Category: during
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You can have your husband back soon.
During the spring, summer and fall of 2020, my husband was doing a lot of free work for Heather’s company. He was making videos for a fundraiser, helping to create remote performance opportunities for her classes, and just in general on zoom with her a lot. Daily. It wasn’t all work. Zoom striptease isn’t exactly…
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Galentine’s Day
February 2020 February 2020 was the last time I thought I had a Valentine. That weekend, I traveled with friends to a conference in Atlantic City, laughing that my husband never really cared about Valentine’s Day, so I was okay missing it. When we got into the car to get on the road, my friend…
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Heather’s Couch
Early, 2020 Heather wanted my boys to watch The Mandalorian at her place. We didn’t have Disney +, and she thought it would be fun to have the families get together. She invited her adult daughter too. We had snacks, and wine. Somehow I ended up sitting her couch at the back of the living…
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My Couch
I need to tell you that I love my couch. It’s a huge sectional, deep red, covered with colorful blankets my mom crocheted. When we were dating, my husband drew a couch, we colored it – purple and red stripes. We dreamed of getting a couch just like it one day. We didn’t, but we…
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The Wrong Band
February 2020. It must have been February because it was before the world shut down. I parked in my kids’ school parking lot and listened to Tori Amos sing The Wrong Band again. What was it about this song that reminded me of my life? I couldn’t quite figure it out. I think it’s perfectly…
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Frozen
January 2020 December was rough. But I was trying to understand your friendship with Heather. I was trying to build a friendship as well. So, I agreed when she invited us to go to the movies, “Let’s go see Frozen 2,” she said. “I’d love to have your kids see it. I’ve seen it a…
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Red-Flag Shoes
Wingtip “I would be livid if some other woman sent my husband a gift like that.” That’s what my friends said, when I mentioned to any of them that Heather had sent my husband a pair of wingtip shoes. I’d explain how I don’t think like that. I’d say “They were meant to be for…
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Where did you learn that from?
My memory is fuzzy – way too fuzzy. Like, what happened when? At some point in the last few years, I started joking, “Where did you learn that from?” every time he did something a little different in bed.* He would laugh, I think. Say something, I think. And life moved on. And now that…
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Too Big
In high school, I wrote about him for an English assignment. After years of being bullied, and called out for being fat, I was somehow able to believe him when he told me I was beautiful. Not only that, I was able to write about it and read it out loud in front of my…
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Remember Easter?
Do you remember Easter time, a few years ago? When they found a suspicious nodule in my thyroid, and for a few weeks, the worry of cancer was passed around back and forth between us? You said you couldn’t imagine life without me, and you didn’t want to. We took Easter pictures with the family…
Slices of Betrayal 