Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve been a couple since we were kids.

Since high school, where we first connected through late-night AIM arguments about the musical merits of Taking Back Sunday and who wrote a better English essay about The House on Mango Street. On our first date we ate Quizno’s subs, saw Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, and kissed in the parking lot of the movie theater, on the trunk of my parent’s Volkswagen. My first kiss, I gently mashed my lips into Stephanie’s face. From that moment forward we were an item, and over the next nine years we’d traverse the country together: college in Portland, graduate school in Chicago, work in Cincinnati.

As we grew older, relatives peppered me with questions about when we’d finally full-on commit. The truth is, for a long time, I was in no hurry. We already shared an apartment, a dog, a bank account. How much different could marriage be? Maybe more important, because we had grown up as a couple, it took some time for us to find ourselves as full-fledged, mature individuals. We made sacrifices for each other: Me moving to a city not conducive to my career for her job. Her financially supporting me while I was unemployed, and emotionally supporting me through the accompanying depression. Somehow we weathered every storm and marched on, stronger for the struggle.

Not that I hadn’t fantasized a million potential proposals along the way: From presenting a ring on a silver platter as we dined like royalty in San Diego last year, to kneeling in the sand of Chicago’s North Shore where we lived like paupers during grad school. But before, the timing had never felt right.

Which is why, as we finally settled into our adult selves, I became frustrated with the taxonomy of our relationship. Unlike ‘wife’ or ‘fiancé,’ to just call Stephanie my ‘girlfriend’ (“of almost nine years,” I’d always add as a subtitle) didn’t convey the gravity that nearly a decade of trials and triumph deserved. I wanted it to be clear to the world what we meant to each other. That’s how I knew I was ready.

Around last Christmas, a couple of close friends invited us to join them for a summer vacation in Hawaii. I knew far before any flight bookings or swimsuit purchases had taken place that this was my time to pop the proverbial question. Little did I realize, despite the nine-year build up, what an exercise in patience even just six more months would become, as I had far too much time to overthink how the deed would go down.

Nine years of engagement anticipation supplies a lot of accrued pressure. I’m not extravagant by nature–jewelry from J. Crew is my go-to girlfriend birthday gift–but with the prospect of a destination proposal, paired with the weight of our long-time courtship, I couldn’t help but feel that this moment had to be spectacular.

Aware I would not be the first (or thousandth) to propose in Hawaii, I plundered travel blogs and Trip Advisor threads for ideas. One person recommended the beautiful vista at the top of a giant crater called Diamond Head, and linked to a YouTube video in which a sweat-saturated man (the hike to the top is almost a mile long, and nearly vertical much of the way) knelt before his girlfriend, the cellophane-clear Pacific Ocean stretched out behind them. She burst into happy tears, and it was certainly a sweet moment, but the perspiration streaming off their smiling faces, combined with the tourists milling in and out of the frame behind them, seemed to sap the scene of romance.

Another online comment recommended driving up to the northern coast for a picnic. “Bypass the busy beaches,” it said, instead offering directions to a deserted strip of shore only accessible through a hole in a chain-link fence on the side of the highway. “And since no one maintains the trees on this hidden shoreline, watch out for falling coconuts!” As serene as the setting might be, ‘Bride-to-Be Bludgeoned by Rogue Coconut’ was a headline I’d rather avoid. This idea, too, was shelved.

Privately, I met with our travel companions to see if they had any suggestions. Canoe ride to a private island? Nope, couldn’t trust myself not to fumble the ring into the ocean. Helicopter ride? Absolutely not, even moderate turbulence has me squeezing Stephanie’s knee like a stress ball. Ring of candles in the sand after dark? Too Wiccan. With no progress made, I resigned myself to fly into engagement unknown.

Spontaneity makes me uncomfortable: I’m the sort of person that scripts out a rant before calling customer service. Which explains the anxious bounce of my leg on all three legs of our flights en route to Hawaii. After 15 hours of travel we arrived in Honolulu, where our friends picked us up in a Mustang convertible. As we drove through the night toward the east side of the island, wind whipped Stephanie’s hair across her face in the moonlight. I could hardly wait to ask her. Tomorrow would have to be The Day.

