It snowed more than a foot in Heber today. That’s plenty of snow, people. And I get to shovel it. Because I’m the wife that wants my husband to come home, dreading the long, long driveway only to discover that, by some miracle, he can actually move from the street into the garage.
So I go out. I start pushing. And hauling. And sweating.
Sweating!
And then, maybe just a little swearing.
Then more pushing and tossing. After about a half hour, I’d carved a pair of skinny, crooked paths from the garage into the street, and cleaned the walkway. I was just looking from the street back to the distant end of the driveway, tears of despair threatening, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a Polaris quad pulling into my neighbor’s driveway.
“Hey, how nice of the snowplow guy to block you in like that,” called the ridiculously cheerful man in the quad. I laughed and waved, and he hollered, “Give me a minute to clear these guys out, and I’ll come finish your job.”
I almost cried. Really. My back was aching, and I had at least twice more to do than I’d managed so far. So I really started to put my guts into it. I shoveled and chucked snow in every direction. (Not really. I’m pretty careful. The driveway gets frightfully skinny throughout the winter if I’m not. So I pushed snow carefully where it belonged.) He finished up the Mortensens’ drive and actually asked if it was okay with me if he pushed all the snow into the yard. Was he kidding? The kids would love a huge wall of snow to hike/jump/tunnel around. So in the time it took me to clear the garage floor under Scott’s car, he pushed huge amounts of snow from the long driveway to the basketball standard. He worked so fast, I had very little time to think. I asked his name, and he told me Clayne. A friend of Cody’s, apparently, but not one I’d ever seen in the neighborhood before. I thanked him as sincerely as I could and wished him a merry Christmas. Maybe he was one of Santa’s elves. Maybe he was a Christmas Spirit, ala Mr. Dickens, like the Ghost of Driveways Present. Or maybe he was an angel sent straight from God. An angel in hip waders and a cowboy mustache.
I thought about checking into his details, maybe finding a way to repay him for his efforts, but I really rather like the thought that I will never know this guy’s human details. Let him remain my mysterious knight in a shining 4-wheeler, spreading cheer and snow through the neighborhoods of Heber.
Merry Christmas!