In the continuing vein of having a “happy not crappy” Lent (see
my post on “Giving Up Lent”) I’m writing about stuff that makes me happy. This
story makes me extremely happy. But first, let me paint you a picture of what
life has been like for the past few days.
I live in East Tennessee. It’s currently unseasonably cold
here. Like, break-out-the-waffle-weave-longjohns, stock-up-on-firewood, freeze-your-nose-hairs-together
cold. It hasn’t gotten above 20 degrees in a week (which for us is cold) and
the windchill has put the temperature repeatedly into single digits. As I write
this—sitting by the fireplace—it is currently 5 degrees with a windchill of -8.
I don’t care who you are or where you’re from, that’s cold. Our people and our
infrastructure just aren’t built to handle this kind of cold.
All this weather has come because of some “arctic blast” which
brought snow with the cold. The same system that’s been pounding the Northeast
quadrant of the US finally made its way south. However, due to a nice “warm”
front pushing up from the Gulf, here in East Tennessee we didn’t just get snow.
We got ice. We got sleet. We got a day of freezing rain followed by snow. This
means everything is coated in ice with about an inch or two of snow on top of
that. School has been closed for a week, businesses are running shortened
hours, and TVA (our electric company) has asked everyone to turn off
non-essential stuff to try to conserve power. It’s been…fun.
Despite all this, my mother has been hard at work. Her
office is also her home so there’s none of this “Oh sorry! I can’t get to work!
I’m snowed in at the house!” business for her. Her car has been sitting in the
driveway for four days where she parked it upon getting home from the grocery
store just before the icy portion of the arctic blast hit. She’s been hard at
work. Her car’s been accumulating various forms of freezing precipitation.
This morning, she was scheduled to leave for a weekend getaway
with her sisters. This would involve chiseling her car out of the glacier it
had become. Two days ago, it took me half an hour to carve my car out of the
ice, a feat which involved a snow brush, an ice scraper, a small ice pick, and
a few swear words. (Side note here: the main roads have been clear for days, and
the sun has been shining, so driving in general is not a crazy death-wish
adventure. Driving is fine as long as you take it slow and allow extra time.
And you’re not trying to take a loaded school bus down back county roads.)
Needless to say, Mom was not looking forward to finding her
car. But here’s where the happy comes in. As I shuffled, pajama-clad, into the
living room sipping my second cup of coffee, some movement caught the corner of
my eye. I walked to the window looking out over the driveway. And there was my
father. Jeans tucked into his boots, ski jacket zipped up to his chin, scarf
wound round his face, toboggan cap pulled low over his ears, looking for all
the world just one red snow suit away from being Ralphie’s little brother (“I
can’t put my arms down!”) painstakingly clearing off my mother’s car. He
chipped methodically away at the ice around the doors, scraped the windows, and
pried the truck loose so Mom could load it. He started the engine and put the
heater on full blast so it would warm up. He even turned on the seat warmer.
It occurred to me, as I watched my father carve a sedan out
of an ice block on a negative-8-degree morning to help prepare for a trip he
wasn’t going on, that this was love. True love was right here in the driveway.
And it was holding a small ice pick.
My parents just celebrated their 40th anniversary
this past December. They bought each other a card and let me take them out for
a quiet dinner, but nothing more. They all but forgot about Valentine’s Day,
and rarely—if ever—do they partake in mushy-gushy romantic stuff. Their idea of “date
night” is to order a pizza and watch DVRed episodes of Blue Bloods and White Collar,
which they do with seemingly tedious regularity. I often roll my eyes at their predictability, and yet, I wouldn’t
have it any other way.
Love isn’t a sappy card or heart-shaped chocolate. It’s
not all passion and romance all the time. It’s not even saying, “I love you”
for the first, fifth, or thousandth time. Love is being able to rely on someone
with almost tedious regularity. Love is chipping your wife’s car out of an inch
of ice on a cold, windy morning without being asked to do so, but doing so
because you want to.
It’s clear to me that 40 years together hasn’t even begun to
quell the love my parents have for each other. This is sometimes mystifying,
sometimes intimidating, and always inspiring. And definitely makes me happy.
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