No steel plow had denied us our glory. No cease of snow made our work less arduous. We were accorded the full opportunity of laboring long and hard to express the freedom of movement we had been taught was a right of citizenship to be defended at all costs. We must liberate our vehicles for which we toil endlessly in stuffy offices. We must uncover the precious asphalt that we have allowed to cover our farms and fields, with its white stripes, scraps of paper, stains of oil, crushed cigarettes and other leavings of our busy lives.
We talked, we joked, we cursed, we pretended it was not all that bad. What we disliked but would not discuss was that the deep snow made us stop whirling in the small circle of our lives long enough to take a look. What did we see? A dozen different stories, one for each wielder of the shovel. A dozen collections of good and bad, happiness and sadness, hopes and regrets.
The first car backed slowly from between walls of snow and turned to make a run for the street. It moved off, slipping and sliding, but eventually escaped its snowbound prison. We all cheered and raised our shovels high in the air. We would be whirling soon again in those small circles we call our lives. We would put away our shovels to sit in stuffy offices, pace in lonely malls and pull coupons from payment books.
