Married people

We attended a birthday party for my son in law’s aunt yesterday; she was turning 75. For some reason, it was among his large extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins doing the electric slide on the dance floor that it finally came home to me that he and my daughter are now well and truly married. We’ve been included in their family gatherings upstate for some years now, but this was the first one where my daughter was no longer the girlfriend, but the wife, an official member of their clan. And by extension we were too. 

My girl and her love have been house hunting all month, as their current lease ends on September 30, and the rent on their one-bedroom apartment will go up exorbitantly. “We’re paying for all these building amenities that we’re always too busy to use,” my daughter said. They’ve decided they are over shiny new apartment complexes with roof decks, gyms, media spaces, and event rooms. They want something older, simpler, with flaws that lend character, like a floor-through in a pre-war brownstone. Well, they may have found exactly that, a two-bedroom garden apartment in the Brooklyn neighborhood where they were hoping to land. 

Competition for apartments in the city being as fierce as it is—with bidding wars on rent pushing some places out of reach of mere mortals—my two reached out to the listing agent and preemptively submitted an application as soon as they saw the posting. They arranged to view the space yesterday morning before driving upstate with us. They did worry that the agent and owners might invite a bidding situation, thereby pricing them out of the running. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. While we were at the party, the owners, who occupy the brownstone’s upper floors with their sons, texted to ask if my daughter and her husband would come by to meet with them today as a step toward offering them a lease. 

This afternoon’s meeting apparently went well. The owners are a lovely French Canadian expat couple, and he works in finance like my son in law, and she works in marketing like my daughter. It’s not quite a done deal yet, but it looks promising. The apartment is not appreciably larger than my daughter's current place, but it's charming in an old world way, with an extra bedroom, whitewashed brick walls, an updated kitchen and bathroom, good natural light, and a private back patio that looks onto a garden—a rare thing in the city. It's also on a great brownstone street in Park Slope, for substantially less rent than they've been paying. I'm praying their new situation turns out to be harmonious in every way.

My daughter told me something the other day that I rather enjoyed. I had observed, not for the first time, that she and her love seem to manage big, complicated tasks with little conflict. She said, “Did I ever tell you about our ministries?” No, I responded, intrigued. “Well,” she said, “we each have our ministries. I am the minister of travel and Noel is the minister of finance. I was the minister of wedding planning and now he is the minister of moving. It doesn’t mean either of us is doing any of these things alone, but there is a definite project lead!” She gave a delighted little clap as she finished, which made me laugh and laugh.  

Update: They got the place! They sign the new lease tomorrow.