“Treasure your family and memories!”

Tonight I married Ira Glass. You know Ira Glass, the voice of This American Life, maybe the greatest radio program in modern day Anywhere. If you haven’t listened to it yet, you should start. And then you will become intimately familiar with my new husband and will also want to marry him yourself. You should feel free to want to marry him because I took the liberty to do so tonight and it felt great. I had absolutely no qualms with the fact that he is already married, or that this marriage took place entirely in my imagination while I was supposed to be listening to him speak an introductory piece about a book at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. He stood within a few feet of my beating heart and I swear to you we made eye contact. It was, in that moment, that I married him. And so now you may call me Mrs. Ira Glass. Two. 

 

You are probably asking yourself what Ira Glass and my marrying him has to do with anything. And, quite frankly, it doesn’t. Just a little anecdote to prepare you for the recommendation of this book, a talk about which I heard tonight by the author. She tells the very true story of her search for the family that saved her mother from being murdered in the Holocaust and to hear her speak brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion, including when I asked her to sign my copy of the book and came out with something like this: “Hi, my name is Gina, and what you did was amazing, and I can’t really talk about it,” and then quickly choked back tears long enough to ensure snot didn’t run down onto her hand while she wrote a note in my book. (The note is the title of this post and I think couldn’t be more true.) This means that of the two authors I’ve met personally, who signed books directly in front of me, I have not been able to offer a single moment of coherent or intelligent conversation but instead rely on my social awkwardness and cry. David Sedaris was the first author I ever met and I was so incapable of speaking, he proceeded to have a conversation with his publicist who sat next to him. 

So listen to my weekend! I went to DC! I saw my best friends! I stayed up past midnight! Twice!  There was salsa dancing, homemade pizza, a lounge owned by Thievery Corporation, a clothing swap, a reunion with high school friends, and lots and lots of talking about Brazil. I bought a $45 roundtrip ticket and got to watch a movie, grade papers, sleep, and drink Starbucks. I slept SO well and came back to NYC on Sunday totally refreshed and excited for the week.

And then came today, Ye Olde Monday, and despite the fact that my morning was awesome, my afternoon came crashing down and by the time six o’clock rolled around, I was yet again questioning why I’d chosen the teaching profession five years ago. The Fight or Flight instincts were rising in my blood after a particularly difficult conference in which I felt wholly responsible for one child’s entire future and guilty that I hadn’t taken action sooner. Noticeably absent from the “Fight or Flight instincts” was the “Fight” component, and as the clock struck 6, I was ready to go home and begin writing my letter of resignation. But somewhere, deep down, the calm, lispy voice of Ira Glass welled up in me and I asked the cab driver to please take me to 108 Orchard Street, where not ten minutes later, he yelled at me because the credit card option wasn’t working on his meter and I was “supposed to have money with me all the time!” Apparently I’m not allowed to get into a cab with just a credit card. He freaked out and, after I patiently tried to explain that I’d be more than happy to go to an ATM to withdraw money for him, he continued to berate me for not carrying cash. After I returned from the ATM I handed him a $20, and while I waited for him to count the change, I bent over and leaned into the window. “Look,” I told him, “I’m a good person. I didn’t do anything wrong and I didn’t appreciate that you got mad at me.” And while he continued counting out singles, he mumbled, “That’s okay, that’s okay.” And I wanted to say, “Dude, I wasn’t apologizing. It wasn’t okay what you did.” But coming out with that would negate the good thing I’d just said, the assertion that I was a good person. And that was the only time in my life I’ve said that to another person. And it’s true. I am a good person. 

And I can be a good person and still make mistakes. I can make mistakes and not be held responsible for a child’s future. And I learn from my mistakes. So I know what to do now. 

And so I celebrated my little personal assertion victory with a few sips of complimentary red wine as I wandered around the museum space. I moved aimlessly around the gift shop, picking up mugs with “Tenement” written across it, thumbing through books about immigration and personal memoirs, and finally rested my hands on a flat magnet in the shape of the Tenement Museum itself. And suddenly, raising my eyes to gaze around the growing number of visitors eager to hear Erin Einhorn tell her amazing family story, they fell upon a gentleman’s bespectacled face, salt and pepper at his temple, and loose leaf in hand. The pit in my stomach softened and the frustration of the previous two hours dissipated in the next sip of Cabernet. I could hear the familiar stuttering search for words, his thoughtful pause between phrases, saw him blink twice. And I knew: it would be a beautiful wedding.