I can't say that it was love at first sight, but she was hard to ignore. Unlike most of the other freshman, me included, she didn't keep her head down and hope that she wasn't noticed. Her hand was always in the air, and she had an opinion about everything. She had a self-assurance and confidence that you didn't often see in eighteen-year-olds. She was used to being right about things, and she was so smart that she usually was. Between her demeanor and her long brown hair....and, well, her incredibly firm, D-Cup breasts...I was hooked. I started paying much more attention in class, and doing all the readings. I wanted to get in on the class discussions without making a fool of myself. Frankly, she made me horny and made me a better student. It took me all semester to get her to say yes, but we had our first date just before finals.
College romances aren't very stable, but we were the exception. By sophomore year we knew we were made for each other. We were married after graduation, and we lived in a tiny off-campus apartment while she went after her PhD in American literature and I got my Masters degrees in education and library science. Because we had to scrape by on the money I made substitute teaching, we had to build our social life around things that we could do on the cheap. We hosted game nights and video nights with other grad students. We went to free art exhibits and poetry readings around town. We hiked. We read to each other. And we had sex. Oh, man, did we have sex. We couldn't keep our hands off each other. She loved sucking my cock. She'd wait until the most impossible, inopportune time and suddenly she'd have me unzipped and in her hot little mouth in the blink of an eye. On the highway...in the bathroom at a party...in the spare bedroom at her family's house... If I wasn't in her mouth, I was in her pussy...or her ass. She might have been a virgin when she went off to college, but by the time we were married she was the most cock-crazy little slut I'd ever heard of. And, hey, I sure wasn't complaining!
The only thing we ever disagreed on was where we eventually wanted to live. She couldn't wait to get back to the beach, while I didn't want to live anywhere but the desert or the mountains. Imagine our dismay when we ended up in Syracuse, New York! We'd heard so many terrible stories about the weather that it was the last place on earth either of us wanted to be, but we really didn't have any choice. The position at Syracuse University was far better than anything else Jackie was offered, and I did some long-distance interviewing and managed to get a job as a high school librarian in a little school district about a half hour south of the city. So we packed up all of our meagre belongings from our little Tucson apartment on a hot day in June and drove cross-country in a rented U-Haul.
When we got to Central New York we were delighted to find that our combined income would allow us to buy a house, because we had had more than enough of renting to last us a lifetime. We looked around for a bit and finally found a great deal. It was the proverbial cheapest house in an expensive neighborhood. It was a quiet suburb where everybody kept to themselves and took care of their house and yard. The local school district was one of the best in the state, which was important because we were thinking of starting a family. The house itself was about the smallest in the neighborhood, and the yard seemed smaller than everybody else's, too, but we didn't mind because it was so private. It sat up on a little hill at the base of a "T" intersection, overlooking both streets. There was a steep, winding driveway flanked by large shrubs and huge stones, and the back yard featured mature shade trees. We fell in love, moved right in, and set up housekeeping for the first time in our lives.
Well, we pretty quickly found out that it's hard work keeping up with a house...and expensive. There were dozens of things for which we just hadn't budgeted. The big one was a lawn mower -- I mean, how could we have overlooked that? -- but there were also rakes, clippers, garbage cans, and all sorts of tools and paint supplies that you need to make minor home repairs. Hell, we didn't even have the money to furnish the place! All we had was the furniture from our old apartment, which meant that half of the rooms were empty. I mention all of this as the reason why we never even thought of buying a snow blower. They cost hundreds of dollars, and when you're from the Southwest, you've never had personal experience with real snow, and you're enjoying the mid-80's Syracuse summer it's easy to convince yourself that you can just buy a snow shovel and spend ten or fifteen minutes scraping off the driveway. More about that later.
Aside from all of the hard work and expense, I was also surprised at how lonely it got. My job didn't start until September, but Jackie had to throw herself right into her job at the University. She had classes to teach for the summer session. There were lessons to prepare and papers to grade, along with faculty obligations, University orientation, and the research and writing that we hoped would eventually lead to a full professorship somewhere. She was gone all the time, and I didn't know anybody within a thousand miles. I'd get up in the morning and take a long run, then spend a few hours on the house or the yard. At night I'd try to catch up on things with Jackie if she was around and not too busy, or I'd just take a drive and try to get to know the area. Needless to say, our sex life suffered as well. It's hard to fuck when you're never together. This really wasn't what I expected from our first place together.
When fall rolled around things didn't get better -- they got worse. Now I was busy all the time with my job, too. The air got cooler and crisper, the leaves changed the most amazing colors I'd ever seen in my life, and I was having serious second-thoughts about my marriage. We had been married for over five years and maybe we were just tired of each other? Maybe we weren't the perfect couple after all? I mean, if we really were so in love with each other, wouldn't we have found time to be together no matter how great our careers or how busy we were? Our sex life went from once every week or two during the summer to never. I was reduced to jerking off; thinking about Jackie looking up at me as her hot, wet mouth closed around my throbbing cock. I dreamt about the way she'd look over her shoulder and moan as I worked myself into her tight pussy or ass from behind. I could hardly remember what it was like licking her pussy and clit, or what her pretty face looked like when she came.
