Ice Scraper

You are in bed, half-asleep, the morning after a snow storm. Which storm? Who knows, they are all one icy blur in your  memory. As you hear the wife leaving, you read the Times on your phone, scrolling through the story today's weather "a day of slush between two snowstorms." Speaking of storms, the wife is kind of storming out, annoyed that you didn't fuel the car on the weekend before the storm.

As the apartment door slams shut, you can literally feel the peace settling back, pressing down like two stones on your eyelids. A few more minutes of sleep....

Your cellphone ringing is a rude awakening, her voice incoherent, muddled with frustration, rage, and... are those tears? It takes a few minutes to realize that not fueling the car was the least of your faults. That spot where you parked near the top of the garage was open, exposed to the snow storm, something you did not realize late on Saturday night when it was the only thing available. The back of the car, it seems, is opaque with a sheet of ice frozen hard - and she tried to scrape it off with the only tools she has, her fingers and a plastic bag. 

As you dress, you try to think of  a solution, considering you don't even own a shovel, let alone an ice scraper. Indoor parking so far has made you soft. Though its freezing outside, you know the temperature inside the car is rising with each interminable second as she gets more and more stressed about being late for work.

By the time you leave home, your phone is already ringing again, a sign that she has already driven down six levels and has been parked outside since a minute or two (though she sincerely believes it to be much, much longer).

The car looks crappy. You unleash your weapon in a tidal wave across the rear windshield and watch it clear like magic. Magic, or two bottles of microwaved hot water.

Now she has turned her back to you, and you know she half wants to smile or maybe even giggle. But with a long and potentially difficult drive before her, the frustration hasn't quite gone away yet, so she will hide her face. She hates being late.

You want to smile too, in triumph, but you haven't quite gotten over your annoyance at being blamed for not moving the car on a Sunday before a storm or not being aware that it was exposed to the elements. She could have moved it herself if she wanted to. So you remain stony-faced.

A few hours later, these pictures reach your inbox. 

"The drive was so horrid, but it's so beautiful here today!" reads the message.

It's not till evening that you tell her about the backup secret weapon you didn't even have to use - her favorite stainless steel spatula