"Hello, Sylvia? This is Fran. Just wanted to hear the sound of a human voice."

November 1951

"I don’t believe you’ve ever met my husband—so we’ll just leave it that way."

November 1960

"I cleaned up the attic, I painted the screens, I washed the dishes and I’ll never play gin rummy with you again."

April 1961

"It’s not nagging. It’s procrastination intervention."

January/February 2005

"Man! It’s getting colder than a ..."

October 1982

"Let’s make a deal—if you don’t join the cigar
trend, I won’t join the thong-bikini trend!"

July/August 1998

Cartoons: Wives’ Tales The Saturday Evening Post

Devra and Jim Fishman on their wedding day.

“Sweetheart, what would you like for lunch today?” I asked as I stood in the kitchen clenching the handle of the open refrigerator.

I wondered if my husband Jim could hear the resentment biting into my voice, like a termite chewing through a piece of good wood. This would be the 81st meal I would have prepared for us since he retired four weeks earlier.

Jim and I had just come back from the gym and were still wearing our slightly sweaty workout clothes. He sat at our glass-top kitchen table with his chair angled, holding up the Washington Post in front of him. The sun flickered off of the silver wedding band he always wore, the same design as my gold one, which was upstairs on our bureau. I left it at home because I didn’t like to feel my fingers pinch between my ring and the free weights I lifted.

“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” Jim replied, without looking up. Then he pulled back one side of the paper and added, “I love spending time with you.”

“And I love spending time with you, too,” I responded, then thought, I just wish it wasn’t quite as much time, though.

Two years ago, with Jim’s encouragement, I quit my marketing job to write and take care of time-consuming housekeeping tasks so that we could enjoy carefree evenings and weekends together. I wrote every day, met friends for lunch, took a regular yoga class, and became a weekly hospice volunteer. My new routine was so personally fulfilling that it left me wondering when I ever had time to work.

When Jim retired last month, I rejoiced for his newfound freedom but didn’t expect it to eat into mine. Once Jim was home he wanted us to have every meal together. When I announced I was going to the grocery store, he would ask me to wait until he was finished reading the paper so he could come with me. If I said that I wanted to go for a walk, he would go get his shoes. My writing slipped and my friendships started to fray as I tried to adapt to his new schedule. For the first time since we met, I wanted less time with Jim, not more.

I adore my husband. Our lives fit together easily like a child’s first jigsaw puzzle. I love Jim’s quick wit, personal integrity, and ability to have thoughtful, emotional, and even difficult, honest conversations. From the moment we started dating, years after each of our first marriages ended in divorce, our priority was to be together as much as possible, as though we were trying to make up for all of the time we spent apart.

So how could I be losing my appetite for the man I adore, the man who makes me laugh at least three times a day? And, how would I tell the love of my life that I no longer shared his vision of togetherness? I longed to move anonymously through a Whole Foods Market once again. I missed the days when I would be at my desk, realize I was hungry, silently go to the refrigerator, take out food, eat it, and get back to my writing. I was beginning to feel like I was disappearing into a morphed image of the two of us, and I was frightened that neither Jim nor I would like the new half-person I would inevitably become.

My husband reminded me every day that I was the reason he was happier than he had ever been and that being together was what he wanted and enjoyed more than anything else. We hadn’t discussed what we wanted our lives to look like once he retired, and now I was wondering if I would fail as a wife and partner simply because I wanted—no, needed—for us to be separate individuals in our marriage. I had heard of this happening to long-married couples, but we were still giddy newlyweds who celebrate our ‘anniversary’ every Friday, the day that we eloped at a local lawyer’s office more than 200 weeks ago.

I knew the only way to tell him was with direct, loving honesty, the same way we discussed everything else, except my stomach started to tighten as I considered how this might affect our relationship. Jim might need togetherness as much as I needed space. Couples split up over that kind of incompatibility and I couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to us.

