Stretching My Comfort Zone
A dead hen. A tree fallen on the driveway. Cats with diarrhea. I thought I had it together. Carl had made it alive up to Rangely, Maine to go skiing, but the snow storm there had turned to rain here, and left the trees all around Darwin’s View—and the solar panels—covered with ice. As the sun rose, everything around me twinkled.
It was sad and disappointing to go out to the coop to find Rosie dead. I had hoped she would have recovered but that didn’t pan out.
I put Rosie in a brown leaf bag and put her on top of the stacked wood pile, out of the sun. It was below freezing; I figured I could deal with burying her tomorrow. (That would be today…).
Then I cleared the solar panels by noon with the help of the heat of the sun.
And a tree had fallen across the driveway while Carl was up in Maine skiing for the day. No problem. I wasn’t going anywhere and when Carl got back, he could drive around it.
Meantime, I started getting texts—are you okay?—from others who were out of power. I invited them up, but all were self-sufficient in their myriad ways. And then came a text asking if I needed help removing the tree from the driveway.
Which led me to wonder if I was being a tad too “to the manor born”? Why wasn’t I going down the hill myself to remove the tree before Carl got back? On a walk earlier in the day, I had tried to drag it out of the road, but it was a rather large tree. And my logic held: there was ample . . . ish room to drive around it. And two large boxes of kitty litter had been delivered at the bottom of the driveway that I couldn’t very well carry up. But I could deal with it all tomorrow. (That would be today…)
Speaking of kitty litter, it was around then, as the text suggestions rolled in, that I noticed, first with my nose and then with my eyes, the situation in the kitty litter box. Clearly, one of the cats had eaten something they should not have. My stress level spiked. Could I not hold things together without Carl!? Why not drive down the driveway to get the boxes of litter myself?
Answer: Because there was snow and a sheet of ice on the drive. Not my style. But it only took a minute, after our niece Sarah called to ask if I needed help removing the tree, to accept the fact that it was time to put on my big girl pants and get myself outside of my comfort zone. And so I did.
I told myself I would get into the Tesla because if not now, when? I went out to the garage, patting Rosie on the way. I looked about and found the electric chain saw. I opened the garage door and gunned the reverse. Crunch and bang, I was out!
Carefully, I turned the wheels and headed down the driveway. Slipping. Sliding. Fishtailing and heading to the side of the road. Foot off the gas, but not on the brake. Eventually, I got to the tree and lowered my shoulders away from my ears, unclenched my fingers from the steering wheel. I decided I would not risk driving back up the hill. I didn’t want to end up off-road and in need of a towtruck.
Sarah arrived a few moments after I had figured out how to turn on the electric chain saw and made my first few cuts. I was kind of proud of myself. Would Carl be? Or would he be disappointed not to be able to cut up the tree himself? My intention was to cut enough space for him to just get past the tree. But with Sarah there, with two hand saws that at times worked better than my electric saw (which was apparently baffled by anything thicker than three inches) it seemed weak to stop. So we sawed and lugged and sawed and cleared until the road was open. We doffed our caps to each other and Sarah opted to walk back to her car.
At which point, rather than leaving the Tesla in the middle of the driveway—far more of a deterrent than the tree had been—and feeling rather fluffed as a happy hen, I decided to try my hand at driving the Tesla forward, up and down to the end of the driveway where the kitty litter delivery awaited pick up.
I crept the car toward Sarah, who wisely stepped off the driveway while I fishtailed by her. I made it! And like the adult I am, I packed up the car with the two boxes of kitty litter and the chain saw, and left it there for Carl—who drives in snow and ice—to drive it back up to our hilltop when he arrived home at 9. For my part, I had a lovely walk up the driveway t
How interesting, when one’s comfort zone is very small, to stretch it—not alone, per se, but with help from family and friends.
