Dignity

The cab driver gestured to the back of his SUV.

"Yeah, I think you're right," I said. "It fits."

He shook his head. We weren't really speaking the same language.

He began gesturing again, pointing at me, then the back of his SUV.

"Ahhh," I said. "Oh, you want me to sit back here...with that?"

I waved my hand at the desk we'd just purchased and crammed into the back-back of his car, eliminating his actual back seats.

He nodded vigorously.

As a kid, I loved riding in the back-back of our Jeep. It felt like an adventure, even if we were just going to the grocery store. 

But, at 31, I have standards. And dignity to maintain. You know, the kind of dignity you maintain while standing on Broadway trying to hail a cab with an Ikea desk you bought from a girl who just graduated from college.

I looked at Tiffany. She shrugged and headed toward the front seat.

I crawled into the back-back underneath our desk.

"Yes, ma'm," the cabbie said, pleased.

Crossing Manhattan takes a long time on a Friday night. Twisted up between the legs of our desk, I caught up on lots of emails and posted a status update on Facebook. I even texted Tiffany, concerned at the hardship she was facing up there in an actual seat, with air conditioning.

"Look in your rear view mirror," I typed.

"What am I supposed to be seeing?" she answered.

"My hand!" I responded. I was waving my hand like a maniac through the crack between our desk drawer and the right rear door, trying to catch her eye.

"Can't see anything," she wrote. "Tinted windows."

I sighed and turned around to find the man in the car behind me staring through our rear windshield, which was not, like all the other windows in our cab, tinted.

I gave him a little wave. 

Dignity be damned.

Home Sweet... Wait a Minute...

Of all the things I don't do well, being wrong is what I'm best at being bad at.

Unfortunately, I'm wrong a lot.

Even, it turns out, about which apartment building I belong in.

We live in a dark brown brownstone on a street with approximately three other dark brown brownstones (and other light brown ones, pinkish ones, greyish ones, etc.). For the first few months, it was easy to tell which building was ours (Apart from looking at the address. That's too easy.) because there was a bike chained up out front. But, once the weather improved, whoever owns that bike must have gotten on it and decided not to come back because all that's left is the lock.

Sometimes, I go up the wrong stairs and even into the wrong vestibule before I realize I'm not actually home.

Take, for instance, the other day when Tiffany and I got into a fight on our run.

It went something like this:

(heading out of Central Park onto a certain street)

Me (exhausted): "Why are we going this way?"

Tiffany: "Why does it matter?"

Me: "Because my way is faster."

Tiffany: "But why does it matter?"

Me: (silent treatment)

By the time we made it to our street, I was a few angry paces ahead, so I was first to slow to a stop and walk (read: stomp) up our stairs.

"Where are you going?" Tiffany called, as she walked past me to our real stairs.

Why does it matter?

Candy-Coated Is Forever

It's official.

Tiffany and I are getting married.

Yes, yes, I know. It's been months since I proposed and put a ring on it. But that all seems a little flimsy now that Tiffany's cousin put a picture of us on hundreds of pink and white M&Ms and served them at an engagement party in our honor.

Forget all that stuff about melting (in your mouth, not your hands), nothing says forever like having your joint-likeness on pieces of candy-coated chocolates.

I didn't even know engagement parties existed until I became engaged. I'm not sure if that's because the few married friends I treasure didn't have engagement parties or if it's because the few married friends I have treasure me so little they didn't invite me to their engagement parties, but, in any case, I did not know what they were.

I knew about showers, bachelor/ette parties, and weddings.

At first, I was nervous about the engagement parties our families threw for us (we wanted to get married to throw a party for all of them!). It turns out they're wonderful. Mostly, when Tiffany and I tell people we're engaged, all anyone wants to know is when we're getting married. Never mind that it took eight years to get where we are.

But an engagement party is all about gathering to celebrate the incremental marital accomplishment of asking (and answering). We're lucky to have so many people we love and who love us back cheering us on.

Also, I feel especially grateful to have leftover bags of candy with our faces on it.

Coconutty

If you've never had an older brother, you probably can't understand how it is that I came to be stuck about 25 percent of the way up a palm tree on Saturday.

But perhaps you will enjoy the story anyway.

The simple answer is my brother and I were celebrating Mother's Day with our mom in Miami and we all wanted to drink some coconut water... you know, the kind they devote entire shelves to in grocery stores.

Brandon says he drinks the magic stuff a couple times a week, whenever he finds a tree low enough to shake down the fruit.

We thought we had found such a tree on one of our walks down the beach.

"Maybe you can climb up, Rebecca," Brandon said.

"I don't know," I hedged, shading my eyes as I peered up the branch-less trunk.