“We’re having a big salad,” I said, as I slowly opened a drawer in the fridge, pulled out romaine, celery, onion, and tomatoes and placed them on the counter near the sink, all the while gathering my thoughts and composing my opening sentence. I opened a can of tuna then rinsed and methodically chopped the vegetables into bite-size pieces, tapping out a message that lunch would be ready soon. Taking my cue, Jim folded his newspaper, stood up and set the table.

“Sweetheart,” I said, as I brought the salad bowl over and sat down. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” he asked as he sat down.

I intended to speak slowly and evenly, but the words rushed out, like a pot boiling over. “Preparing and sharing all these meals. It’s too much for me. I miss all of the things I was doing before you retired. I miss who I was before you retired.”

“But I thought this is what we wanted, the very reason I retired—so that we could be together all of the time,” Jim said, shrinking back into his chair and locking onto my eyes with his. He looked like a little boy who just found out the truth about Santa Claus.

I tried to explain. “Sweetheart, I feel like I’m losing my balance with all of this togetherness. Don’t you want to pursue your own activities—separate to mine?”

I saw his eyebrows push together as he leaned forward and started to speak. “I have no interest in jumping up and finding stuff to do right now. I just retired from having to be somewhere, reporting to someone, five days a week. Right now I am perfectly happy spending my time with you.”

“Of course I understand that. I’m sorry,” I said, trying to deflect the growing tension. “I enjoy being with you, too, but I’m afraid you won’t love the person I might become if I don’t stay nourished with my writing, my friends, and my exercise classes. I’m also afraid I won’t like the person I might become.”

“I can’t imagine not loving you, but I have noticed that you haven’t been your usual, lighthearted self lately,” he said. “And, I love your usual, lighthearted self.” He started to blink, which I took as a good sign. “But I’m not sure what to do here.”

For better or worse, but not for lunch.

“I love you, too, sweetheart,” I said, reaching for his hand before I continued. “I have been thinking about this and have a proposal for us to try. How about we eat breakfast together, taking turns preparing, spend mornings—and lunch—on our own, then meet back up for dinner, which we can also take turns planning?”

“So we’re married for better or worse, but not for lunch?” he joked, a sure sign we would survive this hurdle.

“Yes, I guess you could say that,” I said, leaning over for a quick kiss. “I think it’s worth a try, don’t you?”

“OK, yes,” he said, slowly nodding his head, still smiling. “Now please will you pass the salad dressing? I’m starving.”

Suddenly, I was too.

For Better Or Worse The Saturday Evening Post

This is not all that uncommon or remarkable. I think I speak for most—if not all—of my male friends when I acknowledge that had we each never married, we’d all be living in a dimly lit apartment (possibly all in the same dimly lit apartment) with the same furniture we had in college. Among the abundant blessings we each enjoy for having married is that we live less like zoo animals than we otherwise would have. We have drapes, we have nice plates and spoons, and even things that serve no purpose but to just be there and make our homes look like homes.

But what I found so intriguing about my friends’ redecorating adventure was the contrast between the ferocity, clarity of purpose, and efficiency with which she tackled the project and, in the other extreme, his most modest of expectations:

“All I really want is a chair,” he confided in me one day.

“What do you mean you want a chair?” I asked. “Certainly your wife is not going to redo an entire house without chairs, is she?”

“Oh, no. Sure,” he acknowledged. “There are chairs, but I mean … you know, a regular chair. Just … a place to sit down.”

I found this so sad. Here’s my pal—a very bright and very successful businessman—who, when all is said and done, wanted/requested/expected/hoped for nothing more than to have, in his own home, one guaranteed quiet place to sit down.

And I felt his pain because I myself have, for a long time, hungered for nothing more than the chance to just sit down.

I’ve always been a fan of sitting. Started sitting as a kid, got more heavily into it when I got to high school. You know how that happens: You start off just sitting with your friends, for kicks, and pretty soon you don’t even need other people; you’re sitting every chance you get—any time of day and night.

