Six months after I nearly destroyed our first $26,112 day.
Four days after we walked down the aisle for the first time, my wife Antoinette and I cruised off on our honeymoon to Cozumel, Mexico. On our second night, we found ourselves sitting in a theater full of our fellow passengers as contestants on a knockoff version of the ’60s game show, The Newlywed Game.
The first question was easy — “Where was your first date?”— but they devolved quickly: Which in-law would you least like to be stuck on a deserted island with? Which movie best describes your love life? What is your husband’s most annoying habit?
We got every question correct, and every answer was filled with resentment. Our first date was a 1930s diner outing at Quintessence, a Cap City landmark. We both deemed our love life to be akin to Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and my wife offered three things she despised about me: how I wiped my nose with my finger, my nail munching, and how I was overall a neurotic nebbish.
We were suffering from the fallout of the past year: everything leading to what would be our first wedding ceremony. I didn’t deal well with change, and a wedding changes everything. It changes your family structure, changes how to organize finances. I was fiercely independent, and I didn’t have faith I could care for anyone else. But Antoinette always believed in me, and, somehow, every time I struggled with moving forward in our relationship, and every time I struggled with moving forward in life, Antoinette pushed me, and together we got through.
“Fill in the blank,” the Drew Carey-looking cruise director said to me. “The ugliest thing about my wife is ____.”
“Her tones,” I said, straight-faced. The host froze up, devoid of one-liners. We won, obviously.
Antoinette and I met in April 2009, after the lead organizer of the mentoring program I volunteered for asked me to pick up the new mentor, a Brooklynite studying Africana studies and communications at SUNY Albany, speeding toward her bachelor’s in three years.
We cruised through the city in my blue Saturn as I fumbled over icebreakers: Where’re you from? What’re you studying?
Luckily for me, Antoinette was more skilled at the conversation thing. She dug through my CDs, pointing out that she also loved Maxwell and Amy Winehouse.
From then on, every week we drove around discussing race and religion and swapping book recommendations. I learned that, right before we met, Antoinette had left her ex-fiancé. To mark a new beginning, she pierced her nose and went in for the big chop, cutting off any chemically treated hair, and rocked an afro puff. I adored her positive energy, so when she mentioned she wanted to get her driver’s license, I volunteered my car for practice.
We spent afternoons circling parking lots and gently bumping cars while parallel parking. When she scored her license, I came up with more excuses to hang out. After six months of being friends, she dropped the bomb, asking me via text: “Do you like me?” My hands shaking, I typed “yes.”
Soon, I introduced her to my small, close-knit Ashkenazi Jewish family, and she welcomed me into her large but distant Nigerian and Jamaican crew. I loved how close she was to her mom, how she planned to have an intergenerational household. She appreciated how I was best friends/nearly twins with my little sister, how my big sister and her husband set my #couplegoals. Together we cooked salt fish latkes.
When Antoinette and I met, I was 28 and three years sober. I had spent most of my early 20s dropping in and out of college, spending time behind the locked double doors of St. Peter’s Hospital detox unit, failing out of their rehab. In the first few years of my sobriety, I spent my days chilling on the stoop outside 12-step meetings on the corner of Lexington, working an entry-level respite position at a local social work agency.
I liked my life in early recovery. I liked the room I rented in a two-bedroom on Morris St. Liked making meetings whenever I wanted. Liked volunteering to make myself feel good. My life felt safe. But four years after we started dating, Antoinette was tired of my inertia. She wanted marriage, a house, and a family (with seven kids, she used to joke).
As terrified of change as I was, I feared losing her more. I stalled for another year, but I finally popped the question over a bucket of seafood in a booth at our favorite Times Square eatery, Bubba Gump’s.
Then I talked her into delaying the ceremony another year.
I knew I loved and adored her, but I didn’t have faith in myself. I had never envisioned a future for me that involved anything more than hitting up meetings and remaining stagnant at the same social work agency. Starting a family felt unfathomable. During my hazy years, I stopped attempting to get sober because I figured I would just relapse. Once sober, I wouldn’t push myself to take any additional risks — whether it be a better job or a marriage — expecting that I’d mess everything up. Proposing was terrifying, but, beneath my distress, I knew a life with Antoinette was what was best for me. I just feared it wasn’t best for her.
I remember reading a study that said the more you spend on your wedding, the more likely it will end in divorce. Every time Antoinette brought up ideas for venues, my mind spiraled. Neither of us made tons of money and neither was great at saving. To me, spending excessively on a wedding made no sense, but to Antoinette, money could always be made and was to be enjoyed. The tradition meant a lot to her so she wanted the perfect wedding ceremony, but, in truth, it probably meant more to me. A wedding made things absolute. I would either succeed at being a good partner forever or destroy her life. The more we spent, the more I felt the pressure mounting. Still, I pushed myself to brave forward with whatever Antoinette wished for.
