Last weekend, while parallel parking on 5th Street in the East Village, my tire briefly went up on the curb and then rolled back off, slamming my car down with a loud bang. I got out to survey the damage and saw that my front bumper was hanging off. It was a Sunday, and I called all the garages I could find, but no one was open anywhere near my New York neighborhood. I left the car parked overnight until I could bring it to a garage on Monday.
When I returned after work the next day, I was struck by a sad sight. From front hood to rear tail lights, my black, shiny car was completely covered in icky white bird droppings. With the bumper hanging off and the polka dot paint job left by the feathered culprits, my poor car looked like it had narrowly escaped some apocalyptic disaster.
My mom and her cousin were in the city Monday evening to visit an elderly relative, so I met up with them for dinner. It was the first time my mom’s cousin had been back to the East Village since her father, my great uncle Moe (who grew up in the area), passed away earlier this year. We got to talking, and she mentioned wanting to see the garage where her father worked as a mechanic for so many years. On East 5th Street. Right across from where I was parked.
I hadn’t realized until then. What a coincidence, that my car should run into trouble right across from where my great uncle once plied his trade.
I brought the car to a mechanic that evening. Thankfully, he didn’t laugh at my car’s sorry state. His English was heavily accented, and as he worked, I could almost picture my Uncle Moe, who had a thick Yiddish accent, screwing the bumper back on. It was fixed in less than 10 minutes, and cost $20. I had no time, though, before Yom Kippur, to get the car washed.
On the Day of Atonement, parked at my in-laws’ house, my wife’s 89-year-old grandmother took one look at the car in the driveway and laughed. “I know, I know,” I said. “It’s gross.”
“No, this is good,” she said with a smile. “Don’t you know? It’s a sign of good luck and blessings. And you got a lot of them! It means you’ll have a good new year.”
I hadn’t heard that before about bird droppings, but I’m not one to argue with the matriarch of the family. It did make me think though. Uncle Moe had a great sense of humor… if he was going to reach out, this was certainly a funny way to do it.
I suppose if you’re like me, and you look for Mysterious Ways every day, you’ll start to see them everywhere. But I don’t see it as some silly delusion. Maybe a fender-bender is simply that. Maybe a flock of birds isn’t delivering a message. But if a small everyday experience can get me to think about God, and what lies just beyond what we can see, then I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.
Have you had an everyday experience—something annoying, something embarrassing, something frustrating—only to see it later in a completely different light? Did the experience move you in a powerful way? Send your story to us or share in the comments below.
