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apparently, snow has no purpose at all.

[talk radio]

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There's this guy I don't like.

He's tall and charismatic and utterly bizarre, discouraging in the way that makes me doubt my life and purpose and love of God. I used to always forget this and let him in, and he accepted my hospitality and attacked my wellsprings, denied my heart, depressed my spirit. The last time he came over, I did something I never, ever do and just left the room to go to bed.

I don't know where these death-words come from, whether they're brewed in his own self-hatred or neglected mind, but I decided to stop spending time around him, with the same absolute finality I attached to decisions like not drinking anything larger than my head, or getting a swastika tattooed to my butt. It was just something I wasn't ever going to do, period. Winter is long enough as it is.

We live in the Colorado mountains, and last night the snow came. It fell steadily through the night and into the morning, layering foot after foot of soft white on the ground. We woke and made pancakes drizzled with honey, marveled at the drifts outside, celebrated the delicious certainty that today was a day for crocheting and reading thick books and padding around in socks and not working. I hollowed out a cave in the front yard so Norah could have a place to pee, and called it a day. I didn't even attempt shoveling our driveway, or even the front walk, for the same reasons that no one ever tries to tear down the Great Wall by hand or fistfight a Beluga whale.

But later that morning, when I was settled into the couch with a book and a steaming mug of my absolute favorite black tea, I heard scraping outside. I ignored it at first, on the grounds that it might be a wounded animal or homeless person or something else that would require me to go outside and do something, but I finally walked to the window. And what I saw was this man, headphones in, brandishing this overlarge snow shovel.

I watched with mounting incredulity as he shoveled the snow off our cars, and then out our driveway, and then up our walk, for one hour, then two. The drifts piled next to him were above his head, a head that is already fairly far above the ground. He never paused, except for moments when he pressed his hands into his armpits and stared down our street, at the shades of white and grey.

I'm angry at this man in a dull, muted way. It's true that he has hurt me for reasons I can't fathom and in ways that left shards under my skin, and he doesn't seem to have what it takes to realize or care what he's done. But this morning, so cold and white, I had a moment of clarity. I saw and understood that I've hurt him too, and he's the one shoveling my driveway, for no reason other than he knew I couldn't do it myself.

I watched him take out a broom and brush off our cars, mine and my sister's and my roommate's, and it made me think about things like forgiveness and love and what they look like when you're not steeped in self-righteousness and drinking tea and reading about them in books. Today they looked like this: snow falling fast on soaked shoulders, a shovel flashing green against walls of white. A startled smile exchanged through a window.