To afford the wedding, I focused on our day-to-day bills — rent, car insurance, internet, groceries — while Antoinette saved for the ceremony. We quickly put a deposit down on the fourth floor of the New York State Museum, claiming Antoinette’s dream location. The setting included a sick view of the Empire State Plaza and Capitol building. It was the perfect Albany landmark for a romance that bloomed across its streets.
The wedding was scheduled for a Sunday because we kinda-sorta kept Shabbat, and I used the odd day as leverage to haggle down prices. We locked in Mallozzi’s, one of the capital’s ritziest caterers, as well as DJ Trumastr, Albany’s hottest DJ, who prepped a setlist consisting of Paul Simon, Lynxxx, and Beres Hammond, representing our diverse backgrounds. The affair came out to $26,112.86.
To be clear, we didn’t pay it all ourselves. Her dad handled the photographer and the balance for the venue, and her mom took care of the honeymoon and wedding dress, and she financed transportation for nearly her entire extended family (after the wedding, my parents gifted us a $10,000 check, to start our life together — that promptly went toward debt). The more our family invested in our stock, the more I panicked it would all go belly up.
Four months before our scheduled wedding date, my fears of failure turned catastrophic as my family fell into disarray.
Just weeks before my youngest sister’s wedding — which I already struggled with because it felt like our relationship was changing — my brother-in-law walked out on my older sister. He had been my role model, my biggest male influence. He gave me my first beer, taught me all his comedy routines. I told myself that if my big sister’s marriage went sour, my relationship with Antoinette would, too.
I was unable to send the wedding invites. Every time I postponed, Antoinette grew more frustrated, to the point where we were sleeping in separate rooms. I broke up with her, three times, assuring myself she’d be better off without me, but she continued to talk me into staying. Two months before the ceremony, I dropped the invites into the mailbox, but the stabbing thoughts intensified. I had dreams of her happy with someone else, starting a family with a guy who wasn’t as mentally ill as I was. I had nightmares of us getting married, having kids, then me turning into my brother-in-law, leaving the family I loved to suffer the repercussions. A week before the ceremony, I broke up with her for the final time, promising myself I wouldn’t budge.
Tears dampening her face, Antoinette smooshed her cheek into mine and whispered, “Just be with me for one day. Not all the future. Just a day.”
At that moment, I decided to stay. To give it my best shot, just for that day. I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t my family, that I wasn’t the person I used to be. I decided I didn’t like myself at that moment, but I wanted to get better. I wanted to be the best person I could be, and the best person I could be was beside Antoinette, supporting her and celebrating her and growing with her.
The day of the wedding, Antoinette half-expected I wouldn’t show. Even though we did the I-dos, she despised me for what I put her through, and I was frustrated with her for not having empathy during my crash. We threw the greatest party most of our guests had ever been to — impressing even my Nigerian ambassador father-in-law — but every kiss was strained. We posed for pictures, smiling before the carousel, but the emotions were staged. When we cruised off on our Newlywed Game-knockoff honeymoon, we were barely speaking.
In the months that followed, we dedicated ourselves to couples therapy, determined to make our relationship work. We both realized that we struggled with communicating: Antoinette often shut down, while I turned overly emotional. We had to learn new ways to speak to each other. We focused on each other’s strengths, recognizing that we each brought something special to the table that the other lacked. I took responsibility for spiraling out of control, nearly ruining our wedding, and she worked to be empathetic to my anxiety. I realized how desperately I wanted her to attain her every dream and how blessed I was that she chose me to be her partner in achieving them; she believed in me, and I began to believe in me, too.
For over a year, Antoinette had been meeting with our rabbi, taking classes, attending shul, moving toward converting to Judaism. We had always planned to have a second, intimate religious wedding after she formally converted. And so six months after the first wedding, my wife dunked herself into the mikvah, a ritual bath, completing the process, and we held a small ceremony in our Albany temple, costing $2,618: enough to rent the social hall, hire a klezmer band, contract a videographer, borrow a chuppah, and buy a crap ton of lox, bagels, and kugel.
The first wedding, we were trying to impress people, but this second wedding, we weren’t trying to show off — we just wanted to feed friends and family yummy food and spin in circles of joy. We didn’t even send invites. Instead, we handed out flyers and plastered them online, keeping the ceremony open to anyone who wanted to join.
