Shoveling the Driveway After A Terrible Snow As Night And The Temperature Descend Into A Cold Fit For The Dead

I hold the snow shovel in my corporeal and gloved hands. The snow is terribly deep. It's beyond pushing down the drive and into the road and has to be taken one shovel at a time. It's nothing that can be done quickly. There is a process to it. A slow process. I lift a shovel-full and throw it high over the wall feeling it throughout body, mind, maybe even heart and soul. It's all too much, I think, this snow that I have to clear. I couldn't possibly. Then I dig the shovel in and throw it again.

Dad leans reluctantly on his old metal shovel with the wooden handle he wrapped in black tape where it began to split forty years ago. There's a chunk out of the metal edge where he tried to pry something up with it. Maybe ice. Maybe something ridiculous. The shovel and he have come back looking just as they had the day before he died or whatever day it was that he and I last shared this life. He would have preferred to come back younger, stronger, but the living bring back the dead as they wish, never the other way around. Dad excepts this, accepts what I've given him.

He has taken up smoking again. Why the hell not, his expression says as I watch him strike the match and cup it close to his face where it shines in his glasses. Then the smoke hides his eyes and blows out past me. I can't smell anything and wonder if it's just his breath floating on the frozen breeze like mine. No, I think. It's certainly not that. Right Dad, I say. He wipes his nose with a gloved hand. That old leather glove is worn, stained with grease and oil. He touches the top of the old knit hat he still wears. It's one I cast aside at ten as unfashionable. Nothing wrong with it, his shrug says. I exhale and it's as if he has blown a cloud of smoke across me.

I survey the driveway I've cleared, the snow left to shovel. Percentages, that's what I'm calculating. Dad looks. He thinks in fractions. I say, about two-thirds to go, my breath blowing hard away from us. He nods. The afternoon sky has gone dark and the snowstorm is giving way slowly to falling temperatures. We're headed down below zero, frigid, breath-stealing cold.

Dad finishes his cigarette and tosses the butt in a pile of snow I've thrown over the wall. It doesn't fizzle but disappears. He holds the handle of the shovel like a tool but uses it as a staff, something to hold him up or hold him here. I tell him to rest, just take it easy, Dad. Be here with me.

I dig in the shovel and throw snow high up out of the driveway. Again and again. Dad stands and watches. There's no hurry. The streetlight at the foot of the drive flickers to life as I throw another shovel of snow up high over the wall. The wind catches it, blows it back at me, right through where Dad stands. That snow blinds me. I'm so tired. I rub my eyes with the back of my glove and open them again worried, anxious that I'm alone. The night is growing so cold and though the streetlight illuminates all the work left for me on this Earth it has put out every single star in the heavens. I dig the shovel in and throw it hard against the blowing wind.

Copying Passages

from Devotion by Dani Shapiro, 159-160

The great yogi B. K. S. Iyngar once wrote, “The moment you say ‘I have got it,’ you have lost everything you had. As soon as something comes, you have to go one step further. Then there is evolution. The moment you say ‘I am satisfied with that,’ that means stagnation has come. That is the end of your learning; you have closed the windows of your intellect. So let me do what I cannot do, not what I can do.”

I was in no danger of self-satisfaction. I had arrived at an understanding of all I could not do, which felt like reaching the edge of the world. Once I realized that the things I had habitually used to prop myself up (the new pair of shoes, the good piece of news, the great review, whatever) were as fleeting as a sugar rush, they lost their luster. I had spent years—my whole life!—taping myself together like so many torn bits of paper, bolstering myself up with ephemera. What was I supposed to use to hold myself together, now they were gone? Oh, what’s that you say? The idea is not to hold myself together at all?

It felt as if another step, and I would free-fall. Another step, and who knew what would happen? There was no stopping, no pausing. Truly, there was no comfort. How long had I been at this? A year? Two? It was no time at all, in the greater scheme of things, and here I was. I had arrived—in the words of Thomas Merton—at an abyss of irrationality, confusion, pointlessness, and apparent chaos. This, Merton believed, was the only point at which faith was possible. But most days, I felt the chaos without the faith.

