Winter Chores

I am caught off guard by winter. In the night, while I sleep, it goes about the business of covering everything up, with snow, and ice, and cold. And I wake, to a steel gray sky, and a thick crust of white. The trees carry the burden of winter, too, holding up with frail stick arms tall slices of snow. The mantle drops from the limbs with the least bit of movement from the wind. I wish I could see the green ground, but it is silenced beneath the snow. I wonder if it could speak up even if it wanted to.

I draw my coat around me, and put on my snow cap (the creamy white one; I wear it rarely but it seems fitting now), and pull on the only pair of gloves I could find. Mittens, actually. Rainbow colored mittens. I am a sight as I emerge into the white outside, wilding a snow shovel. Snow continues to fall from the sky; tiny flecks of snow, the kind that is made when it is so cold it takes your breath away. It is light, like sugar sprinkles, falling again over everything. Like depositing layers of icy sediment, the snow is steady, then recedes a bit, but it never stops.

So I begin the task of shoveling the driveway. I make a pattern out of it. At first I move right to left, making long scrapes in the snow. The shovel grates against the pavement when it finally finds it. Right to left. Scrape. Right to left. Scrape. And then I change the pattern. I move from center right. Then center left. The shovel scrapes the pavement. I move to center again.

In the distance, I hear the scrapes of the neighbor's shovels. We are all in proximity of talking, but we don't. The cold has sucked the voices out of us. And there is something about the winter that wraps you in a blanket of solitude. So we all continue our work, creating as we go a strange rhythmic song of snow shovels grating. The sound is a little harsh, but at points is muffled according to the distance between us. I go to center, work right and then back to center. The sky sprinkles sugar fine snow all over me and the part of the driveway I have already shoveled. I'm sure my rainbow mittens would curse furiously at the cold if they could. The cold is stifling to everything around me.

But then I hear something unexpected. Out of place, but such a welcome sound, my wind chime chirps in the wind that is starting to pick up. It sings to me a promise of growth. Of spring. I hear my wind chime most during the dawn of a fierce summer storm. It bangs against itself in a furry of metallic notes, alarming me that the thunder would soon be rolling in. But here is my wind chime, barely, tentatively, sending its notes into the air.

It is saying to me, hope is coming. Let the ground rest. Let the buds yet to be formed on the trees wait just a little longer. Let God lay the cold blanket over everything, and let it all be quite. Remember to rest. Let it all rest. Hope and promise are coming.

I arrive at the end of my driveway. I pick up the last scoop of snow and fling it to the side. My neighbors have retreated back into their houses already. And the song of scraping shovels stops.

When I walk up onto the porch, I put the shovel down and listen. I still hear my wind chime continue to ting, reminding me to rest. Snow, as it falls, is not at all as noisy as rain. It has no sound at all.