Every so often something happens to remind you time is passing. The bagels that you bought two weeks ago turn moldy; the cable company sends a bill marked, “urgent”; the cute teenage boy at the supermarket check-out calls you “Ma’am.” (For any woman over the age of thirty-five, an especially rough one.) And then, to add insult to injury, if you’re a parent, particularly in touchy feely Southern California, there’s “Move Over Day” at school.

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A few weeks ago I read this article about a pair of Buddhist teachers who live as a couple and have taken a vow never to be more than fifteen feet apart. This is apparently more than a little controversial in the world of Buddhist scholarship because among other things, the relationship is being presented as a celibate but intimate partnership between an older man and a young woman who some in the community refer to as a “blonde bombshell.” Now, though your definition of a “bombshell” might differ from someone who has spent twenty years in a monastery, the point is, no one thinks this set up can actually work. The vow applies to their hearts and minds but in particular to their bodies, which means they are literally together all the time.

This Buddhist couple got me to thinking. I mean, the premise sounded horrible and interesting at the same time. The idea of never being able to be more than fifteen feet away from your partner sounds intriguingly atrocious. They even go to the bathroom together (apparently if they’re in an airport one will stand outside the bathroom door to spare the general public) but I stopped peeing in front of guys when Mr. Handsome was three years old and he asked me why I had “wire hair.” (Raoul — the handyman — was in the house when he said this. I was mortified and my handyman couldn’t stop laughing.)

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It all starts when I make up with La Annabelle. It's Friday night and the "Sex and the City" movie has just opened and my doorbell rings. Jeffrey has the boys for three days, because, I kid you not, he's supposed to spend a week at some ashram in the Blue Ridge Mountains and he wants some "quality time" with his offspring before he goes. This ashram nonsense is his Father's Day gift from the Concubine, who God bless her stupid little heart, insists on staying with him, at least through the summer. (This may have something to do with the tacky mansion he always rents on the beach in Santa Barbara every August, or it might just be his money.)

Anyhoo, I open the door and there's La Annabelle, with Cody the vegan teetering next to her. They're all glammed up, wearing Manolos, and oddly (or not so oddly) there are Cosmos in their hands. (Actually, Cody's shoes are that cruelty free brand that Natalie Portman, also a vegan, has designed. Even for the most anticipated chick flick of the century, Cody won't cross to the dark side.) "Are you my Miranda or my Charlotte?" Annabelle says, then reaches into her Balenciaga (the same one she flounced out of my house with when we had that nasty fight) and pulls out a bedazzled thermos. "I'm your fucking Samantha," I tell her, and kind of thrust out my boobs. Then Annabelle tells me to get the hell out of my ratty jeans and t-shirt because we're going to the movies. "Move your cute ass," she adds, "We have to stop somewhere first." "Stop where?" I ask her and she just shakes her head mysteriously while Cody wobbles in her meatless shoes and does her best not to give anything away. "What's the J-ster doing for Father's Day?" Annabelle asks me and when I tell her he's having dinner at home with the C-word and the kids she says something that sounds like, "Last Supper," which in the moment, I don't really understand.

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When I first got separated (such a ladylike term — it should be "wrenched," or "torn," or "severed," that's more like it) all I did was eat. Cheesecake, Pop Tarts, Cap'N Crunch, all the stuff that Jeffrey hated and that I knew was bad for me went straight into my "separated" body. I guess the idea was that the bad stuff would fill me up — you know, the separated parts would theoretically all come back together because all that fat and sugar would round me out, as it were. I'm sure you can understand what I was thinking. It made a lot of sense at the time, plus I was always hungry and common sense told me food was the way to go.

That lasted for a little while, and then, for lack of a better option, and with the encouragement of Annabelle (no, we haven't totally mended the fence yet, but we're working on it) I joined a gym. I've always hated gyms. The idea of sweating in front of strangers never appealed to me (I can't imagine why) and the thought of seeing all those nubile twenty-something actress wannabes (this is Los Angeles after all) flaunting their belly rings made my own Buddha belly turn. But I went anyway, out of boredom, more than anything else, and the belief that even though I was eating everything that was put in front of me, (a little shout out to Fritos here), the working out would literally, make me a stronger person. That somehow, a treadmill was going to propel me in the direction that I needed to go.

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Well, as we all know, Memorial Day was just upon us. Memorial Day signifies many things to many people. It is the near end of another school year. It is the unofficial start of summer. It is the signal that tennis camp and endless barbecues (how much sausage can one woman eat?) and god help us bikini season is right around the corner. (A few months ago I actually had the audacity to purchase a bikini, in a racy leopard print, thinking that in honor of dumping Jeffrey I would also dump the ten pounds that he left behind on my hips and ass. What a surprise, that didn't happen.) Memorial Day is also obviously the holiday where we are meant to remember the people who have fought and died for our country, and while I won't go into a long diatribe about that, I can say that I, who am not sure I would know how to die for any cause, truly appreciate what they have done. That said, and with no disrespect, I would like to take this opportunity to do a shout out to some of the things in my life that despite my best intentions I may have lost, or am losing, or may never lose, but that I still want to remember.

