This time of year, the UPS drivers around here all have an extra on the truck: someone to dash to the door with the boxes while the regular driver drives to try to speed up the process with all the extra deliveries going on. So it was an unfamiliar face that rang the doorbell, and he was halfway back to the truck by the time I opened the door and called after him my standard, “Thank you!”
The guy looked startled. It amused me.
The second time, a few days later, same guy running, he waved back with a smile.
The third time…
There was a woman I’d known whom I’d thought had moved away years ago after she’d been widowed. She kind of dropped out of sight. Come to find out through mutual friends this week that she did still live here, and I said how much I’d love to see her. I didn’t have a phone number for her.
Monday my phone rang. They had passed the word along, and she was just as glad to hear I wanted to see her as I was that she was still in the area.
Wednesday she came over, and had just gotten out of her car when the UPS truck pulled up alongside it. She was parked right in front of my door and was on her way to it; I had heard her car pull up and was just then opening the door to come out to greet her.
The new guy handed her my package after she told him sure; meantime, I was on my way.
I hadn’t seen her in probably ten years. She’d changed enough I probably wouldn’t have recognized her on the street had I not had any context, unless I heard her voice, and we threw our arms around each other in great joy at seeing each other, made all the more intense for wishing we hadn’t waited so long to look each other up. Hugs! With that package in her hand against my back as she held me, a cane in her other hand.
I glanced up to see both men in that truck. They’d hesitated rather than revving up the engine to go, watching, not wanting to miss that moment. Their eyes were big and their smiles as wide as ours.
As my former UPS guy once exclaimed to me, “I love my job this time of year!”