I wrote this some years ago. But after this winter, when our yard has looked like this:
I'm feeling like I did the day I wrote it,
and I thought I share it.
(I confess that it's a bit over-dramatic.)
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So I am partnering with the sun, helping it to melt the last stubborn lumps of white by spreading the snow in a thin layer. A note of irony greets me at the edge of the lawn: My husband labored many hours, moving this very snow from the driveway into piles in the yard, and now I am putting it back where he found it, hoping that my warm-hearted confederate in this business will banish it from the concrete within hours.
I wonder if the neighbors are thinking I am foolish. They cannot be expected to understand that this is no vain exercise, but rather a pivotal battle in the annually recurring conflict between winter and me. As I work, my task takes on heroic, almost epic proportions. I am a warrior, a nearly vanquished soldier returned for one last duel. Months ago I retired to my stronghold, conceding my enemy’s superiority, occasionally emerging, dressed in battle clothes and armed with a shovel, to stage a weak resistance. But mostly I have waited, confident that in time, my opponent would weaken. And then, I knew, the reserves would come.
So now, with a mighty battle cry in my heart, I have entered the fray in earnest. I work barefoot, daring the small frozen chunks that jump up as I comb them with the rake to strike my feet, and they do. Let them come. They fight valiantly at the end of their life, but they cannot hurt me now.
I hear water dripping off the roof; the sound of approaching victory. I glimpse a spot of red on the end of my rake and stoop to investigate. I have scraped up a ladybug, and it is now dead. The ladybug was not my enemy, and though I am saddened by this unexpected civilian casualty, my work continues. How many ladybugs has the snow itself killed, I wonder?
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