Good mittens and good neighbors

Thanksgiving weekend brought a lot of snow to most of our state. For once, the forecast was on the money. Darn it.

One of the joys of living in an apartment building is that someone else gets to worry about cutting the grass and removing the snow. So, what was I doing last Saturday? I was pitching in with snow removal, that’s what.

There I was in Cedar Rapids, hanging with my daughter, son-in-law, and Grand One, looking out the picture window at the inches of snow. I had taken a warm coat, but I had forgotten to pack boots, so I was happy to stay inside and keep their dogs company.

Oh, this white stuff. The joy of childhood, and the bane of adulthood.

How was it that, as a kid, I could play outside for hours with one-ply knitted cotton mittens that got soggy almost immediately? This was years before Goretex coated our gloves or Thinsulate coddled our digits. We grew up in the wet, smelly, dark ages with floppy, drippy hand coverings.

Perhaps it wasn’t hours spent outside. Perhaps fickle memory is playing one of its tricks. Perhaps the mittens of old served as unintentional timers that drove us inside to warm up and dry out. 

Being warm and dry sounded good to me as we watched the snow fall on Saturday, but it was not to be. The kids had gotten into skiing a few years before Grand One was born, and my daughter produced fancy ski pants, an extra set of boots, and honest-to-goodness mittens. For me.

These were not the sort of mittens where the tips flip back so that you can expose your fingers. No, these were bona fide mittens that also happened to have a set of gloves attached inside.

Where were these mittens when I was a kid? I might have been able to play outside all those hours I once imagined.

THUS BUNDLED and attired, there was no way to back out, so we three adults trudged outside to do battle with the white stuff.

I helped as I was able, not that I’m all that able anymore. My small attempts at scooping confirmed that it is indeed best that someone else removes snow at this point in my life. It also confirmed that, even with my Luddite-inflected view of the world, I am grateful that snowblowers exist.

The kids are good neighbors, and they scoop out Marvin-Next-Door, so I did my little bit to clear around his front entrance. I may not be able to lift great weights, but I am thorough. I mean, if you’re going to do a job, do it right. For me, that means clearing up the snow crumbs.

“I can tell you grew up in the Midwest,” Marvin said. “You know how to scoop.”

If he’d only known me 40 years ago, when my back was strong and unbothered. At least my hands were warm and dry, and that’s saying something. Marvin then handed me three oversized calendars to pass along to the kids, who passed them back to me.

We got the snow cleared and we did a good deed, but the best part about being outside was watching Grand One being pulled around in the snow by his mommy. It made for a great picture on my son-in-law’s phone.

Speaking of pictures, anybody need a large calendar?

Joan Zwagerman has begun to make peace with the big snowfall, but it has sure put a crimp in  her biking to work.