The snow began to fall Wednesday evening. I headed out to tuck animals and stood, watching the wind blow the snow underneath the barn light, diffusing it as if there were a scrim over it. I hurried around, carrying a wayward hen back from the wrong coop, checking and double checking the various latches on their doors. Knowing it was going to be cold and snowy throughout the night, I slid open the storage door, the familiar sound immediately setting off calls from the sheep, and dug a scoop into the cold metal bin of cracked corn. Immediately as I walked into the barn, I was accosted by a group of wooly thugs: insistent velvet noses pushing at my arms, hoping for a spill. I sprinkled a small bunch on the hay to get them off my scent and quickly maneuvered around the barnyard dropping little piles, like setting up for an Easter egg hunt. Once occupied, they quickly forgot about me and I was able to sit on the wood step and watch them snuffle up the sheep candy.
The snow fell all night. Even standing on the precipice of spring, there is something wonderful about being in a warm house, red embers in the fireplace, dogs curled, paws twitching, running in dreams as we buried ourselves under a pile of flannel sheets and wool blankets. Like bears, still content to hibernate for the few final weeks of winter.
We woke in the morning and lifted the shade to see the shop roof piled high with snow that was still coming down. The plow had been by but we hadn’t heard its clunking and scraping as it was muffled by white noise. We immediately go to the work of digging ourselves and animals out. Chickens, shoveled free from their coop, walk their one leg tentatively lifted at a time walk, stopping periodically to shake the lifted foot with an offended air. I plop a square of meal worm suet into a black rubber bowl for them and they forget their offense and race, squawking delightedly, toward the treat. Paul tugs the snowblower to life and begins forging deep paths for us to walk, the piled snow above our waists. Muir and Bronte jump high into the air after the snowblower plume. I stop and lean on the shovel to watch.
By late morning our driveway has been opened up and we head off for our Thursday errands. One of my favorite things about living here is the brevity of recovery time from a huge storm. The plows get out all night long, people wake up, clean up and go. To me, it says something important about who we are and how we live.
We hit the hardware store, drive through at the bank and run into the post office to send birthday gifts off to Tennessee. We walk back to our car on the sidewalks that are now rimmed with piled-high snow plowed back from the street. We talk about how much we enjoy Thursdays together as we near our parked truck. I climb up onto the snowbank to crawl down to open the door when my right boot slips forward putting me into a gymnastic-worthy split. Clearly unable to hold this position, my leg continues to slide and I awkwardly lunge downward. I fall to my knee and momentum carries me further forward and I bang my head on the bumper of my own truck before finally coming to a stop in a pile on the slushy ground. Full realization makes me think, “why couldn’t I have just passed out?”
Paul has now realized that I’ve fallen and comes hurdling over the bank. I look up at him from the small space between our truck and the next car and from under my hat that is now partially over one eye. “DON’T make a scene.”
He whispers and asks if I am okay. I reach down to my now throbbing knee and through my leggings I have blood on my hand. My top priority is to get out of this position as quickly as possible, the blood on my knee and the dirty slush on my skirt not hurting me nearly as much as my pride. I ask him to get under my arms and haul me up. At this point I’m really not sure that my left leg is going to help in this rescue attempt so now Paul is, literally hefting under both of my arms as I am dead weight dressed with a hat over one eye.
Finally upright, I straighten the hat and open the truck door with the casual air of someone who has just finished her Thursday errands but also just happens to have blood coming out of her leggings and wearing a skirt sopping with dirty, wet snow.
We get into the truck and sit in the quiet warmth, Paul looking at me uneasily, like one might look at a grenade. I begin to cry, not from the pain, although that is substantial, but because I feel so ridiculous, so clumsy…so vulnerable.
Not knowing quite what to do, Paul begins to remind me of the time we were buying shavings at the farm store and while I was inside the store he grabbed a bale of shavings and as he turned to take it to the truck, the rest of the 16 foot-high stack, 4000 bales (his count), avalanched on top of him. As he slowly pushed away the bales and began crawling out of the pile, he noticed a man standing in front of him who had apparently witnessed the entire sequence. “You okay?” the man asked. “Absolutely,” Paul replied, brushing shavings from his clothes as he staggered uncertainly toward the store.
My hot tears of humiliation slowly change to tears of laughter. It is a guffawing laughter, the kind that comes from the bottom of you and white-washes your soul. I lean against the steering wheel and roar.
Paul looks at me happily but with some trepidation, not knowing if this will remain laughter or not.
I look over at him, grateful for all of him. This shouldn’t help. But it does.
And yes, we went to lunch.