I took pride in planning and paying for the second ceremony myself. Though the event was much cheaper, I didn’t settle for anything. The food was on point. So were our outfits. It felt like victory that every dollar spent was my own — I was investing in our future.
Under the chuppah, I crunched the glass and we jumped the broom. When we leaped, we did it together. The community lifted us aloft in chairs, and, as we floated above the crowd, each grasping the napkin connecting us, I realized I could do it. I could handle life’s changes. I could grow. My wife had been with me when I was at my lowest. I knew I’d do the same for her. We’d survived one of our toughest hurdles, and I had faith we could get through more. I was ready. Ready to create a home, ready to start a family, with faith, with Antoinette.
After another school shooting, teachers express fear over the threat of violence in their classrooms.
The day after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Elizabeth, a first grade teacher at a school across the state, looked down at the sidewalk to read what one of her students had scribbled in chalk at the entrance to their school: “If you have a gun, get out pleas.” The child’s message, innocent with its spelling error, was decorated with the drawing of a little white heart.
That day, Elizabeth started locking both doors in her classroom. She told her students not to congregate in the hallway, to stop coming in and out of the room all day long, and “if you have to go to the bathroom, go quick and be back ASAP.”
“I don’t care how inconvenient it is,” she said. “If that fourth grade classroom’s door had been locked, the shooter would not have been able to get inside. I have to remember that.”
Elizabeth, who asked to be referred to by her middle name because “it’s a highly politicized issue … especially in Texas, and I don’t want to put myself at risk,” did all this because she felt ultimately responsible for her students’ safety. “This is by no means normal and anything I want to be doing with my students, but I felt it was the reality of that day, and I did what felt the safest,” she said.
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Previous mass shootings, like the 2012 one at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, that claimed 27 lives, haven’t pushed lawmakers to prevent future ones. The country remains awash with guns, and few new burdens have been placed on would-be gun owners to stop future massacres. Instead, the burden of keeping students safe has fallen on schools — and ultimately on teachers.
In lockdown drills, teachers are expected to train their students to hide, and, in some cases, to fight. Proposals from arming teachers to “hardening schools” underscore the message that keeping schools safe is ultimately the responsibility of schools themselves, and of the adults in them.
“So many of our teachers come to the profession because they love working with children. They love what they do, so they’re already always thinking about how they can help their children. There’s less of a focus on the emotional and traumatic experiences they’re having,” Prerna Arora, a school psychologist and assistant professor of school psychology at Columbia’s Teachers College, told Vox. “We have to consider how trauma impacts a teacher and their ability to be present and be there for their students.”
And if the worst should happen, teachers are often the last line of defense. While police dithered outside, two teachers in Uvalde died while shielding their students from gunfire. Since their deaths, the two teachers, Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia, have been called heroes — a label that does not capture the complexity of what teachers are expected to do and be every day. They’re expected to be counselors, nurses, human shields, and more.
Arnulfo Reyes, a teacher who survived the shooting at Robb Elementary, explained how he went from preparing for a student award ceremony that morning to being shot twice by the gunman and witnessing all 11 of the students in his classroom die. “I tried my best with what I was told to do,” he said in an interview. “It all happened too fast. Training, no training, all kinds of training, nothing gets you ready for this.”
“We have to consider what happens to teachers when part of their job is the expectation that they might have to hug their children under a desk during a mass shooting,” said Arora. “It’s a horrifying visual, the idea of having to shield your students to protect them from gunshots after watching the movie Moana,” Arora said. “This is the only job in the country where someone is basically expected to do this when it’s not part of their job description or what they’re trained for.”
In the days since the shooting, commentators and Texas lawmakers have offered countless thoughts on school shootings, none of which involve gun safety reform. Texas’s Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Sen. Ted Cruz suggested that officials “harden schools,” leaving one entrance in and one entrance out. Others have suggested arming teachers, or training students to fight shooters, or making body armor available at schools for students and educators. Other ideas call for a more imposing physical landscape: taller fencing, tripwires, metal detectors.
Many of the ideas, like positioning “good guys with guns” or arming teachers, have not worked in the past. But they underscore that lawmakers are likely to put the responsibility of keeping schools safe back onto schools and teachers.
“As a former volunteer firefighter, I can tell you that many of these ideas to lock down schools create huge safety concerns,” Josh, a science teacher in Houston who asked that only his first name be used for fear of retaliation, told Vox. “They also don’t address the root causes of shootings, which is access to guns and mental health. We don’t have enough counselors in our school and there just isn’t enough money to actually invest in mental health services.”
