Two nights ago it was snowing again, kramsnö this time as the Swedes call it. Kram means hug. Hug snow! The kind that sticks, the kind that you lift your face up for and stick your tongue out to. The kind that mashes down just right in your mittened hands to form a perfect snowball; the kind that you can roll about the yard in serpentine trails that lead to a snowman’s body and torso and head.
We’ve had an awful lot of the powder snow, the light glittery kind that sifts and blows and shines like diamonds in any scrap of light. But beautiful as it is, it’s not nearly as satisfying as the real stuff. Anyway, because it was snowing and rather late, I thought I’d wait on the re-shoveling and just deal with the next day when I came home. It didn’t snow very long so the next morning there was only a dusting on the car and the accumulation on top of what we already had wasn’t that much to speak of. The streets in our village weren’t plowed yet, that early in the morning, so driving was a bit of a slippery challenge, especially whenever we went around a corner, but no worries.
As we drove into the village at the end of the day, I was glad to see the streets had been plowed…until we turned the last corner and I saw that our driveway (which is three cars plus wide) was completely plowed in: to the tune of two feet high and two feet wide and 10 feet long. AAGH. I couldn’t even pull the car into the driveway!
Nothing for it, but to park the car in the street, climb over the embankment, fetch the shovel and start digging. I figured there was no point in shoveling the barrier behind the Volvo: Anders is gone for 2 weeks and it wasn’t going anywhere soon, so I just started removing the piled up snow that was blocking MY car’s entrance. Kramsnö is HEAVY. A quarter of the way through the dike, I straightened up, stretched my aching back and yelled over to my next-door neighbor, who was ALSO unshoveling her plowed-in driveway: “I don’t think it’s so pretty anymore!”
Back to laboring: chunk, lift, fling; chunk, lift, fling…and suddenly another shovel was next to mine, also digging in, and I looked up to see my across-the-street neighbor smile at me and say, “Looks like you could use some help!” I was halfway done, so he helped me finish it off, clearing the whole driveway space so that I could get the car up. Wasn’t that nice?
We don’t really know our neighbors well. We all smile and wave at each other on sight and say hello and once in awhile someone will stop and chat for a moment, but nothing much more than that. I know that the people in the six houses in the block across the street hang out with each other to some degree, but we’re not part of that circle. They’re all quite a bit younger with much younger children, and we’re all just busy with our separate lives, I guess. Anyway, I thought it was very neighborly. And I noticed afterward how much the snow was sparkling again.
NOM NOM NOM!: Mini-lollipop PIES