What’s your name?

Have you ever thought about your relationship with your mail delivery person? With someone who comes to your doorstep almost every day, knows your name, and knows who lives with you too?

I vibe with ours. I love this guy. We’ve greeted each other for nearly five years with a grin, no exaggeration. He’s always bopping with large headphones and each time I see him, I make assumptions about what he’s singing along to, imagining he’s listening to the same hip hop we blare in the afternoons when the kids are done with school.

I think about how intimately he knows me. How he sees me curled up on the couch with a book when he approaches the picture window in the front. How he’s seen me through multiple pregnancies, asking every so often when that baby would come, or if my parents were coming to help. How he has seen me leading PD from my laptop balanced on the couch arm in the living room. Does he make assumptions about me, too?

Half the time I shout something ridiculous out the front door, sometimes when he’s nearly at the gate.

“You going out of town soon? You haven’t taken off yet since the pandemic started, right?”

He’ll keep walking, nearly at the bus stop, then turn to shout back at me, “You know it! I’m headed to Georgia soon.”

“Double mask!” I shout back and smile, shutting the door. Do years of these little interchanges, strung across time, amount to a friendship?

He knows that Ryan and Ryan, who live above our garage out back, get so many packages we sometimes roll our eyes together.

“Not for you,” he told Ehsan at the door yesterday, handing him an Amazon box to toss in the yard. He smiled at me knowingly. I grinned again and shook my head, wondering what kind of vitamin supplement or essential oil Ryan ordered this time.

He knows when all of our kids have birthdays, because packages start arriving with their names on them too. He knows when I’ve had a rough day, because sometimes when I run to the mailbox I will overshare as he heads back to his white mail cart, which he always leaves at the bottom of the front stairs, spouting something ridiculous like “What am I supposed to feed them tonight? Again! I swear I can’t make another meal.” He’ll shake his head and smile at me, raising his hand in the air in half salute, half fist-pump, like a sort of camaraderie. Sometimes I hear him at the door telling whichever kid opened the door, “Don’t bother her now, just give her this mail, mmkay?”

I appreciate this guy immensely. He’s always there, rain, sleet or hail – just smiling and keeping it real, shaking his head with what I swear is a deep knowing even as my running commentary turns slightly political. He engages in little lines of conversation too, complaining about double shifts, or explaining why he’s missed a few (a lot) of days, as ours is the last house on his route and the truck has to be back in before dark.

“Yo can you hear the protests from your house?” he asked me this summer.

“Definitely,” I had said back to him, “Like a soundtrack.”

Yesterday, everyone in Chicago was wearing t-shirts and shorts, overcommitting to the day’s high temperature. It was sunny and everything felt hopeful. When I saw him approach our stairs I ran to intercept the mail, grinning at him like always.

“Hey what’s your name?” I blurted out, barefoot and already in what my family calls “home clothes.”

He smiled. “Armon.”

“Armon?”

“Yep, that’s it, Armon,” he said, backing down the stairs.

He was crossing our lawn when I shouted, “That’s a good name!”

I knew he’d turn around when he reached the corner. He always does. Armon raised a hand, gripping a rubber-banded letter bundle, and pumped once before shouting thank you. I would like to think his gesture meant solidarity.

Slice of Life, Day 23