Salvation! (It comes in many forms.)

When I got up this morning, the driveways still hadn't been plowed and I was beginning to think about 'Plan C,' having already enacted 'Plan B' last night. But I couldn't do much because I had to get ready for the 10.00 HE over at the local assisted living place. Since my car was totally blocked in, I phoned someone for a ride (no problem).

Later, while meeting with our intern/transitional deacon, I heard a welcome noise, snowblowing! The team that comes with our snowplow guy was busy finishing off the ramps (which seem to go on for miles) and stairs. I was happy to have the church freed up again. It really bothered me to have its steps and walkway still covered in thigh-deep snow.

And then this somewhat jury-rigged tractor with big snowblower on one end and tied-on somehow snowplow blade on the bucket on the other, and a hand-made cab arrived from I don't know where. I didn't get to see the man undo the church driveway but it took him two or three passes to do the rectory driveway, easy.

Apparently one of the kids arriving for nursery school this morning, noticing the two places I had hacked through the thick wall of crud and the connecting little path, said to his mother, 'Look, there's a cross.' Uhuh.

I tell you, sometimes some of the most mundane things can make me very happy. This snowplow made my day. It's like the time years and years ago I was cleaning out a house in which a family of four (two teen-age boys, the mother an artist and the father a packrat) had lived. They had dumped rugs on the back porch of the house and it had rained in on them so they were crawling with earwigs. When the garbage truck arrived the first morning, I ran out to ask if they could pick up the eight garbage cans worth of broken hockey sticks, crutches and take up the old rugs. I think they had pity on me because I looked so grubby and because I clearly was so happy to see them. They were very nice and came back after they had made their appointed rounds and took up everything.

So, I have a healthy respect for those people who do the unglamourous, but oh so essential, jobs that keep us functioning.

One sad note about this blizzard: while no human lives were lost, at least eleven barns collapsed under the weight of the snow and so far it is confirmed that 21 cows were killed. A farmer's life already is harsh; to lose their animals in a storm where the snow came too fast is sad.