on finding goodness

decency and delight

I may have broken the neighbor's snowblower.

I think when we started it up, something got into the augers and a sheer pin broke.

As I write this, I’ve just come in from attempting to clean up after a particularly large dump of snow that turned quickly to heavy slush due to the rain that followed it.

This was a widow maker storm. The effort required to clean up likely took a few lives in the form of heart attacks.

I had no idea the snow blower was broken until I started clearing the fifth driveway on our street. At 49 years of age, I’m one of the younger people on the street. With that in mind, I gleefully ran around clearing driveways.

The whole family pitched in.

It seemed like everyone was out shoveling. The mood was jovial. We were all working. Cleaver jokes and odd conversations punctuated the afternoon. I left my phone inside. In fact, I neither saw nor heard a phone all afternoon.

Over the last little while, I’ve not spent much time away from my phone, away from a screaming screen…