The Christmas Amaryllis/Hippeastrum flowers are doing well.
I’m getting older and often I wake up early in the morning feeling anxious and a little blue. I look at the news headlines about people who die and often they’re my age or even younger. Maybe the Christmas holiday does that.
When I get this feeling of dread, I try to think of what I can be grateful for. It’s hard to think of big dramatic experiences. If I sit still long enough, it’s the little acts of kindness that drop down like snowflakes, slowly.
The grade school teacher who took the time to figure out I needed eyeglasses because I couldn’t see the blackboard.
The preacher who sat up all night in a chair with my sick mother when my brother and I were little kids and didn’t know how to help her.
The company that hired me for my first real job when I was a teenager. If they hadn’t done that, I might have become homeless.
The guy who took me to an autumn outdoor art show where he was exhibiting his paintings on a brisk autumn day. Man, it was cold.
The guy who took me to a Minnesota Twins baseball game in the summer. Man, it was hot.
I remember a couple of best friends. We weren’t friends long—but it was long enough.
The friends who supported Sena and me on our wedding day. I still remember it with gratitude 47 years later.
Okay, we got about 14 inches of snow from Winter Storm Finn, but that doesn’t begin to convey the human meaning of it.
I’m going to call digging out from all that snow a Sisyphean labor. You don’t hear that term much, but it means a chore that never seems to end while you’re doing it. The short story about Sisyphus comes from Greek mythology.
Sisyphus was the king of Corinth. Just to be clear, it generally doesn’t snow in Corinth. One day, King Sisyphus saw a splendid, mighty eagle carrying a beautiful maiden to a nearby island (where it also does not snow). A river god named Asopus told him that his daughter had been abducted, but not by extraterrestrials. Sisyphus suspected Zeus, who had never seen a snow shovel, if you can imagine that. Like a fool, Sisyphus asked Zeus to help him find her. Because Zeus hated nosy mortals who aren’t supposed to know what the boss god is up to, he banished Sisyphus to Hades where he had to roll a giant rock uphill which always rolled back downhill (Hamilton, Edith. 1942. Mythology. New York: Little Brown and Company).
Anybody who knows what it’s like to try to shovel walks and driveways during a horizontal snowstorm knows that for every shovelful of snow you remove, twice that amount refills the space you empty almost immediately. You’d have to stay out in the snowstorm forever to keep up. It’s the definition of a Sisyphean labor.
And that’s why Sena and I left about a third of our driveway uncleared last night because we were exhausted. We’d been out in that storm shoveling all day since early morning. We ached everywhere and didn’t have much to show for it.
This morning we were up early again, anticipating trying to clear the driveway and again shovel all the walks, the curb ramp, the trees and whatnot.
The driveway had been cleared, probably sometime during the night, by a good Samaritan we’ll probably never know for sure. We could tell by the telltale friction wheel tracks, and the perfectly circular mark of the machine’s turning radius. A path to our curbside mailbox had also been cleared.
We are grateful. The only big job left was to clear the curb ramp, across which was a hip high mountain range of snow left by the city plow. It was also blocked by a large pickup truck. The driver must have seen us and he hurried over from where he was working with a crew building a house. He was more than happy to move it—although I was not so happy when I found out how hard we had to work to clear the curb ramp. If you start from the top, the snow spreads out over the mountain. If you start from the bottom, the snow from the top falls down. I would call that Sisyphean labor.
Anyway, we’re waiting for the next disaster, which I think the meteorologists are calling Winter Storm Gerri. They’re promising 4 inches of new snow by Friday. It almost sounds like light duty.
Christmas Day at our house was a lot of fun. I got a coffee mug that specifies the importance of cribbage. Sena got a throw that sort of complements the throw she got me on our anniversary.
Those throws add a lot to the ambience in the room. And the coffee mug really speaks to the “importanter feature” of cribbage in our life nowadays.
This was the one of the best Christmases ever. We’re up to our ears in gratitude. And that’s the most importantest thing of all.
Just as a follow-up to my post about getting and paying attention, I got about a 1,000 views in less than a day on one of my recent YouTube videos, “Backyard Animal Parade.” It’s now over 1.2K.
I never get that kind of response. Usually, it take years before I get that many views on my YouTube channel videos.
The video below was made from footage of our visit to Arlington National Cemetery in 2015. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, each element of the guard’s routine has meaning, down to the number of steps taken up and down the black mat. According to the website:
“The Guard marches 21 steps down the black mat behind the Tomb, turns and faces east for 21 seconds, turns and faces north for 21 seconds, and then takes 21 steps down the mat. Next, the Guard executes a sharp “shoulder-arms” movement to place his/her weapon on the shoulder closest to the visitors, signifying that he or she stands between the Tomb and any possible threat. The number 21 symbolizes the highest symbolic military honor that can be bestowed: the 21-gun salute.”
