Going Postal

When we moved into our apartment, I was pretty much in shock and awe about owning a piece of New York City. I had never thought about buying an apartment. A mon avis, people bought houses not apartments. James, my husband, believed in ownership; and he had me convinced that the money we had saved in our proverbial nest egg should, indeed, be used to buy a nest.  Truth be known, I became landed gentry a month before I became the mother of twins, so at the time I was pretty much flummoxed about everything that was occuring in my life.

I loved the apartment itself, notwithstanding its quirks; still do. Its views are astounding, its size, well, pretty good for a New York City apartment. It's located across the street from a playground, next door to a park. It feels like a treehouse. After living here for a while, things started bothering me. Familiarity, blah blah.  I found a way to look past the building's pink hall walls by concentrating on the mail chute, located right outside our door.It is a glass chute with bronze accents, a lovely hall ornament. I enjoy writing notes and hate writing checks. When I do either, I want to put them in motion as quickly as possible. The accessibility of the mail chute makes my life that much easier. Plus it looks way cool.

The mail chute, and our place, is tucked into the northwest corner of the building, with two neighboring apartments, the owners of which have changed six times. With each move, the owners seem to get younger and younger--as do their children--but they constantly are lovely. No, really, I'm not just saying it (as if they read this blog). The two adjacent mothers and I sometimes have ad hoc girl fests in the hall. Actually, I hear them talking and open the door to join in--their daughters are about the same age. Recently, I did so while holding a letter, which I dunked into the chute during our conversation.

"You trust that to work?" asked one of my neighbors.

Work? What work? You put the mail in the chute, it goes down. It isn't a job. There are no moving parts...except the letter. It only let me down, figuratively speaking, once. I had bought my stepdaughter a refrigerator magnet from Florida (before she moved there), popped it into an envelope, and threw it into the slot. I gasped as it adhered to the inner wall of the metallic shoot. "What was I thinking? It's a magnet," I wailed to my husband who, I swear, found a yardstick, shoved it through the slot, forcing the envelope to the fourth floor then repeated the action until he rescued it from the mailbox in the lobby.

I shared that story with her, we laughed and returned to our corners. Why did her reaction stump me? I realized later that, given her age and our age difference, she was too young to know what I did: you can't beat gravity.