He added: “We teachers have come under attack for many things this year. They don’t trust us to put out the appropriate books for our students but they trust us to carry guns in schools?”
Rachel Graves Hicks, a high school career and technical education teacher in a large suburban school district near Fort Worth, Texas, has already spent time that could have been spent teaching on preparing for shootings. She routinely practices safety drills with her high schoolers. She tells them to place big items of furniture at the door, get out of sight, and be as quiet as possible. And should the shooter breach the door, she instructs her students to hurl items at them.
The burden could someday become too much. “The day my district determines that teachers are allowed to carry guns at school, I will no longer work in the classroom. Full stop. I am out,” she said. “We tell them to throw monitors and chairs, anything that could stop the shooter,” she said. “How is this not enough?”
President Biden is mulling over what he can do in response to a looming Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
As a decision looms in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the landmark Supreme Court case that would effectively eliminate the constitutionally-protected right to a legal abortion, pressure on President Joe Biden to take action protecting that right is mounting — so much so that Biden directly addressed it on late-night TV this week, telling Jimmy Kimmel that, while he urged legislative action, the White House is also mulling executive orders protecting abortion access.
Post-Dobbs executive orders were on the table before Biden’s Wednesday appearance, although the White House has kept quiet about what those actions could look like. His interview with Kimmel was no different; after encouraging a legislative approach to enacting abortion rights protections, Biden told Kimmel, “I think what we’re going to have to do… There’s some executive orders I could employ, we believe — we’re looking at that right now.”
On Tuesday, before Biden’s late-night appearance, Democratic senators including Chris van Hollen of Maryland and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sent a letter to Biden urging the administration to issue an order to develop a national, whole-of-government plan to protect the right to abortion, citing the administration’s previous willingness to take action on securing voting rights, combatting racism, and strengthening economic competition.
“Now is the time for equally bold action to protect the right to an abortion,” the letter reads, asserting that, “the dramatic escalation of attacks on abortion access — spearheaded by right-wing justices, lawmakers, and activists — demands comprehensive and creative strategies from every corner of the federal government.” The letter urges Biden to issue an executive order requiring the heads of federal agencies to submit their plans to protect abortion rights within 30 days of the order, concluding that the issue — and the millions who would be affected should the Supreme Court rule that Mississippi can indeed ban pre-viability abortions — require “no less than a whole-of-government response.”
However, the administration has signaled that any action will come after the court announces its decision — not pre-emptively. “We don’t have a final conclusion,” former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at a briefing in May, after a draft decision authored by conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito declaring the Mississippi restriction constitutional was leaked to Politico. “The Supreme Court themselves made clear this is not the final opinion. We are already working a great deal behind the scenes, and we will have more to say,” Psaki said at the time.
While the administration reportedly ramped up its planning after the draft memo leaked, holding meetings with providers, activists, and state lawmakers, Democrats and abortion rights activists have been frustrated with the perceived lack of preparation for what many consider the inevitable dissolution of Roe v. Wade after decades of conservative activism to defeat it.
“Why are we so behind the curve on this? Where is the plan? We knew this was coming in theory since [Justice Amy] Coney Barrett joined the court, and in practice since December,” Democratic strategist Christy Setzer told The Hill in May. “I don’t want to hear empty rhetoric about how we won’t go back, I want to hear that there is a legislative or federal plan to change things.”
What exactly could executive orders do for abortion rights?
At the heart of the Dobbs case are three questions: Whether it’s unconstitutional for a state to enact any pre-viability bans on abortion; under what statute any such prohibition should be interpreted; and whether abortion providers have the legal standing to challenge a state’s abortion laws on behalf of their patients.
Any executive action the administration decides on will be fairly limited; once states have the authority to regulate pre-viability abortion regardless of the undue burdens the laws would place on people trying to obtain them, many will legislate it practically out of existence. If it’s decided that abortion clinics don’t have legal standing to challenge laws those states enact, it’s unlikely they’ll be challenged at all, since such cases require significant resources that individual abortion patients likely don’t have.
Any executive orders wouldn’t challenge the ruling directly, but rather enhance access to resources for people seeking an abortion. “As far as specific actions, there’s any number of areas of concern they could seek to address,” Setzer told Vox via email, such as “working to increase access for low-income women and women of color even in blue states like New York and Connecticut; protecting patient privacy (for patients and medical workers) where abortion will be criminalized; increasing access to contraception under Obamacare in states where it’s limited; working to lessen barriers to getting the abortion pill.”