But as I get older, I find I appreciate sitting more and more. Because when you’re a parent, the amount of time you get to actually sit diminishes progressively—while the need to sit only increases.

When you have kids, there is just always something—hundreds of somethings—to do. And doing these things invariably involves getting up to do them—the very opposite of sitting down.

When I was younger, I used to tease my father for falling asleep at the movies. I don’t think in his adult life he ever once saw an entire film through from beginning to end. It made no difference how good the film was—how long, how loud, how engaging—he just wouldn’t make it.

Well, like so many other things, I have, with age, come to understand my parents’ side of things more clearly and now find the shoe entirely on the other foot. My kids take bets as to how soon their old man will be asleep watching anything.

I believe sitting is very underrated. And I’m not just saying that because I’m good at it. Really, it offers everything you could ask from a physical activity. It can be reinvigorating and refreshing, yet it’s restful and safe. It lets you relax and think. It doesn’t hurt anybody else—unless you’re sitting on them. (And even that, in the right context, can be good.) You can do it alone, or in groups. It’s environmentally safe, it’s easy to learn, and can be done almost anywhere.

I even use sitting in my work. As an actor, you’re supposed to have a motivation in every scene. You’re meant to know, at every moment, what it is your character wants. As any of my colleagues who have ever worked with me will attest, my “character’s” motivation is virtually always “I want to sit down.”

Should my character already be seated, then, of course, I adapt. In such cases, my motivation is generally “Please don’t make me get up.”

I like to sit, is my point here.

I can’t say enough good things about it. Sitting also has a spiritual component. Do it right and you become mindful and appreciative of all aspects of the human condition. You often hear of meditative sitting poses, almost never of meditative “stand over there” poses. Why do you think that is?

There’s an implied sanctity associated with sitting. Think of anything important you’ve ever had to share. What do you say? “Let’s sit down and talk about it.” “I have to tell you something; are you sitting down?” It’s never “Get up and run around the room. Are you jumping? Good, because I have to tell you something.” No, because you know in your heart that sitting is the way to go.

Which is not to say I condone or am prescribing to a universal life of sloth. I certainly embrace the importance of exercise and activity. However, I could point out that a lot of terrible things in life might have been avoided had people simply sat down and stopped doing whatever it was they were doing when this terrible thing happened.

As a parent, I’ve moved beyond pro-sitting and become almost anti-moving. “Someone’s going to get hurt. Just … sit down” is perhaps the most frequently uttered phrase in my house.

Just as you almost never hear of a kitchen countertop running into a kid who was sitting nicely, so too do you rarely hear of an unhinged lunatic opening fire on his former coworkers while sitting nicely. It’s always the work of somebody standing up, moving around, and getting all agitated. Had he remained seated, perhaps thinking and reflecting a bit more thoroughly, tragedy would have almost certainly been avoided.

Now while it’s true that bad things could happen to you while quietly sitting, technically most sitting injuries involve getting into or out of the sitting position, not the actual sitting. Chairs have been known to be pulled out for laughs; knees have buckled, as have lower backs. But, generally speaking, once you’re seated, you’re pretty much out of the woods.

All of which is to say that if elected, I will work tirelessly to defend your right to sit, and vow to fight with all my powers the vast but unacknowledged anti-sitting lobby that works to dominate and destroy the fabric of our American life.

By the way, in case you’re wondering: my friend never did get his chair either. Side tables and bric-a-brac? You betya. A nice chair to sit down in? Not so much.

Excerpted from the book Familyhood by Paul Reiser. Copyright © 2011 Paul Reiser. Published by Hyperion. Available wherever books are sold.

Sitting The Saturday Evening Post

Apparently, yes—but in quite different ways. Pounds tend to add up for women after marriage and men after divorce, according to the American Sociological Association.

Although the study data can’t explain why, researchers suggest married women have little time to exercise and divorced men lose out on the proven health benefits of marriage—including stability, regular meals, and reminders to take better care of themselves.

Love Surprise The Saturday Evening Post

“Breakfast is more enjoyable since we agreed not to wear glasses at the table.”