Arlington National Cemetery YouTube video music attribution:
It’s a cool, sunny afternoon. The lawn has just been neatly mowed by hard-working, reliable people who use power mowers. We used to mow lawns at previous properties using old-time reel mowers. I should say my wife used to do the lion’s share of that while I was at the hospital, working as a consulting psychiatrist. Now that I’m retired, I sometimes just wonder what I’m good for.
But it’s not hard to remember what Memorial Day is for. I was never a soldier. I never knew anyone who died in war. I only talked with military recruiters in a time so long ago, I barely remember being that young. I think they knew I was not ready to die for my country. They didn’t scorn or openly reject me. They treated me with respect.
Though I know what grief is because I am bereft, I cannot imagine what it’s like to grieve the death of any loved one who perished in war.
All I know is that when I was young and thought I wanted to be in the armed forces, there were recruiters who saw through me and knew I did not want to be a soldier.
They knew I did not want to die thousands of miles from my home in a bloody field. They knew I did not want to be buried forever in a foreign graveyard.
They knew I could not be one of them. Yet they did not treat me like an outsider. Now all I can do is be grateful. Now what I can do is honor them in silence.
We got walloped by that blizzard I mentioned yesterday. It left about 5-8 inches at least with a gift mountain about waist high on one side of our driveway left by one of the city plows. Later in the day another plow gifted us another driveway plug, not as tall but wetter and heavier.
This morning we shoveled hard and it must have showed. Three of our neighbors came over with their snow blowers to help dig us out. We were very grateful for their kindness. One of them must have been up before 5 AM to get started. Another powered her way through a good chunk of our driveway. Yet a third neighbor helped clear the gift mountain and more.
I think I may have got in the way a few times because I felt a little guilty about them doing so much work with their machines. I felt compelled to sneak in and scoop something because I felt terrible just standing there watching them.
In the afternoon we had to get back outside to clear the second driveway plug left by the second city plow. Our driveway had drifted in about to my hips. It took us a while to dig out.
Some have speculated about whether shovel people take unfair advantage of the generosity of snow blower people. After all, we tend to look kind of pathetic, so they probably take pity on us.
There might be an expectation in some neighborhoods for snow blower people to contribute to the community by being willing to go the extra mile and clear driveways for shovel people. I could find only one serious article on the internet about this, “Is There a Social Code for Snow Removal?” on the Scientific American web site.
I’ve not heard of shovel people coming to help snow blower people, but it happened this afternoon. After Sena and I cleared our snowdrifts, we visited the three neighbors who helped us this morning and scooped out their driveway snow plugs and a little more when we could.
Today Sena and I want to make a shout out for a big act of kindness. Back in August, the derecho blew down a maple tree in our front yard, which also led to a concern about the tree right next to our house, which was a lilac.
We cut both down to stumps with a handsaw, a long handle tree trimmer, and a bow saw. We don’t have a chain saw. We planned to hire a handyman who does own a chainsaw to cut down the stumps.
We were outside, laboring over the lilac with the bow saw. We shared the bow saw. Come to think of it, I’m pretty good about sharing a bow saw, especially when I’ve been using it enough to notice muscle pain in several places I didn’t know I had.
We got the stump down to about 2 feet and were cutting off pathetic little chunks not much bigger than golf balls.
And then I guess a couple of guys on the construction crew working nearby took pity on us because suddenly, they walked over, shouting “Let us help you!” and carrying the biggest concrete saw I’ve ever seen, along with a respectable sledge hammer. The guy operating the concrete saw was the size of a sumo wrestler. His partner was no slouch.
No kidding, “Let us help you!” How could we refuse? What made them do that? Was it the white hair? Was it because they might have seen me yesterday get dirty as a pig cutting tiny pieces off the front yard maple stump? The only way to trim a stump once it gets to a certain height is to roll all over the ground. I have not been that dirty since I was 8 years old after playing king of the hill on a very tall dirt pile.
When I think about the use of a concrete saw almost as tall as I am to cut down a lilac stump, I’m astonished. They brought the tools they had to help us. I’ll never forget that big, friendly “Let us help you!” I’ll never forget their smiling faces.
That lilac stump lasted long a little longer than you’d think, and it was very heavy work. The saw screamed and smoked like it was on fire. It was heavy, but he was heavier and strove to slice the stump as close to the ground as possible. They both took turns swinging the sledge hammer at it—which made me instinctively want to duck. The stump finally let loose.
Immediately, the workers hurried away as we shouted thanks, almost as if they were worried that we might want to pay them—which I certainly considered. They smiled broadly, waving their huge hands.
We are still overwhelmed with gratitude for their kindness. These days, kindness is hard to come by. You look at the news (bad idea), and all you read is somebody is slamming or killing somebody else. I’m not saying you never see or hear about little or big acts of kindness—just that the bad news tends to overshadow the good.
You have to look very hard for an act of kindness. It’s harder to see how we can pay it forward. It doesn’t have to be a big act of kindness. It can be little, like saying “Good morning, how are you?” Even saying “thank you” is an act of kindness. And it’s OK to give a big shout out for any kindness you see—just to let people know it’s still out there.
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