The next morning, dressed down and oiled up, we made a beeline for the beach and made like solar panels, absorbing UV rays and conserving energy so we could shake off jet lag. Stephanie read The Goldfinch while I pretended to doze, secretly scoping out the area. The resort was surrounded by a series of rocky lagoons, and through prescription sunglasses I could spot a footpath following the coastline off into the distance. I made a mental note and took a gulp of frozen Mai Tai. After an afternoon of oddly-shaped sunburns–specifically, in thin strips just above my knee, where bunched swimsuit had exposed marshmallow-white thigh–we retired back to the room to de-sand and shower.

The hotel hallway smelled like clean diapers, and as my nostrils drew in the pungent promise of future baby BM an idea came to me. I turned to my three companions and said, “Let’s go for a walk at sunset.”

Our friends are expecting a baby in November, so as Stephanie cleaned up, I told them this might be an ideal time for “unexpected pregnancy pains” to prevent them from joining our sunset stroll. I retrieved the ring. An attempt to stuff the entire velvet box into my pocket produced an awkward lump, so I decided to ditch the vessel and let it ride solo. Stephanie emerged from the bathroom, and after some minor cajoling–“I don’t want to leave them if Emily’s not feeling well!”–we hustled out to the beachfront just as the sun began its initial descent.

I had no clue where the path would take us, and as we wove our way off of the resort grounds I grew nervous. Though the water reflected a beautiful palette of pink, yellow and orange, the surrounding sand was filled with noisy families. A dad digging a hole, children eating Pringles, a teenager playing Pitbull on an iPod speaker. Not that I could begrudge them for enjoying their vacation, but as for a proposal location, while the setting itself was right the staging was all wrong.

Soon we reached the end of the paved path. From there, a dirt trail jutted off into a lava-rock peninsula, where wind was toying with a fisherman’s line. I grabbed Stephanie’s hand and we made our way to the outermost point. About halfway there, I saw that by some cosmic coincidence, the Beatles’ lyric “Love is all you need” was spelled out in white pebbles on the ground. At the end of the rocks we were close enough to the sloshing waves that they wept droplets onto our legs. I had goosebumps; from the ocean spray or nerves, I couldn’t say.

“You know,” I said, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said.

The sun fell below the horizon. I fell to one knee.

“Will you marry me?”

I trembled on the words, and almost had to spit them out. So much time had been spent examining this moment clinically that I hadn’t realized how emotional I’d be.

“Yes,” she said, then started to cry.

We embraced and held it, the summation of a decade posed in tableau, then headed back to the hotel.

I can now say with confidence, drawn from personal experience, that performing the perfect proposal doesn’t necessarily mean engineering the most elaborate, precisely plotted scheme you can imagine. No flash mob of dancing friends or carefully crafted video is needed. It’s the act itself that’s important. I could’ve proposed at dinner or on a hike, in a house or with a mouse–it would’ve been special no matter what.

We’ve come a long way since those teenagers kissing on a car trunk, but in some ways we haven’t changed at all–except now she’s my fiancé, not just my girlfriend (of nine years).

Like John Travolta before her, Gwen Stefani found herself on stage, millions of people watching, facing down a couple of words fraught with mispronunciation danger. And she did the brave thing, she just went for it, tied tongue be damned.

She didn’t nail it, but it could have been worse:

After Monday night’s boring not-so-surprising Emmy Awards, TV’s brightest stars celebrated their wins, danced away their losses and wished they would have worn anything but a red dress. That’s right, it was after-party time.

From the Governors Ball to HBO’s annual soiree and FOX’s bash, celebrities made their way around and toasted to “Breaking Bad” and “Modern Family,” you know, the two shows that basically took home every award.

