I love my car mechanic.
We all call him Paul. Everyone I recommend him to loves him. He has had his garage for at least three decades if not four. The first few times I went in, he was short and gruff, but always fair and kind.
Then one day I went to start my car, and apparently I had parallel parked onto a nail the night before and we had a flat. I called the garage and he walked over a few minutes later, patched the tire no charge. He looked at me and the baby in the back and simply said, “No charge today.”
I went and got him an apple cake at a local diner.
He mentioned a few months later at an oil change that he loved the apple cake and where did I get it?
I told him the Dining Car in the Northeast. He was surprised he didn’t know it. We swamped a bit about diners and went back into our day.
Then a few months after at the next oil change he noticed my address had changed and recommended a nearby sushi restaurant. He showed me photos of their platter on his phone. Surprisingly, it was an amazing authentic little Japanese joint I would have overlooked. I went quite often.
A few years after that when we had a major snow storm that spilled over for a few days and my car wouldn’t start, I called to cancel my scheduled maintenance. He walked us through heating up the car-hood lock with a towel and a hairdryer on the phone so I could get the battery jumped, and not be without a car.
We found out both our families loved Ocean City, NJ and he had a granddaughter my son’s age. He’d let my son pick a tootsie pop when we went in for service from his private stash.
I recommended him to every single mom I knew. They all called and thanked me, saying it was the first car shop that they felt like they were treated like a person. I used to be able to walk to his shop. Now I drive 40 minutes there to get my oil changed, and so do two of my family members, and many of their friends. He laughs and calls himself, “one of the family.”
A few days after a really lovely book release, feeling a new chapter of my life begin, I called Paul to schedule my new tires. The last oil change he said to me: “No big trips, or, you know, get your tires changed before the cold. No rush,” he swiveled in his chair, “just plan it.”
It’s a kind way to speak to people.
I called Paul one morning, and after seven years I trust him so completely I said, “I'm ready for tires.”
“You want me to call back with a quote. Or you asking me to pick?”
I hesitated, and said “Well, I was going to go with what you-”
“Yeah,” I could hear his swivel chair squeak. “You want me to get you the tires you deserve, like I’d pick for myself? Not the cheapest, but not the most expensive, something good. Something you can count on.”
“Yep, that’s the ones.”
But the phrase, “the tires you deserve” hung in the air. They might have missed me on another day, but they were a marker. We weren’t scraping it together anymore—whether physically or emotionally. We weren’t going to over-give for no reason or to prove unnecessary worth. There was none of that. It was an expectation of goodness and its reliability, sweet and simple.
It was a marker of this new expectation that we deserve goodness—trust it, share it, spread it. Don’t miss the whispers. The sages are everywhere, hidden in plain sight.