"Yeah, it may be a little too tall," he agreed.

If you have an older brother, my post could end here. You know Brandon's response is the answer to how I came to be stuck up the tree. If you don't have an older brother, here's what you missed:

If an older brother says you can't do something, that means you have to do it. Even if he's right. Over the almost 32 years Brandon and I have shared on the planet, this rule of siblinghood has caused me to be: much too far out in the ocean, accidentally upside down in the air on snow skis, and generally much tougher than I otherwise might have been.

On Saturday, it was obvious to us all as soon as I began my climb that I could not make it up the palm tree. What was apparently less obvious was that I also could not get down.

"Oh well," Brandon said, starting to walk away from the base of the tree.

"Help," I said.

But it was too late. I had already begun the painful slide down, scraping off what seemed like crucial parts of skin on my inner thighs, inner calves, and the tops of my feet.

But I didn't cry. And if you don't know why, you obviously don't have an older brother.

The Orange Door Is No More

I wish Tiffany and I were the kind of people who had the time or talent to turn an orange door into a piece of art. Or the kind of people who had an apartment big enough to display such a piece of art. But we're not. Maybe someday.

Anyway, shortly after Tiffany dragged the orange door up to our apartment, we put it outside on our patio until we could "do something with it." But instead it just sat there. Through rain. And snow. And more rain and snow. We made one half-hearted attempt to peel away the layers of paint and then we made a judgment call. We decided the door had to go. We needed space for flower pots. 

"It's kind of sad," I said, as Tiffany leaned the door up against a tree outside our building.

"Yeah," Tiffany agreed.

"Such a great keyhole."

We stood for a few seconds, and then we turned and went back upstairs.

A few days later, we were on our way to dinner. We passed a woman and a man walking together. I noticed the woman was staring intently at something. I turned and saw the orange door leaning up against a wall on someone else's patio.

"Hey," the woman said to her companion. "That's my mom's door."

She took a picture with her phone.

Tiffany and I smiled at each other.

The next night, someone put four flower pots out on the curb. 

We took them home.

Invisible Stuff

When I tried to step down from the linen closet shelf to the sink, I knew I was in trouble. 

"Help me, Tiffany," I called.

"Seriously?"

I considered my options. I was perched like a koala bear straddling the door jam, several feet off the ground. In one hand, I held on for dear life. In the other, I clutched the bar of Irish Spring soap I'd climbed up for. 

"Yes," I said. "Very seriously."

Tiffany and I have less room for stuff in our new apartment. And all the room we do have is extremely vertical, meaning people like us, who stand 5 feet 3 inches off the ground, can't see it or reach it, hence my unfortunate climb (Tiffany eventually rescued me by lifting me out of the linen closet).

Our storage woes cause all sorts of other problems too.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Target to stock up on:

Irish Spring

laundry detergent

razors

tampons

dish washing soap

face soap 

face lotion

only to find when Tiffany koala-ed up to put the stuff away that we already had extra quantities of:

Irish Spring

laundry detergent

razors

tampons

dish washing soap

face soap 

face lotion

that we'd forgotten about. 

So even though we have less space for stuff, we actually have more stuff because we can't see any of the stuff we do have.

Donut Money

I knew as soon as we stepped onto the train that we'd picked the wrong car. There was a woman standing in the middle of the aisle and she was bundled up in ten or twenty coats and her skin was like leather and her eyes were black dots, hating. As soon as the doors closed, she began screaming at the top of her lungs. Something about JFK and then:

"You can take your donut money and shove it up your..."

"Did that woman just say donut money?" I whispered to Tiffany.

"Yes," Tiffany whispered back. "Yes, definitely donuts."

I've never had specific donut money. I've had laundry money and lunch money and fun money, which my mom sometimes slips into a card that she mails me with a little note, like: "Get your hair done!" or "Go to the movies!" or "Buy an ice-cream!"

But never donut money, although I do love donuts. I tried not to make eye contact with the woman, but the further I turned my eyes from her face, the closer she got to me physically.

"I don't want your donut money!" she spat.

I changed tactics, trying to express my understanding of her position with a slight nod of my head. Who would want my donut money, if I had any?

She turned away from me suddenly.

"F*#$ you and you!" she screamed, wheeling around in a circle. "I know who killed JFK! F*#$ you!"

"Did she just say..."

"Yes," Tiffany hissed. "Shhh."

Suddenly another passenger began to sing, right at the angry screaming woman.

"Oh god," I whispered.

"F*#$..."

"HALLELUJAH..."

"JFK..."

"PRAISE JESUS..."

"DONUT MONEY..."

"LORD LIFT ME UP..."

But then the lord did something better. He let Tiffany and I out at the next stop.