Thanksgiving

I wasn't raised in a part of the country where it snowed. Shoveling isn't something I associate with a chore. I like it. I like it in the same way I like ironing. When it's over it feels as though I've accomplished something.

I found myself this past winter in Minnesota, in a suburb of Minneapolis. I'd been staying in a rented house when the blizzard hit. It had snowed all night and when I woke up at five the driveway and walk were covered in four inches of snow. I went out and began to clear the walk. It would be a few hours until dawn and the plastic scraping against the concrete was hushed and insulated. I found a cowboy hat in the house and used it to keep the snow out of my face.

I lit a fire later and watched the snow keep coming. It was almost noon when I shoveled again. I almost couldn't tell where I'd been earlier that morning. I had to keep the driveway clear, though, because it was time to visit George.

I'd met George a week before at the nursing home almost a mile away from my rented house. He sat in the dayroom with his friends and looked out the window at the snow and at five watched the news. He was tall and rangy with a long neck and happy, birdlike eyes. He was missing the index finger on his right hand. He'd played baseball for some team in southern Minnesota when he was younger. A pitcher. Straight out of the eighteen nineties with his long legs and slight frame. "I could throw them all," he said. "Curve, knuckle, spitballs. I had an eighty-six-mile-an-hour fastball." He'd been scouted by the Cardinals. "I coulda played for those guys, too." But he'd been at work one day at the envelope factory when his hand slipped and the paper press severed his finger. He kept pitching. "My curve ball was never the same, though, after that. Used to be I'd toss that ball with such a nice curve it'd come right back into my own mitt." He chuckled. "But it never was the same."

I'd created tall banks on both sides of the walk and driveway. I preferred to shovel when it was dark. It was meditative to hear only the scraping and my breath.

I saw George on the last day of the blizzard. He'd only recently come back to this Home, he'd tried a stint at a larger facility, but didn't like it. His roommate swore too much. Plus all of his friends were here. His wife would come often. His son, too. I asked if got to visit home much. He said he'd just had Thanksgiving at his son's house. It was a good meal. I asked if he ever went home to visit his wife. His eyes became very bright and he had to blink a few times, then wipe them. "No," he said, "I think if I ever got to go home, I wouldn't ever want to leave and come back here." He was quiet a while and looked out the window.

I never saw George again. I had a ticket out of town for the next morning and he died a few months later. I haven't been back since. The snow was petering out, but it still covered my old tracks and I went out to shovel the walk and driveway in the quiet very early morning for the last time. It was still dark out. I thought about George and his mangled right hand and his suddenly bright watery eyes and a home. I have none, but where is a place I can imagine of such happiness that I hesitate even to visit for fear of never wanting to leave again, and how do I get there?

Bozeman, Montana - 11/22/07