My Puffy Coat, or, A Prince Among Men

This is a very personal good deed story, but it totally made my day/week/month so I thought I would share it.

First of all, as my people know, I'm always freezing, and I hate, hate, hate winter. I like it well enough if I'm in a snuggly robe and slippers, sipping tea and looking out the window at a snowy landscape; or swathed in long undies and a down jacket and zipping down a ski trail; but schlepping back and forth to work in the icy wind and sleet seriously brings me down.

I have many different coats, but none of them is really warm enough for New York walking around winters. Fernando has been shaking his head in dismay at me for months as we've tromped around Soho, because I am usually tense, shivering, and clutching my lapels around my throat while my teeth chatter like a tap dancer. I've really been miserable.

He decided to look for a long down coat with a hood for my early birthday present, and found one we both liked on the Lands End web site. It came in black and also a pretty burgundy color, and looked very, very warm. I preferred the burgundy, so he ordered it, and voila! a few days later, a big box arrived at my desk! I opened it with glee!

Alas! I nearly threw my back out recoiling in horror from what I saw in the box. It was HOT PINK - I mean HOT!!! PINK!!! and huge! I put it on and realized I looked like a raspberry version of Violet Beauregard from Willy Wonka - you know, the girl who blows up into a giant blueberry? You should have seen the looks of shock and terror on the faces of my coworkers when I tried it on... and when Fernando came to see it, I could tell that he was struggling not to collapse into hysterical laughter. We folded it up grimly, and sent it back. No. No way. I'd rather freeze.

Last weekend, we had the opportunity to go shopping at a mall, so he insisted that we go try on some more coats. Black ones. Ones that didn't make me look like a barn door or a sack of potatoes. We found many - but the ones that fit me were either too skimpy insulation-wise, or they didn't have a hood, or the hood was festooned with lots of fuzzy fake fur that tickled my nose and obscured my vision and made me sneeze and scrub at my face. Finally we gave up and went to get a beer and some hot wings.

Yesterday, on Martin Luther King day, we planned to spend the day painting our new apartment. Again. (We're really so very tired of painting.) I was waiting for Fernando to show up so that we could get started, and wondering where on earth he was, because normally he is the most punctual man on earth (oh, the irony!- that he is marrying me of all people!) Finally he came up the stairs and cheerfully tossed me a bag from Paragon Sports. It seems he had made his way from Brooklyn into the city in the morning, gone to a sporting goods store, found the perfect coat for me, chosen the exact right size, and spent a fortune on it. Then he took the train to my house in Queens to spend the day working hard on our new home with me.

Thank you, darling.