I had entered the closest thing to a solitary life that was reasonable for me, given both my nature and my circumstances. I spent my days alone. I didn’t answer the phone. I sat at my desk, walked the dogs, got p and stretched, sat back down. I lit a fire in the fireplace, unrolled my mat, practiced yoga. I sat on my zafu and meditated for fifteen minutes, twenty. I went back to my desk. Eventually three o’clock rolled around, or four, and it was time for Jacob to come home from school. I didn’t know how to transition from one to the other: from hermit to mom. From silence to homework. From inwardness to snack-making and Honey, how was your day. I struggled to get inside myself, and then—as if trapped there—I struggled to get back out. (159-160)

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I have for many years typed things that other people have written in order to have become part of me. As a kid I typed lyrics on Mom's college typewriter. For years I've typed poetry into the computer. Now it's a chapter of Dani Shapiro's Devotion today). I wanted to remember and have all those lyrics. I needed to be able to keep the poems I had begun to love. And now, more often than not and certainly in the case of the Shapiro quote, I want to take the ideas in and weave them into my DNA. Typing these things, copying them out like some medieval scribe imprints them on me. I am made a better person, someone with more ideas who yearns beyond what I even thought possible.

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Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it. (Goethe, qtd in Devotion, 236-237)

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In the back of my notebook, working from the last page forward until I meet up with the writing I have done starting from the front and working back, are quotes from the things that I read. I've often thought I should collect all these, type them into my computer, maybe create a database. Of course that would be too much work. It would take away from reading more books, writing more words, being a person in the world. Still, the idea lingers until I remember that I have already copied them down. It is enough. Perhaps I'll return to them but probably not.

Devotion is a book to which I can imagine returning, but I probably won't because I haven't yet read everything she has written. Inside the copy I borrowed from the library was a check out receipt from another patron who on the first of May last year took out three of Shapiro's books. I imagine that person and the image comes to mind easily, looking very much like me or however a person looks when they are seeking something and, holding three books in their hand, feels that they are well on their way, that some kind of understanding is inside those pages. They rush home, find a quiet place, and open to page one.

I can't wait to read Inheritance. I have so much to learn.

Penultimate

It's the second to last time I'll grade the Regents exams in this job. Penultimate, I say to myself as I get out of my car in the school's parking lot. It's a minute and a half before I'm required to be there. I've gotten good at timing these things so I'm not early or late. Arriving late might lead to discipline and more contact with management. Arriving early would have me here longer than absolutely necessary. Nearly eighteen years on this job I've learned what does and doesn't work out. Penultimate, I say again. Today and again in June, then I'm done.

Inside, maybe waiting to see who shows up when, is the principal, the third in two years, borrowed from another division which he also has to manage. I say hello to him and the vice principal. The vice principal is a guy with whom I get along. I used to work here in the afternoons and he appreciated my ability to take care of things in the classroom, to keep most of the kids from roaming the halls, and to connect with kids. He gives me a hearty good morning and says that Regents grading is down the hall in the usual place. Thanks, I tell him. I say good morning to the principal, calling him by name. He almost nods. Oh well. I go down the hall wondering. Is he stressed out, stretched too think like the rest of us, freaked out by Regents exams? Or is it me? Could be. I'm not exactly beloved by management.

Whatever. I've got Regents exams to grade. I go down to the room and the usuals are there. The scoring leader who wishes I was scoring leader. The guy who has my old job. A couple others who are nice but don't factor much into my thinking. It's really just the scoring leader, the other guy, and me. We know the routine. We've done this together going on nine years. We make it work.

The morning begins as always with waiting. Tests haven't been delivered. Not everyone is here. There's no hurry. We can grade the tests in a few hours and never run late. There's coffee and chit-chat. I wait a few minutes before telling them that I'm on my way out. They look curious, maybe suspicious. I'm not coming back next year, I tell them. The other guy nods. He gets it. He asks what I'm going to do. I smile. I don't know. He nods again. He gets this too. The scoring leader says, you're not really, but changes tracks and says she can't blame me. She laughs and says, but now you'll never be scoring leader! I nod. It's a heavy blow, but I'll bounce back.

