For Sid.

With all due deference to the place of privilege conferred upon the eyes, I profoundly believe that our actions also serve as true windows to the soul.

An example: Take a look at your to-do list and see what items get done first. Barring true emergencies or drop-dead deadlines, most of us choose to do the things we like best, or detest least, or are the easiest to accomplish or otherwise offer a low threshold of resistance. We do not always attend to those that are most important, even most urgent, or most responsible. In other words, we do what we most want, not what we most should.

Relatedly, I know that no matter how much I protest that I really am feeling better (as I did time and again this week after being felled by a hat-trick of ailments), it is only when I start cleaning up that you know health is on the way. If I say I am better and prove it by going into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea, bad news. But if I go into the kitchen, grab the broom and start sweeping, or grumble while washing the dirty dishes left in the sink, then you know I am on the mend.

Which leads me to the following question: what am I to make of the fact that the first thing I did this morning after but 2 hours sleep (our electricity went out from 6:30 a.m. Saturday til 4:00 a.m. Sunday and there was lots to do to make sure the house stayed warm and the family comfortable and the food didn’t spoil) was bundle up, grab the shovel and clear my front walk? Mind you, the street was only moderately drivable, my driveway was impassable, piled high with snow, and, to state the obvious, we were not expecting any company. But there I am, at 7:30 a.m., battling with the well-packed snow, clearing a path no bigger than the shovel is wide, along the 35 feet or so of my front walk.

(By the way, if you ever wondered how the Eskimo can build their igloos out of snow, the weekend storm offered the perfect answer. You could literally cut the snow into blocks. That is how I shoveled it. In chunks sliced off at the edge, like serving a huge birthday cake. So imagine if the snow were colder and denser and had more time to set. This weekend’s snow would have made fabulous igloo material. And I can attest to its insulating power. We went without a heating source for 12 hours on Shabbat and lost only five degrees of heat during the entire time, no doubt due to the blessing of snow on our roof. Many of us may have smaller energy bills this month because of the snow. Now we just have to worry about it melting.)

My son emerged from his room close to noon, glanced at the shoveled walk that led to nowhere, and asked me, incredulously as only a 17 year old can, “What were you thinking?”

It was a reasonable question. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking; I was just doing.

My husband suggested I shoveled the walk because I couldn’t get to the gym, which didn’t open till midday today (and besides, we were still snowed in).

And there may be some truth in that. But here is what I also think, more altruistically, contributed to my decision: the need for neighbors and neighborliness multiplies during snowstorms.

If we have strength and health, shelter and company, food and a source of warmth, light and security, we can settle in, hunker down and enjoy the show. But if we do not, snowstorms can be frightening, lonely and dangerous. To know that there is someone down the road whom you can count on, someone across the street who will dig you out, someone whose door is open to you should you need them, is to turn a potential terror into a fun, family story for the ages.

I know several neighborhoods, cul de sacs mainly, that have a tradition of gathering in one of the homes on snow days and power outages. Everyone brings something: food, a game,a buoyant attitude, and the group celebrates this time-out-of-time together.

Then there are my dear friends who spent much of the day digging out elderly and sickly neighbors. Their caring and company were as valuable as the tangible results of their kindness. To know you are remembered when least able to be seen, to know that despite being unable to give back you are deemed worthy of being given to, is to feel loved, unconditionally. That is what we all seek. Yet it is hard to show that during normal times. As benefactors, we hardly have the time to give. As recipients, we wonder with skepticism at the generosity of the benefactor. So how wonderful that snowstorms provide both the time and the circumstance that allows this social exchange, this knitting together of proximate lives that too often are lived apart.

My neighborhood is not conducive to personal shoveling. The driveways are too large; the seasonal contracts for plowing have long been signed. But the one thing I can do is signal this intent of caring, of symbolizing the open-home to any who need it.

In the Talmud we read that during mealtimes, Rabbi Yehudah would hang a napkin outside his home signaling to all who were hungry that dinner was being served and there was a place ready for them at the table. We no longer live in such mixed neighborhoods, nor are we at ease inviting such others into the intimate places of our homes. But my shoveled walkway was meant to signal something similar: that despite the apparent barriers society throws up, despite the emotional distance so many of us place between ourselves, it is good to know that perhaps deep down, our homes are always open to those in need of warmth, a bowl of soup, a comfortable chair, a tender heart, and a listening ear.