of snow blowers echoed up and down the street. My neighbors’ driveways were filling up with snow again, but at least they hadn’t had to break their backs clearing them in the first place, and they had all gotten out to work on time!

As I started in shoveling again, I noticed heavy-duty pickup trucks with blades on the front driving around the neighborhood clearing driveways. Most of them had signs on the sides advertising lawn care and snow plowing companies. I hadn’t thought to call around and see how much it would cost to have my driveway plowed. I tried to wave down a couple of the trucks, but they either ignored me or grinned, waved back, and kept going. They had a schedule to keep, and I wasn’t on it.

I put my head down and started shoveling. In about thirty minutes I got to the part of the driveway that curved right and started to slope down to the road. Another couple of shovels full and my feet went out from under me and I landed on my ass. The jolt went right up my spine and into my head, which started to throb. The driveway was covered with a thin sheen of ice under the snow!

I got back to my feet, cursing a blue streak and swearing to high heaven that we were going to sell this place and move back south even if it meant we both had to sling burgers. My shoveling slowed to a crawl as I had to creep forward and brace myself each time I tried to scoop and throw. Another thirty minutes brought me almost no progress, as I spent more time and energy trying to keep my balance than actually moving snow.

It was during one of these pathetic attempts to heave another shovel full of concrete off into the landscaping at the side of the driveway and not fall on my ass again that I caught sight of what I at first thought must have been a snow mirage of some kind. Down at the bottom of my driveway was a tall, lean figure shoveling snow. It was dressed in a black parka with a deep, fur-lined hood, jeans, heavy black snow boots, and thick mittens. It was shoveling like a pro, too. Snow was flying, and when it noticed me staring it stopped for a moment to shout above the wind, “You’re doing it wrong!”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing ... or hearing. It was unquestionably a girl’s voice, and I had no idea who she was. This was an older neighborhood. The realtor had told us that most of the families had been here for years and their kids had grown up and moved out. The neighborhood Christmas party just the week before had confirmed that impression. I was by far the youngest person there. Jackie couldn’t attend, and everybody else at the party had been in their fifties – at least. So, who the hell was this?

She broke into my train of thought by shouting again. “Look, we’re never going to get this done if you just stand there staring! And you’re going to kill yourself if you try to shovel from the top like that! You’ve got to start from the bottom!”

“What?” I shouted back to her, shaking myself and throwing my shovel full of lead aside. It was the best I could do under the circumstances.

I could almost feel her roll her eyes. “Come down here!” she shouted even louder, using a voice that would probably have silenced a room full of truckers. I took a couple of steps and almost fell on my ass again. “Walk on the edge, in the landscaping!” she yelled.

What could I do? I edged over to the side of the driveway, stepped into the landscaping, and found that I had traction. I made it down to the road in a few seconds and stood there actually looking up at her, which is something considering that I’m six feet tall. She must have gone at least 6’2”.

“You’re doing it wrong,” she repeated, in a slightly lower voice that still cut through the wind. “You’re doing all the lifting with your back. You’re going to really hurt yourself. You’re also trying to take too much with each shovel full. Scoop less snow, and lift with your legs, like this.” She demonstrated, bent at the knees, moderate amount of snow in the shovel, lift with the legs and throw in the same motion.

It looked a lot easier than what I had been doing, so I tried it. It still didn’t exactly feel good, but there was much less strain on my back. She obviously had a lot more experience at this than I.

“With this driveway you’ve got to clear the top, like you did, and then come at the rest from the bottom. Otherwise, you’ll fall. Come at the snow from the bottom and gravity is working for you, not against you. Besides,” she gestured to the huge mound of snow that the plows had plowed up at the bottom of the driveway, “you’ve got to get through this drift when you’re still fresh. If you’re already tired when you get down to it, you’ll never get through it.”