Grading the Regents isn't a terribly intellectual activity. It's straightforward and comes down to organization. It takes a full day only because it's poorly organized. The three of us are grading machines by now. The youngsters have to be taught how to grade. There would be more old-timers but management can't hang onto teachers. Most of the teachers we train to grade these things are gone in two or three years. Many years we start if not from scratch close enough to it to slow things down. That and no one listens to how things should be done.

Years ago I wrote a plan for collecting and organizing the exams each of school. It would require an extra five minutes at the school but save us at least an hour. The scoring leader suggested some revisions and took the finished plan to management. It was good stuff and would have also worked for other departments. We sent the plan and never heard back. The scoring leader, a few years back, asked if we should send it again. I probably smiled. I may have laughed. We decided against it.

Once the tests arrive we do the prep work. This is easy for the scoring leader, the other guy, and me, but takes a bit more for the newbies. By the time we are ready to grade I've been in the building ninety minutes and am wondering again why we show up on time. I don't love having my time wasted even when I'm on the clock and getting paid. Then again, I'll do this one more time and be done. The thought doesn't make my complaints disappear but they sure do shrink. I ask the other guy if he's ready. We read most of the essays because we can and it's just easier that way. He says, sure. We're always ready.

The scoring is uneventful. The newbies do their part. We do ours. Once the tests are all graded, I start going through all the test papers checking that we have all bubbled, initialed, and printed our names on every test. I worked through each school's stack of tests, correcting the mistakes, counting to be sure all the exams are here, putting them in order. Once checked, I straighten the stacks and get them set for the scantron. The scoring leader asks again, how are you not the scoring leader? I give her my usual look and she shrugs.

The other guy mentions how detail-oriented I am. The scoring leader says, you're so careful about all the little things. Mr. Organized. I remember the instructions I wrote for this process which were lost in transmission or discarded out of hand. I like systems that work. I know how to create those systems, implement them, and help people own them. I just want to get it going. I'd prefer not to be scoring leader. I'm happy to be of use to her. If I organized the whole thing, she would happily administer it and we would all work more deeply and in more satisfying ways.

I've had these thoughts every time. Think Charlie Brown trusting that Lucy won't pull the football away. And every time I end up on my back with Lucy looking down calling me a blockhead. Rats.

I had a thought this time that we should list the schools on the white board and cross off each section that's done. It would help us track where we're at and what needs doing, saving us from searching for what comes next. I mention it to the group and they agree we should do that in June. Then I think, one last time, man, and you're free. It's a good feeling. I lean back. The tests are graded but we have some more waiting time. The system is backed up somewhere down the line. That's fine. It's early and we'll be out soon enough. I think penultimate again, repeating it in my head, counting the letters. Six consonants and five vowels, eleven letters in all. This penultimate time is almost over. Next time will be the last. By then I'll be days from my last in this job. I suppose such a thing just has to be called the ultimate. It sure is starting to feel that way.

Middle Of The Pack

I've read a lot of writing this weekend and am happy to report that some of it sucked. Most of it was great — Dani Shapiro, Debbie Urbanski, Henry Wismayer, a couple of friends writing email and letters — and taught me things I need to know, but some of the writers (all of whom I'll refrain from naming) did terrible work. I'd like to believe they meant well but it was as if they didn't understand anything about writing for an audience. Some truly awful stuff.

The saying of which has me self-conscious about writing this. Nothing like setting myself up for a fall.

My point isn't to revel in how bad those pieces were or complain about them getting published. I'm not ready to be that envious yet. I've got time to indulge deeply in that deadly sin. I'm petty but not about that sort of thing.

I'm happy to have encountered all that suckage because it places me in the middle of the spectrum. I've always known there are writers with abilities so advanced they are indistinguishable from magic. Their work sometimes leaves me wondering what the hell I'm playing at in this business, but mostly I accept that there are gods walking among us. Reading the tripe I've been served this weekend I smile because, hey, I write less terribly than that. Score!

The middle is a good place. It gives me hope of moving up. It reminds me where I've come from. And being the middle sure beats the crap out of even thinking that I'm on the bottom.

I'll keep reading the best stuff I can find, but once in a while the worst writing is music to my ears and ego. I say, bring on the crap!