alreadyknewblog

I was balancing on the hood of a Suburban in the back corner of a Walmart parking lot in northern Utah.

Snow was falling heavy enough that it was soaking my hair.

Tears silently running down my cheeks.

My husband was sitting inside the warm car with our three daughters.

I had never changed a windshield wiper before.

The day before the trip, I worked ten hours.

Between meetings, I scheduled a mobile oil change.

Not because the oil needed changing.

Because road trips required fresh oil.

With a dealership-issued mileage window sticker to prove it.

At least in our house, they did.

I scheduled a mobile detailer.

Not because the car was terribly dirty.

Because dirty cars led to criticism.

Full tank of gas.

A half tank would mean I missed a step.

I rushed home.

Prepared detailed instructions and food for the pet-sitter.

Packed for all three children.

Packed for myself.

Packed for my husband.

ipads charged, snacks bought and packed, movies downloaded.

Loaded everything, for everyone, into the car.

The windshield wiper snapped an hour into the drive.

And with it, every single hour I had spent trying to prevent exactly this moment.

What I remember most isn’t the windshield wiper.

It isn’t the snow.

It isn’t even the crack that appeared in the windshield later from the aggressive “help” I finally received.

What I remember is looking through the glass and seeing my daughters watching me.

Did they see a mother who forgot something?

Or did they see a woman desperately trying to prove she deserved kindness?

Did they learn that mistakes require punishment?

Did they learn that love is conditional?

Did they learn that comfort belongs to some people while responsibility belongs to others?

For years, I believed the lesson of that day was that I needed to be more careful.

Better prepared.

More organized.

More attentive.

Less forgetful.

Less human.

It took me a very long time to understand the actual lesson.

There would always have been a windshield wiper.

If it wasn’t that, it would have been the oil.

If it wasn’t the oil, it would have been the packing.

If it wasn’t the packing, it would have been something else.

The problem was never the windshield wiper.

The part that still hurts isn’t standing on the hood of that Suburban.

It’s knowing my girls were sitting in the back seat watching.

Watching a woman work herself to exhaustion trying to earn gentleness.

Watching a man withhold it.

Watching both of us behave as though that was normal.

The windshield wiper eventually got replaced.

The crack in the windshield eventually got fixed.

What took much longer to repair was the belief that safety was something I had to earn.