In their June 7 letter, Democratic legislators highlighted some actions Biden could take, like enabling greater access to medication abortion, a method of abortion that’s effective very early on in a pregnancy. The medications mifepristone and misoprostol, which, taken together, safely and effectively end early pregnancies have been available by mail since the FDA reversed a regulation prohibiting the postal delivery last December. However, a number of states with conservative legislatures swiftly took action to ban or restrict access to them following that decision.
The Democrats’ letter also suggests providing resources like childcare and travel vouchers to people who must travel outside their home state to seek abortion care. That measure would address what is already a barrier for low-income people seeking an abortion: the sheer cost of it all, in addition to the price of the procedure itself. Childcare, travel expenses, and lost wages from missing work are all costs that low-income people seeking abortions in states with limited access have faced for years, as The Intercept reported in 2019.
The letter suggests a few interventions from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including creating a reproductive health ombudsman position which “could educate the public and analyze data collected by HHS about access to reproductive services.” That could include collecting and analyzing data about insurance coverage for contraception, as well as provide information about access to abortion services and funding. The legislators also suggest HHS work to expand the pool of reproductive health providers available to Medicaid patients by “more aggressively enforcing federal requirements” that give beneficiaries their choice of provider.
HHS’s Office of Civil Rights could also strengthen and clarify protection of people’s sensitive online data about their reproductive health so that data can’t be used by states with draconian abortion and reproductive health laws. Data protection is crucial for both people seeking abortions and for care providers; data from a period tracking app, for example, could prevent a person from getting an abortion because it could indicate how far along their pregnancy is, and sensitive information about abortion providers could endanger their freedom or safety.
Finally, a mobilization of federal resources — including providing reproductive health care on federal lands in states with severe abortion restrictions — could be on the table, too. The legislators suggest in the June 7 letter that the Pentagon could consider moving members of the military and their families to obtain abortion and reproductive health care when they need it, and that the Office of Personnel Management could ensure paid time off and reimbursement of costs for the procedure for federal employees who get an abortion.
All of these suggestions are workarounds; they’re not really a direct challenge to the issues presented in the Dobbs case. But, given how intent the GOP is on steamrolling the right to an abortion, and the dwindling likelihood of a Democratic majority passing legislation to protect it, such measures may just be what the administration has to work with.
Legislative protections would be more secure — but they’re harder to enact
Biden pushed the importance of voting and legislative action during his appearance on Wednesday, claiming that if Dobbs is decided and trigger laws go into effect, “it’s going to cause a mini revolution and they’re going to vote a lot of these folks out of office.” But in general, people don’t just vote on one issue, and simply relying on outrage isn’t a great game plan; decades without a clear strategy and concrete ideas about how to protect abortion access has put Democrats and reproductive health care in this position in the first place.
“Part of my frustration is with, frankly, some of my own colleagues and peers. The other side for 50 years has had a legal strategy — where is our 50-year strategy?” Rep. Elisa Slotkin (D-MI) said Thursday. “As someone who comes from a CIA and Pentagon background, I’m frankly furious that there wasn’t more D-Day, decision day, planning.”
Biden, as the leader of the party, hasn’t been particularly forceful in making sure abortion rights are protected, either. “In general, this is an issue where the bully pulpit really matters, and where President Biden still seems afraid to even say the word ‘abortion,’” Setzer told Vox. “That’s the point — the first step to protecting abortion access is saying the words ‘abortion access.’”
Without full-throated support for abortion at the highest levels, passing legislation to protect abortion rights is a tough hill to climb. It has failed in the past; last year, the Women’s Health Protection Act passed in the House without a single Republican vote. It failed in the Senate in May, even after the leaked Dobbs draft, given that it had no Republican support and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a self-styled anti-abortion Democrat, voted against it, too. Expecting fear and outrage over one single issue to change the face of state legislatures, much less the Senate, seems like wishful thinking, particularly if the president doesn’t seem to proactively pursue both options to protect abortion access and alternatives to conservative rule.
Instead of Biden’s and Democrats’ milquetoast response, Setzer said, Biden and Democtrats should be talking about abortion “every chance they get. Congress voted on the Women’s Health Protection Act— super. Now make Republicans vote on abortion 20 more times before November. Make them go on record again and again. Use it in ads. Don’t be afraid — this is a winning political issue.”
Without an aggressive response, the idea that the Dobbs decision alone could and will make a difference in the midterms isn’t at all convincing. “President Biden’s not wrong — overturning Roe could indeed galvanize votes for Democrats in the midterms, but only if we can believe that the White House can and will take up that fight, and it’s not a promising start,” Setzer said. “I’m frankly not swayed by their secret plan on abortion.”