In a bit of revisionist history, the garden at the Frick Collection designed by the world famous British landscape architect Russell Page (1906-1985) and once hailed by the New York Times as one of his “most important works,” has been downgraded by museum officials to nothing more than an interim land use. The garden occupies space the museum wants for a proposed addition. Consequently, in order to demolish it, Frick officials seek to diminish it saying the garden “has always been inaccessible to the public” (despite photos of parties held there and the fact that it was purpose built as a viewing garden) and was “temporary.” This “temporary” idea is an important talking point in the Frick’s justification; the garden’s supposed planned obsolescence is foundational to their argument. There’s only one problem – the Frick created this verdant oasis as “a permanent garden” – at least that’s what the museum’s own February 4, 1977 press release about it states. An anonymous source recently sent me the seven page release (with a note saying “This document is on file at the Frick Art Reference Library”) and directed me to the fourth paragraph on page six – there it is, plain as day: “a permanent garden.”

Russell Page garden at the Frick Collection. Photograph by Michael Dunn via Flickr.

So what’s going on here? The genesis of this Edenic spot grew out of a controversial Frick expansion plan in the early 1970’s. As contemporary news reports and the museum’s 1977 press release note, since 1940 Frick trustees had been setting aside funds to purchase three adjacent properties on East 70th Street. The last, Number 5, the former home of arts patron George Widener, was acquired in 1972. Following several contentious months involving the Frick, its neighbors and municipal officials, on July 6, 1973, New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission acceded to the museum’s request to raze the 1909 Louis XV-style Widener building and create a temporary garden that ultimately would be replaced a decade or two later by an addition.

Within a few months, however, the expansion plan was shelved due to high costs. As the New York Times’ Glenn Fowler reported on November 28, 1973: “The Frick Collection has abandoned its plan for eventual construction of a wing to the east of its museum site at Fifth Avenue and 70th Street, and instead will create a permanent garden and terrace on the space earmarked for the wing.” New York Post reporter Roberta Gravitz, quoted the Frick’s then director Everett Fahy as saying the museum planned a “permanent” garden for the site.

Aerial view of the Russell Page garden at the Frick Collection. Photograph from The Gardens of Russell Page.

This was further explained in the museum’s 1977 press release: “[B]ecause of the high estimates received on the cost of the temporary garden, it was decided instead to reduce the size of the projected wing and to erect a small one-story pavilion and a permanent garden. These revised plans were accepted by the Landmarks Commission on May 23, 1974, and construction began in May of 1975.”

Along with characterizing the garden as temporary, Frick director Ian Wardropper has sought to minimize the garden’s importance in other ways telling New York Press’ Gabrielle Alfiero: “From our point of view, the garden is not in any way original to either the 1914 house or the 1935 house. I just feel the greater good is to use the space that was always intended for the needs of the institution.” As we’ve already established, this was not what “the space was always intended for.” Moreover, the museum’s 1977 press release explains that significant efforts were made to integrate and harmonize the garden with the overall complex: “The limestone for the pavilion’s exterior and for the garden walls came from the same Indiana quarries as did that used in the original building and in the additions made to it when the residence was converted into a museum in the early 1930s. The garden walls incorporate carved stone reliefs taken from the east wall of the original house at the time of the conversion, and the iron gates that once stood at the entrance drive to the house have been re-erected in the front of the garden, flanked by a wrought iron fence made to match the earlier fence around the main building.”

Page’s creation at the Frick is an elegant, nuanced work of art that was realized over the space of ten years. As I have written before, a museum’s designed landscapes should be afforded the same degree of importance and curatorial care as their buildings and other parts of their collection. That certainly applies here.

Russell Page garden at the Frick Collection. Photograph by Henk van der Eijk via Flickr.

It’s also important to consider the context under which Page accepted this commission. According to Nancy Berner and Susan Lowry’s Garden Guide: New York City (W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), the Frick “is one of a number of public projects the English designer undertook at the end of his life, hoping to preserve his reputation for posterity.” The final chapter of The Gardens of Russell Page (Frances Lincoln, 2008) added a poignant note: “Toward the end of his long career Page was keenly aware that of the hundreds of gardens he had designed, many had disappeared. He hoped the ones he was doing in the public sector might find permanence.”

Let’s hope the Frick can honor its commitment to Page and to us.

Russell Page, photograph courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Without a doubt, the Oculus Rift will be the be-all and end-all of our most cherished nerd fantasies (until the holodeck comes.) Example: This game to train like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars—a remote floats around you firing stun blasts that you have to deflect with your lightsaber.

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