With that much work in front of you, you just keep shovelling...

The first big snow of the season came the weekend prior to the Solstice, I remember because Rebecca called on the first day of winter to ask if I'd seen the smashed mirror on my car. Some drunk kids vandalized it and fucked it all up. Rebecca is the woman who lives across the hall from me, and I'd only just given her my number the day before when we met for the first time in the street where we live. I met Leslie the same day, she is the single gal that lives in the efficiency on the second floor landing. The three of us, single gals, came together that weekend and helped shovel one another out.

Today I met the gals again on the street. You could not even see my car, it looked instead like one big abysmal drift. The ladies had already cleared much of Rebecca's car and were fast at work on Leslie's. I grabbed the third shovel, and got to work. About an hour or so later, when I was staring at the four foot mound around mine, I found myself immersed suddenly in the joy that comes from solid, hard work. My muscles felt awake and strong, and it made me more aware of the sun on my face and the sweat under my purple snow cap. I worked my shovel under a big load, wiggled it a little, braced my feet and bent at my knees to sturdy myself and lift the pile. I tossed it, the hunk of snow dirty on the bottom from the dirt cleaned loose in the melt, on to the top of an already six or seven feet hill. It fired in me a new determination to finish the job, even though today was way harder than the first big snow because of the additional amount, and because of the ice frozen in the wall compacted by the plow.

Another twenty minutes passed, and I was sweating, and breathing pretty hard. I was getting fatigued. And then, leaning my weight on my foot lodged on the top lip of the metal shovel, I realized something really important. The kind of really important that only matters to you and the measures you periodically take of your own longings and your own heart.

I dont talk about it much, because I am looking forward these days, much as possible. But 2009 was an enormously difficult year for me. I was brand new in a brand new job, responsible for a geographic area that covered several hundred miles--two counties plus the county where the local Community College I work for is based. The job was under new management, very poorly managed before, and I had enormous messes I was charged with fixing. I moved off the huge farm that I lived on, and left the man that I lived with for 6 years. Right after, I got in over my head with a too hasty romance with one of my very best friends, and hurt his heart and mine, and worse, ended up losing the friendship as result. The same weekend that my best friend rightly ended it with us--the guy I lived with for 6 years let me know he was moving off the farm. So for an entire month I worked the crazy job, and in every second of my spare time I helped him sort through and part with six years of our life together, a lot of belongings. After that long of domestic life, I came out with just a few boxes of stuff. I spent the summer just sort-of stunned. Quiet. Sitting for long, long times in the sun and swimming in the ocean. I did a lot of inner-work, lots of old emotional stuff, unloaded lots of old baggage and sorted through a lot of stuff I never wanted to have to look at about myself. I got close with my family again. I relied, and was moved again and again, by the consistency and tenderocity of my amazing friends.

There were so many days that started in tears, or sobs, really. Me beseeching myself to get up out of bed, or off my meditation chair, and keep going. So many days that I didn't think I could possibly get through til the sun went back down. I know it sounds dramatic, but that's just how it was. That's what happened, over and over, and that's how it felt. It was pretty awful, but I somehow I kept showing up, day after day, doing what was in front of me, doing what had to get done. The Choptank River, her being there and the way she sounded without audible sound, kept me going. Somehow.

When I moved to Easton I just kept telling myself, this is it, up these two flights of stairs, a couple more trips, a couple more carloads, this is it, keep going keep going keep going. It was just Amy that helped me move in. The first week I didn't even unpack, or have a bed, I literally just sat around dazed, smiling a lot. I was so happy to be only three minutes from my office, surrounded by life downtown, and most of all in a space that was mine.

It was my third move in less than a year.

So there I was today, shovelling. Fatigue setting in, the sun priming me, heating the line of sweat between my skin and longjohns. And here's the thing, and it probably sounds silly, but it's what happened. It never occurred to me give up. Not once.

Silly, maybe. But it's a spirit thing, the difference in me that I saw. I was flagging, sure, but knew that I could easily keep going, no matter what. I am looking forward right now, looking in to my future and intending to go after the things to me that mean the most. In this book I am reading, Shantaram, one of the characters says that we have to earn our future. She likens it in this way to love, says that that's what love is--a way of earning the future.

I'm not sure about that, other than to say that caring for myself, showing up again and again to my life, on behalf of me, has earned me in my own meaningful way, my life. It's such a settling sense, a ground inside on which I have found that is mine, and defines at once not just where, but how I stand. It was so gratifying today to look up, the blue sky, the white sun, Rebecca lifting and hunnh-ing with each shove of snow, Leslie wiping away sweat. I was so proud of us. I'm so proud of me.