From Mar/Apr 1999

Smart deal. I knew there was an advantage to being nearsighted. Now, if we can only do something about morning breath.

“Let’s make a deal—if you don’t join the cigar trend, I won’t join the thong-bikini trend!”

From Jul/Aug 1998

This wife knows how to negotiate. This is from 1998 by one of our favorite cartoonists, Randy Glasbergen.

“It’s wearing me out: dirty clothes, fussy eating, constant whining … and then with our first baby on the way…”

From Mar/Apr 2003

I swear I see a multitude of female heads nodding.

“Listen to this—The anonymous winner of Saturday’s jackpot has not told her husband…”

From Jan/Feb 2007

Dear? Are you there? This 2007 Nick Hobart cartoon is one of my favorites.

“I’d go home to Mother, but I don’t know where the RV jamboree is being held this week.”

From Jan/Feb 1998

Don’t parents realize how inconvenient it is when they get lives of their own?

“How could you, Ermela, after I’ve given you the best halftimes of my life?”

From Jan/Feb 2002

I’m willing to bet he sees absolutely nothing wrong with that sentence.

“Give me the bad news, Doc. Am I going to live?”

From May/Jun 2000

Of course, it isn’t just men behaving badly. If the patient’s question doesn’t make sense, just look at the Mrs.

Cartoons: The Funny Thing About Marriage … The Saturday Evening Post

Author Susan Beer is now one of them. In her book, Move On Without Me (Hatherleigh Press, 2010), Beer shares 6 ways to move through the first year of widowhood:

 Focus on the positives. He is forever in your heart and in your memories. So, focus on what you gained and not on what you lost. Start a gratitude list.

 Affirm your accomplishments. It may just be getting through the day, but you did it. Congratulate each discovery of new strengths and resources.

 Acknowledge regrets. You will have regrets. Transform them into learning experiences.

Move on Without Me
by Susan C. Beer
Hatherleigh Press. Distributed by Random House.

 Make yourself the priority. Be honest with yourself and with others.  Only you know how you are feeling, what you need, and when you need it.

 Get up, get dressed, and get out.  Do something that makes you feel good: take a walk, go to an exercise class, get your hair done or restyled, have a manicure, joing a friend for lunch or dinner. And, smile. It makes you feel good, and attracts more of the same.

 Realize that friends, and friendships, change.  Some will come, some will go, and some are there for a lifetime.

Move On Without Me

$15.00 paperback

Hatherleigh Press. Distributed by Random House.

For more information about grief and loss, including a list of related websites, visit Grief & Loss – Topic Guide – Helpguide.org, and Mental Health America: Coping With Bereavement

A Widow’s Life The Saturday Evening Post

Tonight Reuben and I linger in the kitchen longer than usual. It’s August in Tampa, maybe the hottest day of 
the year; we’re both reluctant to leave the air conditioning. Finally we join Ted and Carolyn on the porch. They’re 
sitting in their usual spots on the wicker sofa, red-faced 
from laughing.

“What’s so funny?” says Reuben.

Carolyn wipes a tear from her eye. “I can’t say.” She gives me a wink. “There’s a lady present.”

Carolyn’s stories are usually bawdy or scatological, 
full of burps and farts and bodily emissions. She has the vocabulary of a trucker or a sailor. Reuben and I joke that we get together so Ted and Carolyn can curse. It feels good to joke about it. It reassures me that my jealousy of Carolyn is in remission. For a long time it consumed me. From the day he met her, Ted became more critical of me: my fears, my shyness, the time I spend in the bathroom putting 
on makeup or taking it off. He never complained about those things before. Not until Carolyn reminded him of everything I wasn’t.

“How’ve you been, Ted?” says Reuben, offering his hand. “Did Carolyn tell you what happened yesterday?”

“What?” says Ted.

“Get this,” she says. “Yesterday I had my first cutaway with a student.”

