The Space Between

Our neighbor takes a rest before he finishes shoveling his driveway. 

This snow is becoming slightly overwhelming.  

This morning, my roommate grabbed her jacket and strapped on her boots to come out and help me get my car out of it's frozen puddle.  An hour later, we miraculously peeled it away from the layer of ice it had been lodged in, with one special ingredient: kitty litter.  I feel sorry for my car and can't imagine this heeing and hawing is good for its health; I'm scared it will hurt itself at some point - that the accelerator will shoot right out of the car during one of these rock-back-and-forth sessions.  Clouds of smoke from the burning rubber pour out each time.  The smell tells me that this just isn't right.  It's too much.  

As I sat in my kitchen, unwinding from a nerve wracking failed attempt to skid to school, I began imagining what the world used to be like, before cars and plow trucks.  Were the horses able to handle the roads better, or the walkers?  Updike captures some of those older sounds here in the short story Clarence from In the Beauty of the Lilies (p. 43):

"The clatter of horseshoes and iron-tired wheels on cobblestones was mixed with the receding friction of a Broadway trolley car and the occasional snuffling crescendo, punctuated by sharp coughs of frustrated combustion, of the horseless carriages, or motorrigs - Ford Model Ts and Oldsmobiles in the main - which the more advanced citizens of Paterson were inflicting in ever greater numbers upon the old uneven, dung-strewn streets.  The young century was thronged with a parade of inventions that amused Clarence when little else did, and the presumptuous, ragged, hopeful sound of a doughty little motorrig brought a ray of innocent energy, such as messenger angels would ride to earth, into his invalid mood.  The hoarse receding note drew his consciousness to a fine point, and while that point hung in his skull starlike he feel asleep upon the adamant bosom of the depleted universe." 

I like the part about "dung-strewn" streets - it reminds me of the advancements we've made, but the crap that can come with them.  Our inventions have helped us move around everywhere, but that distance can become hard to handle, too.  

The further I venture, the bigger the spaces between me and my world become; trips to family become plane rides or long drives and I find myself dependent on these machines to connect me with those I love or the work that I do.  Today no way to get to school and this past November, no way to get to my grandmother's funeral in Scotland.  It's tough to be torn between places, yet it's become a normal part of our lives: everyone and everything is everywhere.  I leave pieces of my heart all over the place - and it really hurts sometimes. 

As I write this, I can hear the plow guy and his compadres outside working on the snow and ice in our driveway.  So glad to know we are not alone in this, at all.  

Our driveway looks so much more hopeful now.