Getting to my Christmas Concert: The 7,895th Reason My Husband is Hero

My weekend has been filled with rehearsals and Arrowhead Chorale concerts.  I really enjoyed singing all weekend.  We were accompanied by a small string ensemble, a harp, and a hammered dulcimer at various times during the concert, and as with most experiences with the Arrowhead Chorale, I learned a lot.  That’s why I am always excited to keep singing in the chorale:  I simply learn a lot by singing with smart people.  It keeps my brain moving in a way unlike all of the other experiences in my every day life.    I have gotten to sing so many unusual pieces of music over the past seven years.

All that aside, on Friday evening I donned my fancy clothes and actually did my hair.  (That only happens approximately three times per year . . . for Arrowhead Chorale concerts).   That evening Dr. Peds was staying home to watch the boys.  I was leaving for an early call time to the concerts, and he was going to drop the girls off at the church where the concert was taking place closer to the starting time for the concert.  Because I was doing the dishes and helping the kidlets practice the piano, and because doing my hair always takes longer than I expect because I just don’t ordinarily bother with hair, I ended up leaving exactly when I planned to leave and not a moment sooner.  I swished my way through the kitchen at a brisk pace, threw on my coat and mittens, and found my worn out black shoes that I wear to choir concerts.  I was out the door.  I was in the van.  I was backing out the driveway right on schedule.  Not a moment sooner.

Because we have lots and lots of snow, all the streets in my neighborhood, narrow on a normal day, are even more narrow now because a tall plow grade of snow lines up the edges of each street.  Where two cars can normally squeeze by, only one can fit now, even though the streets are still open to two way traffic.  That makes for some very interesting driving experiences during the winter.  Even worse perhaps, is backing out of our driveway.  It too is more narrow and no matter what you do, it feels like the visibility as you back up is hindered by the excessive depths of the snow.  Once you finish backing up out of the driveway, (on a good day you might not run into the snow bank)  the street is too narrow to turn the car to drive forward, so we have to sort of back into our neighbor’s driveway across the street to go forward.  The two driveways don’t line up exactly, so that  gets tricky too.

On Friday night I backed up, and I thought I had gone far enough into the neighbor’s driveway.   I was worried about backing up farther and hitting the plow grade.  Judging that I had enough room to go forward, I did.  And somehow I completely miscalculated and ended up burying the front of the van into the plow grade on the opposite side of the street.  I don’t even know how it happened really, but the car was seriously stuck.  More stuck than I’ve ever been except for maybe that time late at night when I was a teenager and drove straight into a slough that had flooded and  covered a road up on my way home from babysitting.  Anyway, the front of the van was high centered, and the snow was packed around the front tires.  Packed.  It took me five seconds to realize I was in deep trouble, and the van was blocking a street horizontally.

I ran inside, panicked, gasping out that I needed help with the van right away, and Dr. Peds came running.  The threw on a coat and grabbed a scoop shovel and went to town on that plow grade.  He shoveled as fast as he could, and it is NOT easy to shovel through the bank of snow the plow leaves.  He was throwing snow right and left, and he didn’t yell at me once even though I was standing by, pretty helpless in a formal gown with nicely groomed hair.    He may have rolled his eyes a few times and asked in disbelief what I could possibly have  done to get into this predicament.  He tried backing the car.  He tried driving the car forward.  He did some more shoveling.  And more still, and finally the tires fell down off the snow.  After still more shoveling, they  could chew through the snow and turn,  and we were back in business on my street.  I hopped right in the van and actually arrived (frazzled) at the church where the concert was JUST in time to warm up and rehearse a few last things with the choir.

My husband can shovel snow at an amazing rate, and he’s pretty gracious too.