Carolyn works part-time as a skydiving instructor. Every weekend she does a dozen tandem dives with novice divers strapped to her belly. I listen as she explains how yesterday, diving with an exceptionally nervous student, she realized that their shared parachute had failed to open.

“Twenty seconds,” she says, pausing for effect. “I had 20 seconds to cut loose the chute and open the safety. Otherwise—” she claps her hands together. “Splat.”

“Cut it loose?” I say.

“When the chute opens there’s a whole mess of ropes,” Ted explains. “If you don’t cut it loose, the second chute will get tangled up in them. Then you’re cooked.”

I feel suddenly queasy. I have a desperate fear of heights; the thought of jumping out of an airplane makes me sick. Reuben puts his hands over my ears.

“Poor Nora,” he says. “Don’t listen. You’ll have nightmares.”

There’s more to the story—the intricacies of packing a parachute; comparisons to Carolyn’s two previous cutaways, both on solo dives—but I’m not listening. I’m watching Ted watch her. His blue eyes flash, and a spot of red appears in each cheek. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that this is why I keep inviting Reuben and Carolyn back. My husband is never more interesting to me than when we’re in Carolyn’s presence. Years ago—I’m not sure of this, but I think it’s true—he watched me that way. Every night he came into the restaurant where I worked and sat at the bar for hours, nursing a single beer. The stalker, my friends called him. Twelve years later his eyes skim over me; I am like a familiar painting, like the house he grew 
up in. I look at him the same way. Only when Carolyn comes do I notice his clean profile, his resonant voice, his wrists turning in the cuffs of his shirt. I remember that my husband is a handsome man.

We met Reuben and Carolyn two years ago, in a Thai restaurant on Dale Mabry Highway. We sat on opposite sides of the room; between us, a table of young men celebrated a birthday. The men toasted, laughed, drank. They wore stylish sweaters; they sang “Happy Birthday” in resonant tenors. Then, halfway through their meal, the birthday boy pitched face forward into his curry. An ambulance arrived. Just as the man was carried out on a stretcher, a waiter came out of the kitchen balancing two trays: Carolyn and Reuben’s pad thai, Ted’s and my yellow curries.

“We’re game if you are,” Carolyn called across the room. “We’re both organ donors, by the way.” We laughed, Reuben ordered a round of Korean beers, and by the end of the night they’d moved to our table. They fascinated me, the silver-haired gentleman and his young wife, her hair so short that a waiter had once called her “Sir,” even though she and Reuben were holding hands at the time. We all laughed when Reuben told this story, though later the whole thing struck me as strange. Carolyn is tall and slender, with delicate features; it seemed impossible that anyone could mistake her for a man. Stranger still, neither Carolyn nor Reuben seemed bothered by the waiter’s comment. This, I’ve since concluded, is the difference between them and us. In Carolyn’s place I would have been mortified. In Reuben’s place—having a stranger think he was sharing a romantic dinner with another man—Ted would have been livid.

At the end of the evening we swapped phone numbers. “We’ll never see them again,” I told Ted; but a few days later, Reuben called, inviting us to their house for a barbecue. We played badminton in their yard that evening, slightly drunk: Ted and I on one side of the net, Reuben and Carolyn on the other. After 10 minutes Reuben and I put down our racquets and stood off to the side swapping recipes for bouillabaisse. Finally we retired to the patio, watching Ted and Carolyn as we talked. They played until full dark, visible only by their white tennis shorts, their long bodies graceful as dragonflies.

They are alike in more ways than I can count. They both love dogs, action movies, college football; they are both skiers, scuba divers, climbers of rocks. From a distance they even look alike: blond hair, muscled calves, sinewy forearms. To me they are like champion horses, beautiful because of their strength.

The Florida evening is loud with bugs, the neighborhood coming back to life after the shuttered, sultry afternoon. There are katydids, dogs barking, kids playing baseball in 
the park down the street. We hear a loud crack, the satisfying collision 
of bat and ball.

“Good hit,” says Carolyn. “Sounds like a homer.”

