The Almost Divorce and Other Casualties at 40

It’s been one tough month for marriage: One friend found out his wife was having an affair, one friend’s husband moved upstairs, another declared she was a lesbian leaving her family to sort things out with her new lover, someone lost their spouse to Cancer, and one discovered their spouse was flirting with disaster a shuttle away. Add to that, a few newly minted divorces, a friend who's secretly taken up stripping and the Huffington Post’s launch of a Divorce section for bloggers.

The incidents in isolation did not completely shock or surprise me but the pace in which they were stacked did. Is it the economy? Is it the front loaded age of mortgages and young children that brings it on? Is it contagious? (I told my husband to use Purell.) Or is this life in your 40s?

I called my mother.  The first thing you need to know is that my mother is June Cleaver. Yet the one-liners she delivers, per decade with sincere deadpan, are June Cleaver in a drink mix.

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14 Hours Unplugged

Was my independence that far gone? Did other mothers, working or at home, feel this glee over a single day of flight? Did I really live in this 50s bubble? I am a child of the 70s: Ayn Rand, John Hughes, Camille Paglia! Self-doubt settled in as throngs of people boarded the airplane looking equally as liberated as the newly minted image I’d created in my head for myself: naked on a motorcycle, hair blowing in the breeze… with but a bangle! Only their liberation looked permanent. If you grew up in the 70s, I might also remind you about the Love Boat.

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Last Night I Dreamt of Spike Jonze

I was walking down a wharf in California. It was night. Just as I reached my hand out to say hi, I kicked something with my foot and almost lost my balance. It was a cell phone and I watched HIS cell phone tumble towards the sea. It was too late. It was lost. I looked up in fear.

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