Last week, I caught my landlady, Katarina, in the foyer of our building. She was attired in her style of Croatian refugee chic; i.e. an odd ensemble of mismatching patterned cotton skirt and top, a kerchief, and gold chains. I caught her trying to spy through the small slits of our three-flat’s brown painted metal mailbox.

“You got mail?” she asked, looking at me quizzically.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon. I was scooting out of the building to run a mid-day errand. I don’t always come downstairs at this time of day, so I don’t always notice when the mailman comes. But, as I thought about it, I remembered that just the day before, I came downstairs at around four and got irritated that no delivery had been made yet.

“Yesterday too,” Katarina went on without being prompted. “I come look. No mail. And the day before. It comes late. Maybe six o’clock. Maybe our mailman – he’s sick or on vacation.”

I love our mailman. Our regular mailman, that is. He says hello if I see him on the street. He slips my Netflix envelopes under the hallway door instead of trying to cram them into my mail box compartment, which is seriously too small. I have been living in this neighborhood for most of eighteen years, and I think he has cruised School and Melrose and Henderson Streets, pushing his cart, and trying to get a pass from household hounds, most of that time. I think he knows everyone in the neighborhood. Some years, I slip him a Christmas card with a crisp twenty in it, and some years, I seem to forget to gift him. I don’t know why. I don’t know his name. But I feel like I know him. He’s my regular mail guy.

So, of course, last week, when I was missing the constancy of his visits, the convenient timing of my mail deliveries, and the neat way he leaves circulars and advertising trash in a neat pile in the corner of the hallway, knowing the papers would end up in the recycling bin, I realized how much I missed him; my regular mail guy.

Yes, there’s been sayings and songs about this sort of thing before. In a “Yellow Taxi” filled moment, I shook my head while my inner voice sang the chorus. “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

Last week, I realized how much I missed my mailman. My regular guy. The one who knows me and knows Katarina and my upstairs neighbor Tom. He knows us all by our delivery preferences, if not by name. He always rings my doorbell when I get a package. He’ll place a large flat envelope right under the mail box rather than taking a crush to fit approach. He keeps up his sense of humor no matter what the weather. If he sees me parking my car, he’ll rush to get to my building so the timing of his cart’s arrival in front of my three-flat coincides with my arrival at my front door. He’ll hand me my mail if he sees me.

This week, during the early afternoon, I kept my eye out for him. If he was out last week, I hoped it was just for a vacation. I hoped he didn’t get transferred or something. I hoped his absence last week was just a blip in our longstanding relationship.

“How are you doing?” I asked when I caught up with him at the doctor’s house a couple doors down. He smiled.

“I missed you last week,” I went on. He smiled again. Broader. “Can I take your picture?” I asked him and whipped out my small Canon Power Shot.

Maybe he thought I was crazy, but he humored me. He let me snap his picture. I felt really good. I feel really good about talking about him in this blog.

Letting your regular guy know he’s special is no small thing.