A plump frosting of glistening white snow covered the street. It covered the brown grass, the driveway, and the sidewalk. Monstrous drifts rose high off roofs and locked families in their homes. Flakes sped down from the sky to nestle with their brethren, absorbing the world’s sound and leaving a wake of silence. A hearty winter storm used to fill my imagination with wonder and my heart with love of the season. The possibility of snow tunnels, forts, and cancelled school brought excitement. As I grew older, winter remained a season to enjoy while my dad always grumbled at a snowy forecast. I could never understand his sentiment growing up, but at the same time, however, I did not have to worry about snow removal.

Renting a place to live may not be perfect, but the biggest benefits of being equity-free are not having to fix an appliance or other household malfunction and not having to worry about cleaning up after Mother Nature. In non-urban areas of the Midwest, life seems to have a scripted existence for most. You finish some sort of education, get a job, start a relationship, add permanence to the relationship, purchase a house, have a kid or two, and spend the rest of your days dealing with those kids while talking about how other people are handling their lives. During that odyssey, there are various successes, tragedies, and disappointments. If you own a house, tucked between those moments is the removal of snow from your driveway and other concrete areas of your property.

I have always been an apartment dweller. Tucked away in my fortress of nerditude, I could disconnect from the world, focus on doing what I wanted, and recharge. Life was simple. Simple, however, is not how life is meant to be; a script must be followed, but you cannot know the next line until it is ready to be delivered, almost like scripted improv. I met a girl, and we started a relationship. We continued this relationship to a point where it made sense to live together. It is at this point that I moved into her house. This is a house she owns which means there is no handyman, no “free” fixes, no snow removal service. I entered the world of near 100% manual maintenance. I must have been out of my mind, but as the script says, heart trumps brain and rightfully so.

My move into the house occurred in winter. The last several winters have been, overall, mild relative to some of the doozies both in my lifetime and historically. Mother Nature apparently deemed the winter of 2019 to be noteworthy. The first day of the year brought blizzard conditions and a healthy dump of snow. For the first time in a long while, I wrapped my gloved fingers around what I assume was the cold, reinforced plastic of a snow shovel. With each thrust and toss of the shovel I thought, “A lot of people die from the strain of shoveling snow. What if today is my day? What if I took a chance on doing something uncomfortable in moving, and the first day of the year kills me?” My writing here is evidence that I did not, in fact, die that day. The first snowstorm of the year was survived, and the forecast appeared lenient for the next couple weeks.

Two mild weeks passed with little effort beyond adjusting to new surroundings and way-of-life. A look at the extended forecast showed the honeymoon would soon meet an unfortunate end. Multiple days of snow marched steadily across the calendar toward the present, and with each passing day I could already feel the sweaty aggravation of moving the white powder that would eventually just be water anyway. Then, one afternoon, I received a phone call and subsequent cryptic voicemail from a local restaurant asking me to call back. I could not immediately return the call, so my mind wandered across the tundra of thought trying to establish the call’s purpose. Had I left a credit card there? No, I had not lost a credit card and the call was weeks after my last visit. Had i submitted a business card and won a free lunch? No, the card would not have had my personal number. Had I submitted a job application while blacked out and they were calling to schedule an interview? I guess if had been blacked out I would not be able to either confirm nor deny those actions, so maybe. Nothing truly sensible was coming to mind until my brain pieced three random, passing thoughts together during an idle moment. Thought one: snow is coming this weekend. Thought two: shoveling snow is probably one activity I currently hate above all others, and I wish I had a snow blower. Thought three: I could swear I registered to win a snow blower. A candle of hope had been lit, its small, wavering flame burning warmly against the cold anticipation of snow. Once the three thoughts were bound together in an excitable revelation, I called back.

“You’ve won a snow blower.”

I may as well have won the lottery for all the joy and subsequent good fortune those words brought. She was not a large machine, but she was powerful and hungry. I picked her up and within a day she was chewing through powder. The sound of her small motor rumbling as snow was forcefully expelled from her chute was a wonderful winter symphony drowning out the agonized moans of shoveling memory. I no longer feared the extended forecast. I no longer begrudged my girlfriend for luring me away from my easy-living apartment and into a life of manual labor. Winter could kiss my ass while I kicked its.

Yes, winter could kiss my ass, but oh, I had not yet seen its true power. At 6’2″, I am a good height. In the subsequent weeks since I gloated in victory over the elements, Mother Nature vomited out enough snow to reach my waist. Her fury and wrath has proven, on different occasions, to be more than my diminutive yet scrappy snow blower can handle. Winter became brutal, and while snow continues to be moved with great effort, I remain thankful. Without the snow blower, I may have racked up a full day’s worth of shovel time. My heart could have exploded. I likely would have moved back to my apartment and watched the plows do their job. That would have ended my relationship, but that is not in the script. The clever plot twist dropping a snow blower in my lap hours before significant snowfall allowed the next act to continue. By keeping a shovel out of my hands, the snow blower truly saved my relationship.