Snow day
This morning as I woke up I heard my upstairs neighbor outside shovelling. He is the son of the landlord, who lives on the third floor, and he is responsible for shovelling when it snows. I could hear the shovel, and I lay in bed wondering how much snow had fallen as I listened to him talk to his small son who was apparently following him around. The son is perhaps three and very cute.
When I finally get up, I walk out of my room to discover that the world is white and beautiful, and the neighbor is already around the back of the house, shovelling next to where my car is parked. So I open one of the living room windows and tell him that if he leaves the shovel where I can find it, I'll shovel around my car after I clean it off. And he says that's fine, and he'll leave it on the front porch outside with the other shovel and I can use either one.
I shut the window and stand there for a minute, watching the path around the back of the house get magically longer as he moves on, and then out of the corner of my eye, from the area I can't see, just below the window, right against a house, I see a tiny orange shovel brandish itself at my car and proceed to clear a space about one foot square on the very front corner of the hood. I keep watching and eventually, the owner of the tiny orange shovel appears from where he must have been squeezed up against the side of the house. He cleans all along the front edge of my car, about a foot onto the hood, headlights, other side. He cleans a little farther by leaning over the hood and sweeping his arms around as if he were making a snow angel. He moves around the far side and I lose sight of him for a while, until he appears around the back, still working. He tries to squeeze between the back of the car and the bushes next to it and gives up. I look away and when I look back, I can see one corner of the tiny orange shovel peeking out from the snow on the roof of the car, higher than he can reach but so tantalizingly close that he tries anyway for a while. Eventually he gives up and goes, crying lightly, to fetch his father, who comes over from his path-making and liberates the tiny orange shovel from its mountain home, while asking, "How did it get up there?"
When I finally get up, I walk out of my room to discover that the world is white and beautiful, and the neighbor is already around the back of the house, shovelling next to where my car is parked. So I open one of the living room windows and tell him that if he leaves the shovel where I can find it, I'll shovel around my car after I clean it off. And he says that's fine, and he'll leave it on the front porch outside with the other shovel and I can use either one.
I shut the window and stand there for a minute, watching the path around the back of the house get magically longer as he moves on, and then out of the corner of my eye, from the area I can't see, just below the window, right against a house, I see a tiny orange shovel brandish itself at my car and proceed to clear a space about one foot square on the very front corner of the hood. I keep watching and eventually, the owner of the tiny orange shovel appears from where he must have been squeezed up against the side of the house. He cleans all along the front edge of my car, about a foot onto the hood, headlights, other side. He cleans a little farther by leaning over the hood and sweeping his arms around as if he were making a snow angel. He moves around the far side and I lose sight of him for a while, until he appears around the back, still working. He tries to squeeze between the back of the car and the bushes next to it and gives up. I look away and when I look back, I can see one corner of the tiny orange shovel peeking out from the snow on the roof of the car, higher than he can reach but so tantalizingly close that he tries anyway for a while. Eventually he gives up and goes, crying lightly, to fetch his father, who comes over from his path-making and liberates the tiny orange shovel from its mountain home, while asking, "How did it get up there?"