I had Open Heart Surgery four years ago, and the thing about Open Heart Surgery is that it can come to define you, if you let. People start seeing you differently. At the hardware store and the  vets, the staff always tries to carry the bags of dog food out to the car for me. Bob at the dump never lets me haul a garbage can out of the car and to the bin by myself.

And almost everyone I know warns me not to shovel snow after a storm. This is a complex and sensitive question for me, and it is very difficult to get to the truth of it. Even our electric company sends me e-mails during the storm warning people my age with  heart disease not to shovel snow. I don’t recall asking them about it.

Every time I see my cardiologist – not rarely enough – I ask him if it’s okay to shovel snow. And up here, that is not an idle question. If I don’t help, Maria has to shovel all of the snow by herself, and I don’t feel okay about that. I’m not about to sit in the house sipping tea while she’s wearing herself out. Just now who I wish to be.

My cardiologist, a data man who sees me as one continuing blood test, always smiles and says, “well, don’t torture your heart.” I’m not sure what that means. Sometimes he says I can shovel, but don’t over do it. I don’t know what that means either.

And all of the people telling me not to shovel snow don’t really know a thing about my heart or what i should be doing. I don’t do old talk and I don’t do heart chatter either.

I do shovel snow, every time it snows, and this is a subject Maria treads on with caution, I am touchy about it. She would prefer I didn’t shovel snow, but she doesn’t bug me about it, we give one another space to make our own decisions. Just like I hate her driving off in a blizzard in her toilet bowl of a car, she doesn’t like me shoveling heavy snow, although she doesn’t directly try to stop me.

She is crafty. Sometimes, while I’m dressing or in the shower, she just rushes outside and shovels the paths clean. She’s a fast worker and strong.  By the time I get outside, the heavy work is done. The other day, I snuck out of bed early and went out to shovel. She came flying out and practically knocked me over getting in front of me.

She leaves me along to scrape off the cars and the back porch, maybe to shovel a path to the garbage cans. I don’t have any trouble shoveling, sometimes my angina kicks up and I have to slow down. I think it’s good for me, and there are worse ways to go, should it come to that.

I can shovel snow for a half hour or so and not feel strained or winded. That’s my answer, I think, even the cardiologist doesn’t know that. And I do not torture my heart.

I’ve come to understand that nobody can answer this question but me. I don’t live in the world of alarms and hysteria that marks our interactions with one another in America. I listen to myself. I have an intimate relationship with my heart and it will let me know if I’m going to far.

Illness can either define you, or you can define it. There’s no joy in being stupid, but there’s no joy in living in fear either. I’ll take my chances until or unless I hear otherwise from my heart, the cardiologist isn’t going to commit himself. And most of the people telling me what to do have no idea what they’re talking about, warnings are a reflex in America.

Somebody who lives in upstate New York and can’t shovel snow in the winter needs to think about New Mexico. I’m not there yet. My heart says I should shovel, and that’ s good enough for me.