I got a Valentine in my mailbox last week. I knew it was coming, at least, I hoped it was. Every day for a week, I reached my hand into the dark corners of the black plastic mailbox, anticipating its arrival and finding nothing. Finally, when I had almost given up, it appeared.

Here’s the story: Two years ago, I bought a used car in my neighborhood. It is a bright read Fiat 500 with a white stripe/checkerboard pattern. You can’t miss it. It has an “evil twin” in the neighborhood—the same red with a black stripe and checkerboard. They stand out. Small children get excited when they see my car because it looks like the car in the movie “Cars.” I call it Romeo. It came with Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore” in the CD player. I’m not kidding. So, it’s an Italian love bug.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Jeff and I had bought a huge Pacifica mini-van, thinking we might just take it on the road and camp in it for a while to hide from the virus and crowds of people. Who knew when life would ever get back to normal, after all? We never camped in the van. Vaccines came out. The fear of infection eased.

We moved to Brooklyn. And in Sunset Park, driving is a treacherous sport of sliding past double parked cars while other cars honk behind you. Finding a parking spot requires nothing short of divine providence (Hail Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking place!). None of this is easy with a mini-van we dubbed “Barry White,” after the “Walrus of Love,” who, with his full figure, needed a bigger spot than most cars.

We sold Barry White, and he is now cruising the wide highways of New Jersey, no doubt full of some growing family. Jeff bought an old truck, which suits him. I found Romeo from a Craigslist ad. He lived in the neighborhood. In fact, from the picture, it looked like he was parked on my street! I Zoomed in—that was my street! I walked around the neighborhood, but his number must have come up in the alternate-side street sweeping tango. Finally, I found him and bought him, thinking I would never see the seller again. I can wedge Romeo into the tiniest of parking spots, only bested by motorcycles and Smart cars. It was love at first park.

Two years later, I am unloading groceries at my new apartment, seven blocks from the old one. I pull in front of the door and put my flashers on. Parking on my actual street is a rare and wondrous thing, and today is apparently not my day. A man in a new SUV stops his car behind me and gets out.
”I’m about to move,” I say. “I’m just unloading.”

“No, I sold you the car!” he says. He does look vaguely familiar. “I have a spare!” he says. Spare what? I think—car, tire, oh, key!

“I can leave it in your mailbox. I just found it the other day.” Reader, a car key with remote capabilities costs a lot these days. Romeo is “Pre-fob,” but still, the key is expensive, and I had been living on the edge, with only one key. This was some kind of neighborhood miracle, that eventually, the seller and I would randomly find each other again, that he would have a key. That he would offer to give it to me.

The guy drove off, and every day for two weeks, I checked the mailbox like a lovelorn school girl—nothing. I guessed it was too good to be true. Then finally, on Valentine’s day, there it was—the key, my faith in humanity, my affection for the small town of my neighborhood. Love, love, love.