My husband and I have been together for 24 years. Married for 17 of them. There have been incredible highs and spiraling lows. We’ve had two nickels to our name and stretches of great bounty. Some years go by when we hardly see each other. Which is when things usually come to a head and we start making announcements like, “I’m done!” or “Maybe we should just end it.” Of...
I have a revenge fantasy involving my children. Yes, I go there. When beaten down by teenage dismissiveness, indifference, and contradiction, I think about what I could do to pay them back. Not to hurt them, of course, but make them squirm. Feel the discomfort that I feel. I imagine that I get a job as a barista at the Starbucks closest to their school. I work the popular 8-4...
My sister and I were talking the other day. I was home sick with a cold; she had the week off work. Out of the blue, something urged her to check in on me at the exact same time I happened to be walking by my often misplaced phone. I picked up and what ensued was a rare and extravagant two-hour conversation. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I...
I had to give up coffee a couple of months ago when my heart started acting out after weeks of over-training, over-filling an already full plate, and regularly missing meals. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Six years ago my depleted adrenals and changing hormones urged my ticker to mount a similar intervention. Which it did, quite happily, in the form of tachycardia and a bulging artery that wouldn’t...
My son is fast. He talks a million miles an hour. Moves with bursts of energy. When he’s excited about something, his ideas spill out of him so quickly that I almost have to follow behind with a bucket just to catch a couple. As he’s matured and gotten to know himself better, he’s learned how to corral that energy when needed. At his school orientation the other day, where...
I was working at my computer Tuesday morning when a notification from a friend popped up with the headline that Kate Spade had died. I did a double-take and stopped everything to click on the link she sent. It was 9:41 in Los Angeles, 12:41 in New York. Spade had been found less than three hours prior. Her death an apparent suicide. It seems almost everyone has a Kate Spade...
I caught myself singing in the shower the other day, which surprised me. Not the singing part (I enjoy ripping a tune), but what it means to sing in the shower. I write in the shower all the time, out loud, running dialogue back-and-forth. But singing, that’s different. I genuinely believe that people who sing in the shower are happy. In fact, when my husband and I hear our kids...
I love me a good odd number. Like 25. So easy to add, and multiply. The typical age by which the brain becomes fully developed. The only good coin. Christmas day. My son’s birthday. And zipadeedoodah, drum roll, please, the midpoint of this midlife writing adventure. Yup, I’m standing at the top of the mountain, looking out at the view, thinking that the climb to the summit wasn’t so bad,...
You know that scene in the movie about an insecure middle age guy who thinks he still has the chops of a 20-year old and tries to prove his virility by taking on some physical challenge that, completely inappropriate for his years and fitness level, lands him in the hospital? There are tons of them, but the first one that jumps to mind is that scene in Daddy’s Home where...
I work out at a barre studio in the SFV of LA. If you’re a valley local, you’ve probably been there at least once, maybe after purchasing a Groupon, or on January 1st having just resolved to get in shape. My friend, Kirsten, took me for the first time 13 years ago when the studio was still relatively new and filled with young women (many of them dancers), plus a smattering...
There’s so much noise around turning 50. Does one deny being a half-century old? Embrace the achievement? Fight like the devil to turn back the clock? Without question, this age instigates a new chapter with bigger stakes and a growing sense of urgency. Given our youth-obsessed culture and my own compulsion to stay young, I wondered how honestly I could write about this milestone. Fifty on Fifty is my experiment.
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