Late this afternoon, I was looking out the front door with Po joining me at my feet when I heard a vehicle approaching, making an odd noise.

Thwappety-thwappety-thwappety-thwappety…

It stopped at my neighbor’s house.

My neighbor’s van had a full-on flat on the rear driver’s side tire.

For a moment, I backed away from the door, feeling a pull to go out and see if I could help her out, and yet feeling like I wouldn’t know quite what to do.

I hadn’t changed a tire in years.

I was looking out the door as the van approached because it was golden hour, and the low sun in the west suggested that the Sandia mountains to my right might turn their trademark incandescent red in within minutes. The timing also suggested that the sun would be down in a half an hour, and I knew my neighbor, a busy single mother, probably didn’t know what to do at the moment.

Alright. Alright.

I threw on my tennis shoes and exited my front door to view the van parked to my right, in front of my neighbor’s driveway, a back side door open, but nobody present. The double door before the empty garage behind me was still up.

When I knocked on the house’s front door, I could see my neighbor through an adjacent window was on the phone.

I went back towards the garage, and then to the van- and then she and her two sons came out.

Looks like you could use a hand.

Sure, yes, if you can.

Do you have a spare tire?

I think so- I don’t know. But I think so.

We dug a little while in the back of the van, and a donut-shaped swell in the back left panel suggested the object we were looking for hid there.

Beneath the swell, we found the jack. And then we found the tire behind it.

The sun was dropping, so I said I’d be right back so I could grab my headlamp so I could see what I was doing.

Her elder son, a high schooler, hung close to us for a few as we got the tire and jack out of the vehicle, and then he went to get his young brother out of the street.

A car drove up, and her daughter, a late teen, got out of it and joined our puzzled group for a moment before disappearing in the house.

I fumbled around, but recollected what I was trying to do.

Loosen the lugs a little before you raise the vehicle.

Find a metal point on the frame that grooves the jack head.

I got the handle attached to the jack, and the cross bar to the handle and I clumsily twisted the handle for a while until the van was far enough off of the ground.

I loosened all the lugs, pulled off the flat, and then mounted the temporary spare onto the wheel.

After rescrewing the lugs up against the rim, I lowered the vehicle on the jack with choppy cranking motions.

In the fading light, the rear tire began to settle onto the road, and as I continued to lower the van, the tire began to well out on the asphalt.

Is it?

It looks like it. It looked fine to me earlier.

Ahh, man.

It’s not all the way.

We’ve never had to use it before.

The spare looked unused, but it was in a 2008 vehicle.

Well, this is better than nothing.

When the jack was removed and the lugs were all tightened down, the flat tire and the jack pieces went into the back of the van.

Thank you for your help! I need to take my daughter to her 6 o’ clock tae kwon do class. Do you think it will be okay?

I think so. Just find a station, and get some air into that- and drive slow.

Car doors close, their garage door goes down, the engine starts.

Text me when you get some air into the thing!

And then the van starts to move, a thin compressed tire holding up the back left side.

Thwop-thwop-thwop-thwop-thwop…

I hope I get a text from her pretty quick, I think, as I go back in my house.

Here’s to trying new things in 2022.