Ice on the Windshield

Snow and ice are everywhere.

It’s incredible and wonderful and terrifying to drive in.

Not because of my driving, but everyone else!

Crazy and insane people!

Yesterday I saw a teenager driving down the street with a windshield covered over in ice.

The whole thing!

Her driver’s side window was down so she drive!

Not even an attempt to clear the ice or snow, just little holes at the bottom of the windshield where the defrost was slowly warming it’s way through.

Insane!

Who are these people?

My community and neighbors, I guess.

I’d say I spend a good 60-90 minutes every morning it snows shoveling and chopping away at windshield ice, of late it seems almost every day.

No point in having a garage…it’s too full to park any cars anyway…just the accumulation of, well, multiple Costco runs where we realized we needed items we’d never buy individually but apparently save money buying in bulk, 29 hefty bags full of clothes from a fundraiser for our son’s lacrosse, a water storage tank I bought that is 500 gallons and we are trying to return because it takes up the entire garage, and the bikes – the bikes!  Nearly 18 years of stuff from living in the same place.

So I chop ice for a living off my cars, without getting paid.

Every morning, that’s my job.

I never said it was my job, it just is.

The ice was so thick today that I chopped it off my windshield to get the truck warmed up, and then began working on my wife’s car.

I cleared it perfectly – snow off first, scrape carefully around the wipers, lift those up, clear them off, chop and scrape away at the rest of the windshield, and clear the hood, roof, etc.

As I got in my truck at 7 AM to take the kids to school, I started the wipers just to make sure they were perfect.

A HUGE ugly streak went screeching and splashing by!

I had done a perfect job, except for this one little shard of ice I’d missed on the very tip of the wiper.

Before I continue with what I did, let’s return to teenager who couldn’t see out of her windshield at all…

We are on opposite ends of a spectrum in terms of our need for vision.

She needs the side window down with her windshield covered in snow, whereas I need not one drip of water or ice anywhere to be seen.

I prefer immaculate vision to give me the best chance of being a safe and comfortable driver, while she needs no windshield at all.

Perhaps we are both crazy.

I can live with a few wiper streaks, but it drives me mad!

She should really stop and wipe some of the snow off her car.

The Promise is to keep our vision clear, focused, and safe for ourselves and others.

Now I get out, grab the wiper, try to pry the ice chunk off with my glove, but it was too attached, so gloves came off and I used my fingernails to scrape it off.

Back in the truck, kids now waiting, I started the wipers again.

Good to go now.

What I found interesting is that I thought I was ready to go, and I could have gone, as I had done a very thorough job.

Yet it wasn’t enough.

One little piece still messed with our vision and view.

How like life that can be!

It reminds me of getting ready for church and the vision of your perfect sabbath, when all hell breaks loose once someone can’t find their left shoe.

Or how about the perfect date with your wife, as you smile and go in for the goodnight kiss, and there’s a salad leaf in your teeth, and a glob in your nostril.

Doing the shoveling and ice chopping was never something I said, “I PROMISE to be outside every morning and have the car ready and warm for all of you, walks and driveways shoveled, pathways salted, and I have ordered the sun to rise at a specific hour to light your way…” 

Nope.

It’s an unspoken promise that I just do.

At the same time my wife does her unspoken promise, helping the kids get ready, lunches made and packed, breakfast ready on the go.

There are people who do all of those roles as a solo act of magical wizardry and still get their kids to school earlier than ours!

We all have our little unspoken promise life, and once in a while the windshield wiper messes up the perfection we seek, and yet, we just deal with it and keep going.

Perfection isn’t the aspiration, doing our best to be our best, is.

Sometimes we need to just clear the way for our vision to be realized.

There are lots of unspoken promises all around us, usually only noticed when something isn’t perfect.

Salad in teeth, glob in nostril, black eye before church…

Someday I’ll get the wiper ice off of that dang thing every single time without fail, and until then, I’ll be ready to jump out of the truck and try to get it right again.

Maybe I can wrap it with the lettuce in my teeth.

What do you need for your vision to be realized?

~ Jason Hewlett

Husband, Father, Writer, Mentor, Hiker

• Speaker Hall of Fame * Award-Winning Entertainer * Coach & Mentor
• World’s Only Keynote Speaker utilizing entertainment, musical impressions, and comedy to Create Legendary Leadership through the Power of Commitment
• Author of “The Promise To The One”

jasonhewlett.com