Snowblowing with a baby in a back pack

Snowblowing with a baby in a back pack

It is not that hard really. You just do it. Everyone says, “how can you do it, you are really something.” The snow needs to get blowed and you blow. Just blow. If you can, you try to get up early, and do it before the kids get up and need to get ready. It is easiest that way. If you are too tired, you wake up late and do it with them. Gwyneth was old enough to be in the house by herself, eat her breakfast or draw for a bit. Margot, of course, was just a baby still. So she would come out with me. I bundled her up, put her in the baby bjorn and zipped up my jacket around her. She loved it really. She loved being in the baby bjorn, that was where she was most easily soothed. If she had her druthers, she would have been in it all the time! So into the contraption she went. She snuggled in, and I got the machine rip roaring on. Around and around we went. She had a blast.

In the earliest days I cursed him, his shadow, his selfishness. Cruel cruelty! Injustice. Then I peacefully and thankfully gave that up. It is what it is. This is what it is. Right here right now I need to do this thing. She loves it, she is not complaining, and when she did complain, we stopped. Sometimes I only did half the driveway, sometimes only a strip. Sometimes, I just turned it on, and then turned it off again, shoved it back into the garage, trampled back into the house, unwrapped her, unwrapped myself, and cried. Sometimes I laughed. I began to give myself permission not to finish the driveway. I did the best I could. Sometimes there were ice patches. It is what it is, and this is what it is, right here right now. And then I went to work.