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My wife and I have a dilemma. I'd like to tell you about it.
Our doorbell rang late Sunday morning, and I had a feeling it would be our neighbor Tom. Several inches of snow had fallen overnight and when my wife went out to shovel our sidewalk and the end of our driveway, she took a few extra minutes to shovel Tom's sidewalk too.
My wife has been the designated shoveler in our home for a long time — ever since we discovered, when I reached my 50s, that three hoists of a snow shovel would throw my lower back into spasms of pain that might last for days. Lucky for me, I married someone who is not only good at dealing with snow (she grew up near the Canadian border in northern New York State, where heavy snowfalls are taken for granted) but for whom shoveling is an invigorating form of exercise. Normally she goes to the gym on Sunday mornings; this time she stayed home and scooped snow.
When our younger son is at home during a snowfall, we'll send him out to do the shoveling — and remind him to clear our neighbor's short sidewalk as well. But he often goes away on weekends, so he wasn't here Sunday.
Tom, who is in his 80s and declining health, is no longer able to shovel for himself. But back in the day, he would clear his sidewalk and driveway with a snowblower — and if we hadn't gotten to it yet, he would also do ours. When we would thank him, he would wave it off. With the snowblower, he'd say, removing our snow was no trouble at all. Besides, he would tell my wife, he liked having us and our boys next door. And what are neighbors for, if not to lend each other a hand?
Now here's the dilemma: Tom says he doesn't want my wife (or me, for that matter) to shovel his walk. When our son does his shoveling, Tom is delighted and eager to show his appreciation with a generous tip, ignoring our protests that we want our kids to be neighborly and helpful for its own sake, not for a reward. But once he realized that it was my wife who has been doing the shoveling this winter, he has been scolding us and saying he doesn't want her to do it — not because she's a woman, as we at first suspected, but because he thinks she's too old for such strenuous activity. (She's 15 years younger than he is.) When she points out that she likes the exercise and is already shoveling in front of our house, he sputters: "Well, I can't do anything about that."
So when the doorbell rang Sunday, I knew it would be Tom coming to protest his cleaned sidewalk. And as if that weren't bad enough, he insisted on paying my wife for her good deed. After he left, she showed me the $100 bill he had pressed into her hand and said she was going to figure out a way to return it to him without his finding out. Then we decided to donate it instead to a charity in his honor. Accordingly, St. Mary of the Assumption Elementary School, which is around the corner from us, received a $100 donation on Sunday, along with a note saying that it was in honor of their nearby parishioner (Tom and his family are faithful Catholics).
So, readers, my question for you is: Did we do the right thing? Tom's sidewalk needs to be shoveled and, after all these years of keeping an eye out for each other, it would feel wrong to just leave the snow for him to deal with. On the other hand, if someone like Tom insists that he doesn't want a neighbor's help, however modest that help might be, it feels wrong to override his wishes and perhaps bruise his pride. On the other other hand, if he has no problem with our son shoveling his walk, it seems fair to assume that his pride isn't all that fragile.
My wife and I try to live up to the injunction of "Love thy neighbor" and we have been fortunate in having neighbors like Tom, who are friendly and considerate. But in a case like this, what are we enjoined to do? To shovel our neighbor's snow, or to leave it alone? If you have thoughts, please share them.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe, from which this is reprinted with permission.
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