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It snowed
yesterday--two feet of the stuff, in less than twelve hours.
It was pretty awesome watching it come down, and it was beautiful
to wake up to this morning. Of course, there was another
side to it--it blocked everything off, and we had quite a lot of
shoveling to do this morning: even though we had gone out twice
yesterday to shovel what had already fallen, we still had well over a
foot of it to clear today.
We still shovel
snow. Our driveway and walkway are short enough so that it
takes less than an hour to clear them completely, even with the
extra stuff that the snowplow deposits where the two ways meet the
street. We have no desire at all to buy a snow thrower or
blower or whatever you want to call it--we still enjoy shoveling
snow.
When I asked my
twelve-year-old stepdaughter to help shovel yesterday, she said
"I'm not gonna shovel that stuff. It's too much
work!" When she found out that refusing to help with a
household responsibility meant that she was going to lose a
household privilege or two, though, she was more than eager to
help with the "horrible chore." So she and I went
out to shovel the eight inches or so that had already fallen,
and--lo and behold--we had a blast! She enjoyed herself
doing the shoveling--the snow was still falling and our heads were
soon covered with white helmets, and it was a lot of fun.
She didn't even want to come inside when I was ready to, and we
ended up shoveling a lot more than I had intended.
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And this morning
when we got up, she volunteered to go out and help me clear out my
car, which had been completely covered by the two feet of snow and
completely blocked in by a four-foot wall of snow left by the snow
plows. Once again, we had a lot of fun, and we had that fun
together.
My wife and I
regularly go out to shovel snow or rake leaves or sweep up together, and we do a lot of other
things together, the "old-fashioned" way.
When we
first bought the home we're living in, I went and bought one of
the old-fashioned lawn mowers--the push kind that has no
motor. It's great--I enjoy the feeling of mowing with it,
and I know that I'm not polluting, either with pollutants or with
noise. The first time I used it, our neighbor from across
the street yelled over to let us know that he had a gas-powered
lawn mower if we wanted to borrow it. It was a generous
offer, but he was missing the point.
Power mowers and
snow blowers are fine--they do the job well and quickly, but I
often wonder if people realize what they're missing when they
choose to use them. They make a lot of noise, so it's
impossible to communicate with others while you're working--unless
you want to yell at each other over the sound of the engine.
I also miss the feel of the work itself--pushing the shovel into
the snow, lifting and throwing, or pushing the mower through the
grass, or raking up the leaves and lifting up the piles to put
into bags. I feel much more a part of the work when I don't
have a power engine between me and it, and I enjoy it much more.
Clearing out my
car this morning took about twenty minutes, and Jess and I were
able to talk the whole time about how awesome the snow was, and
how much fun it was going to be to play in it. After we
finished with the car, we noticed a woman in her car having a hard
time getting around the corner in front of our house, so we
cleared the snow off the street, just to be neighborly. And
this girl who just the afternoon before had said that she didn't want to
shovel snow helped out enthusiastically. Had we gone out
there with a snow blower, we wouldn't have shared an
experience. We might have gotten the job done a bit sooner,
but the five or ten minutes we would have gained wouldn't have
been worth the loss of the experience of helping each other out,
working together towards a common goal.
A few autumns
ago, I was out running one day. I passed a house where a man
was out on his lawn with one of those gas-powered contraptions that blow
leaves, and he was clearing the leaves in front of his house
pretty quickly. Someone else was on the other side of the
lawn, putting leaves into bags. They were doing the same
task, but they certainly weren't sharing it. The blower was
noisy and it made conversation impossible. As I ran on, I
passed another house soon, and a father and his two daughters were
outside with rakes, raking up the leaves in the
"old-fashioned" way. They were enjoying
themselves--laughing and joking and working together. There
was no roar of an engine to block their communication with each
other, and it was a great scene to see. I felt bad for the
people in the first yard--they had bought into the idea that
quicker is better, and they had lost the possibility of sharing
quality time working together.
I hope that I
never get so caught up in saving time or doing things in the most
expedient way possible that I lose the ability to enjoy the work I
do, whatever it may be. Somehow, we've come to see any task
or chore as negative, and it has to be done in the quickest way
possible. But what are we losing in the process of speeding
things up? What's wrong with taking our time, relaxing, and
enjoying the task at hand? Shoveling snow? Raking
leaves? Mowing the lawn? I enjoy all of those tasks,
and I make sure that I give myself enough time to do them well and
have fun in the process. Most tasks are only dreadful if we
see them with dread, and I hope that I never lose the ability to
enjoy jobs like these.
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