Parking Karma

The dumbest place to be midday is at a shopping mall the week after Black Friday. Four weeks before Christmas and you’ll be lucky to escape with your life, let alone score a parking space. There was even a cautionary blurb on the news one night, stating stats around parking lot crashes at this time of year. There is no good will toward anyone when parking is at a premium. I do most of my shopping on weekday breaks; fortunately, I work downtown. I don’t have to go anywhere near a mall to get it done in December.

So why was I sitting in the Tiguan at noon on the last Friday in November? Going to the mall, of course. Aside from the annual holiday hubbub, Ter and I have December birthdays to contend with, which makes errant trips at inconvenient times something of a necessity.

Ter, who was at the wheel, rubbed her hands together and murmured, “Parking karma, parking karma,” beneath her breath. The traffic light turned green. We had to wait while four other cars turned ahead of us, but we cleared the intersection as the light changed to amber. We landed in another turn lane, this one leading onto the rooftop parking at the mall. I observed that people were leaving (good sign) and people were streaming in (bad sign). “No problem,” Ter said, undaunted.

Having surrendered any sort of control over my life the day before—but that’s another story—I took her at her word.

We almost always park on the roof of Toys R Us, but this time that was likely to be impossible. Glancing over the sea of shimmering cartops as we drove into the fray, there seemed little point in going the other way, though I reckoned our chances were better in that direction. Still, Ter followed her usual course, pausing at the end of one aisle to watch a silver Chevy slowly reversing from a space. My burgeoning astonishment at this unforeseen opening was abruptly dashed when Ter serenely drove on. Perhaps she’d spied the grille of a gargantuan SUV aiming for the same space from the far end of the aisle, or maybe imagined the space too tricky to navigate, else she would have gone for it.

She turned down the next aisle instead—a route we never take, incidentally; I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve driven along that short stretch. I looked to the left at a solid line of bumpers. Not much hope here, I thought.

Ter suddenly blurted, “Is that a parking space?”

I was still looking to the left, where a set of hash marks along the food court’s skylight could maybe sorta kinda have been considered a parking space if we didn’t get caught, and was about to say, “I don’t think so,” when I realized Ter was looking past me to the right. There, next to a mall service entrance and practically bathed in celestial sunbeams, was a space big enough to hold a Hummer. And it was empty.

I couldn’t even speak. I just sat with my jaw hanging loose as she nosed the Tiguan into place and cut the engine. “How do you do that?” I finally demanded.

She grinned at me. “Someone just said to me, ‘turn right down here’, so I did.”

“Praise your guy Jesus!” I exclaimed.

This is an exceptional example, but in truth, parking spots happen to Ter all the time. She simply accepts that she’ll find one where and when she needs it—and I rather suspect when she can’t find one, it’s because I’m with her.

Honestly, for someone who steadfastly believes in magic, I’m perennially surprised when it occurs in front of me. Yet miracles happen everywhere and every day; they exist whether or not we see them. We naturally expect to see them more at this time of year than at any other, however, and this one was most definitely a Christmas miracle. The first of many, I hope.

Season’s greetings,