By Nellie Curtiss …
After the blizzard of December 2023, the skies rested with clouds just floating over the San Juan’s and Sangre de Cristo’s. A home health provider from the county’s options for long term care drove cautiously down the rural road, just off the state highway. The gravel was sometimes visible beneath the snowpack.
Clothed in a pink sweatshirt with faux fur and her denim leggings tucked inside her snug boots, she stepped through the snowdrifts lacing the clients’ rocky driveways. Cheerful like the shepherds probably were looking at the Star of David that faraway night near Bethlehem, she unwrapped her job’s gift for the disabled, one after another that frosty morning. Her offering was to swiftly collect the mislaid shoes, group the clutter, and store the scattered pennies. Remembering the widow with her two small coins to the synagogue, she brought a huge gift to God’s world on this minus zero and blowing winter solstice by helping some with less mobility and resources.
At home, her small baby, now a toddler, and no longer wrapped in swaddling clothes, played with his grandpa, who landed a nighttime job after a long unemployed spell. Her fiancé woke early for his job at a lumberyard. The pastoral family relied on the pink sweatshirted woman with a golden heart. She dressed early to taxi her sweetheart to work and herself to shut-ins throughout the county and past cattle or sheep ranches where quarter horses and alpacas fed on morsels buried under the snow.
Though taxes are set to increase in the New Year, the Christmas woman and her family worked to eat, shelter and thrive in the Valley economy. She shared her gratitude for working as a home health provider, even though she had to give up her nursing education in these tough and short-on-money times.
The moon was tucked away from the daylight as she parted with goodbyes and “See you next week, after Christmas.” But as she stepped down the wooden stairs, her smile swelled with the memory of a shiny moon; and the season seemed brighter than noontime when crispy snows covered the alfalfa, potato and quinoa fields.
Her next client was not far away. As she flew to her destination, tunes on the radio were interspersed with reindeer songs.
Arriving at the one-hundred-year-old building, she climbed the cracked cement stairs to the apartment. Through the locked door she could hear a feisty chihuahua. Hermano, dressed in a red Christmas sweater, didn’t greet her but barked at her until he settled in his mama’s lap.
Dishes littered the living room on each of the end tables and coffee tables. A couple plates were stacked under the tables. Empty boxes of Cheerios and Lucky Charms were found on vacant chairs. In the kitchen, she began washing as she hummed Silent Night. Now humming Away in a Manger, she folded clothes and started a new load of towels. The bathroom was gritty with fallen and dead dirt-colored seed bugs everywhere; but armed with gloves and Clorox, she wiped down the strings of misses on the bowl and the muck buildup around the tub. A swift brush of her soaped sponge in the sink made the vanity sparkle again.
It was Christmas Eve. Time to pick up her love, that carpenter of hers. She wished her client “Happy Holidays,” then walked to her car below the steps.
Turning onto the highway, she smiled and sang O Holy Night then whispered “Merry Christmas,” to the Bald Eagles in the trees as she drove her 2010 Nisan Sentra out of sight.
— Nellie Curtiss is a retired college educator and long-time local columnist. Reach her at columnsbynellie.com or email her at columnsbynellie@gmail.com
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