So, here again, in no particular order (order clearly not being my strong point):

1. I want to remember my name. (I'm not kidding. Seriously, I'm starting to forget things.)

2. I want to remember my marriage before it got fucked up. (Hmm...not really.)

3. I want to remember how I texted Jeffrey after the Mother's Day brunch from hell and tore him a new one for sticking me with the three hundred and forty three dollar bill.

4. I want to remember how I then realized I still have our joint savings account number so just for fun I called the bank and drained it.

5. I want to remember that I was not a loser for picking Jeffrey in the first place, and that picking losers doesn't make you one.

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So here's the thing about being "peri-menopausal," (or as I like to call it, "PM.") It makes you cranky. (*Note: I was told by my ob-gyn that since I still occasionally get my period, I am not actually in full blown menopause. I ask her what constitutes "full blown" and she tells me that I will know it when I feel it which frankly, makes me even crankier than I am.) Apparently, PM can make you a lot of things (hungry, tired, bored by sex, totally horny) but it can also turn you into a monster. I have seen this in myself and I have seen it in my girlfriends and I have seen it in my neighbor whose husband comes home from work, finds her bawling and screams, "Why can't you just be happy?!" Some of us snap at our children. Many of us rail at our significant others. A few of us yell at our boob-enhanced friends who stood by us when our husbands brought home hookers. That's where I come in.

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For a long time my favorite piece of literature was this play called "Mother Courage and Her Children." I couldn't really relate to the literal story (among other things, it is about war), but I loved the name. The play was written in 1939, by the German dramatist and poet Bertholt Brecht and I always remember it around this time of the year because I think on Mother's Day it is particularly apropos. This is why.

It all started with the man in the grey suit. Actually, it started the day before, when Jeffrey the home wrecker called to remind me Mother's Day was right around the corner. Now, Mother's Day has never been a big thing in our household. Oh, the boys make me little cards with ink blots that are supposed to be butterflies and bring home painted flower pots filled with seeds that in any other home would grow and blossom. (Of course, in the polluted environment specific to my ex-husband, they just wither and die.) Over the years, I came to expect nothing more than this and the day would come and go with little fanfare or discussion. (Which was fine, considering the holiday was created sixty or seventy years ago by a bunch of Camel smoking men in a Hallmark boardroom who, I'm sure, were all cheating on their spouses and thought, "Hey, let's cash in on a day when we can buy our wives flowers and gifts to make up for treating them like shit the other three hundred sixty four days of the year.")

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There is nothing predictable about being in the middle of your life. I've learned that much, if I've learned anything. (Well, except for flabby upper arms. That, apparently, is pretty standard. And chin hairs made of graphite. Don't forget those.) So when one day your college boyfriend shows up, out of the blue, and says he's never really gotten over you — well, there is no rule book on how to handle that one. You could say, "You're a mixed up son of a bitch," which is what you wanted to say twenty years ago when he scaled the walls of your dorm and hung by your fifteenth story window. You might say, "This Romeo and Juliet act is so... Shakespearean," which is what you tried to spit out when he threw your "diverse backgrounds" in your face (you from Connecticut, him from Westchester — despite an Ivy League pedigree the boy was a moron.) You'd probably say, "That ship has sailed, Popeye," which means more or less nothing unless you understand what it is to be a guy who works out five hours a day and thinks his muscles are God's gift to a just-lost-her-virginity, boy crazy freshman. And yet you say none of these things. Instead, you stutter, "Geez, Danny, you look exactly the same," and stare at him, kind of hungry, like you did when you were twenty and all you could think of was how his ripped-to-the-max swimmers body (Eighties lingo, for you youngsters) would look naked in your dorm room.

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It was bound to happen. The space-time continuum would suggest that it was inevitable. Like the full moon, the rising tide, like me being late for carpool over and over again, it was written in the stars. The men in my life were going to meet one another and when they did — it wasn't going to be pretty.

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I have to admit, my boobs have always been a big part of my life. Literally. They showed up late — I was fifteen (kind of apropos for me) but once they appeared they almost instantly had a personality all their own. You know how it is. (Well, if you've ever had double D's you do.) The boys gawk at you. The men whistle. Your friends say they're jealous but are secretly relieved they can go breezy and braless. (In the seventies, the cute sundress, no bra look was really in, remember?) Of course these days, Oprah devotes entire hours of television to how important a perfectly fitted brassiere truly is. (I always knew this. But I never had a syndicated television talk show to help me preach that particular gospel.) I am sure, however, there are many well-endowed women who are fully indebted to Oprah for getting this important information across. I myself have been known to run out and purchase the Oprah bra of the moment, and let me tell you — the fit (when done by a proper bra fitter — don't forget that part!) is always spectacular.

I know I have good boobs. I had good boobs when I was a teenager, when I was in college, when I had a breast reduction (double D's, remember) and I've had them since. They've almost never failed me. My boyfriends always liked them and so did I. Size, shape, the whole nine yards. (Jeffrey was perhaps the exception. This might make one wonder further about our relationship. He always said he wished I'd left them bigger, as if a C-cup wasn't big enough. This is of course metaphoric on a number of levels. I never got a good look at any of his prostitutes except for my Super Fan — she had whoppers — but I'm pretty sure he was getting some gazangas when he hired them.)
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