After a few brief flurries in November, winter arrived in earnest in mid-December. About two weeks before Christmas a huge storm blew up the coast. It moved inland and directly over the Syracuse area. It was all over the news so it wasn't unexpected, but the reality was beyond anything we'd ever experienced. It started snowing lightly on Tuesday night. When I went to bed (Jackie was staying up working on an article for some journal or other) the ground was frosted with snow and ice and looked just like a picture post card. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and took a quick look out the window. I stopped and stared. It was like God had thrown a down quilt over the whole neighborhood. Everything was covered in drifts of snow. The trees and shrubs were bending over, coated with thick blankets of the stuff. Large branches of the pine tree out front drooped down to touch the ground. The wind was blowing pretty hard, and I couldn't even see much past the halo of light cast by the street light at the foot of our driveway. The road leading away from the house disappeared in a haze of blowing snow.
About 5:30 AM my cell phone went off -- it was a text message saying my school district was closed. I smiled, turned over, and burrowed even deeper under the blankets. When Jackie's alarm went off at 6:00 she was surprised to find me still lying in bed. I sleepily explained that I was busy enjoying my first "snow day" from school, so she immediately reached for her cell phone. Nothing. She dragged herself out of bed, looking stricken at how cold the hardwoods were against her bare feet, and went downstairs to check the TV news. All of the school districts in the area were closed, but apparently colleges didn't shut down for bad weather up here. Maybe it was because the students were mostly on campus already and didn't have to be bussed to class, but she still had to be at work on time for her 8:00 AM freshman seminar. She showered and dressed and placed a quick call to a department colleague who lived about a half mile away from us. Jackie had never driven in snow before and, anyway, it was obvious that I was never going to be able to clear the driveway in time for her to get to work. Her friend agreed to come over and pick Jackie up in her four-wheel drive SUV. I kissed my wife good-bye at 7:15 and watched from the bedroom window as she struggled down the driveway through drifts past her knees. The snow was still coming down as the two of them drove off.
A couple hours later I was sitting in front of the television realizing that I might just be in trouble. The storm was originally supposed to blow over so that it would stop snowing around noon. Now they were saying that the storm had stalled...and it was probably going to keep snowing all day and into the night. If I waited until it stopped snowing to go out and start shoveling I'd never get the driveway clear. We'd be snowed in until spring!
I put on my coat, my hiking boots, and my hat and gloves and went outside. I quickly found out that there is a big difference between the light, fluffy, fake snow you see in the movies and the wet, heavy stuff I was trying to shovel. This was like trying to shovel wet sand, and there was over a foot of it in places where it
hadn't
drifted. An hour later my back and legs were aching, my ears and nose and fingers and toes were freezing, and I'd only managed to clear the first ten feet in front of the garage door. That might not sound like much, but the driveway is twenty feet wide. You do the math.
No matter which way I turned, the wind seemed to blow the snow right into my face and down under my collar. I stopped for a minute to rest, breathing hard and wondering how I could possibly be sweating so much when I was so damned cold. Looking down the length of the driveway I still had to clear, I groaned when I realized I still had about at least 100 feet to go! Ruefully I remembered curling up in my bed early this morning while the sounds of snow blowers echoed up and down the street. My neighbors' driveways were filling up with snow again, but at least they hadn't had to break their backs clearing them in the first place, and they had all gotten out to work on time! As I started in shoveling again, I noticed heavy-duty pickup trucks with blades on the front driving around the neighborhood clearing driveways. Most of them had signs on the sides advertising lawn care and snow plowing. I hadn't thought to call around and see how much it would cost to have my driveway plowed. I tried to wave down a couple of the trucks, but they either ignored me or grinned, waved back, and kept going. They had a schedule to keep, and I wasn't on it.
I put my head down and started shoveling. In about thirty minutes I got to the part of the driveway that curved right and started to slope down to the road. Another couple of shovels full and my feet went right out from under me and I landed on my ass. The jolt went right up my spine and into my head, which started to throb. I got back to my feet, cursing a blue streak and swearing to high heaven that we were going to sell this place and move back south even if it meant we both had to sling burgers. The driveway was covered with a thin sheen of ice under the snow! My shoveling slowed to a crawl as I had to creep forward and brace myself each time I tried to scoop and throw. Another thirty minutes brought me almost no progress, as I spent more time and energy trying to keep my balance than actually moving snow.
It was during one of these pathetic attempts to heave another shovel full of concrete off into the landscaping at the side of the driveway and not fall on my ass again that I caught sight of what I at first thought must have been a snow mirage of some kind. Down at the bottom of my driveway was a tall, lean figure shoveling snow. It was dressed in a black parka with a deep, fur-lined hood, jeans, heavy black snowmobile boots, and thick mittens. It was shoveling like a pro, too. Snow was flying, and when it noticed me staring it stopped for a moment to shout above the wind, "You're doing it wrong!"