Ted rolls his eyes. “I wish they’d go back to school already. Ask Nora. They make me nuts.”

I shrug. “They make him nuts.”

Reuben and Carolyn don’t have children either. For them the choice was easy, according to Ted; for us it’s been a struggle, a decision made after years of persuasion (his) and regrets (mine). Ted says Carolyn has no interest in babies, that she’d rather spend her best years rock climbing and skydiving than potty training and watching cartoons, and I know this only makes him love her more.

They agree on everything. The best scuba spots (the North Wall of Grand Cayman), the best way to catch a hammerhead (live blue runners), the best autumn marathon (Marine Corps; they trained together last summer). At least once in the course of the evening, they’ll say the same thing at precisely the same time. “In stereo,” Reuben will joke when it happens. I’ll laugh along with everyone else, relieved that the moment has passed.

“How are the mosquitoes treating you?” I ask. I’ve already shooed two away from my face. As the sun sinks lower, it’s only going to get worse.

“So far, so good,” says Carolyn, oblivious to the pink welt rising on her cheek.

Ted shrugs. “You know me.”

I do. Ted grew up in Florida, yet he’s never felt a mosquito bite in his life. He’s always surprised the next morning to find his arms and legs covered with red bumps. He has climbed Mt. McKinley, run four marathons, and dives to depths of 140 feet, yet he’s unaware of certain facts about his body: that he’s allergic to cats, that red peppers give him heartburn, that his arms become more freckled every year from not wearing sunscreen. He can’t tell when he’s dehydrated, constipated, or catching a cold. He doesn’t realize he’s losing his hair.

“My potatoes are boiling,” I say, getting up. “Any volunteers to make a salad?” We’re having shark steaks, from the 5-foot hammerhead Ted caught in the Keys last weekend, and his favorite garlic mashed potatoes. Ted does the catching, cleaning, and grilling. I do everything else.

“Sure,” says Reuben.

“We’ll take Buck to the park,” 
says Ted. “I’ll start the grill when 
I get back.”

Reuben follows me inside. I mix the salad dressing; he takes a head of romaine from the refrigerator 
and rinses it at the sink. We don’t talk much, but I admire the way 
he moves around my kitchen, humming softly. His forearms are tanned from the golf course. Everything about him murmurs gentleness and competence.

“We have good news tonight,” 
he says, reaching into the cupboard for a bowl. “I’m retiring. I resigned last week.”

For a moment I’m speechless, stunned by the thought that I’m old enough to have a friend who’s retired. I’ve never asked Reuben’s age, but I know he’s got 20 years on the rest of us, maybe more.

“Wow,” I say. “Congratulations.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for awhile.” He tears the lettuce into the bowl. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my work.” For nine years he’s been president of First Florida Bank. “But I’d like to be home for dinner once in awhile. I’d like to spend a little time with my wife.”

“She must be thrilled.”

Reuben chuckles. “I think she’s a little worried. I’ve been a workaholic since she met me. She’s afraid I’ll 
lose my mind.”

“You can travel. Play golf. You’ll find plenty to do.”

“I think so.” He looks up from 
the salad. “I’ve got one project 
lined up already.”

He’s about to say more when we hear Ted clattering up the porch stairs. He takes a glass from the drainer and fills it with water.

“You’re bleeding,” I tell him.

“Am I?” Ted looks at his legs. A bright string of blood is trickling down his blond shin; Buck must have tried to climb him, crazy to get the frisbee out of his grasp. He swipes the blood away with his sweaty forearm, then takes the glass out to the porch.

Reuben laughs. I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking: How 
can a person not know he’s bleeding? It gets back to the question I’ve always had about Ted: Is he brave because he fears nothing, or because he feels nothing?

A moment later Carolyn comes into the kitchen, her T-shirt plastered to her sweaty back. Her hair is sticking straight up and there’s a smear of dirt on her face. She looks terrific. I think of my family’s medicine chest when I was a little girl: the ointments and laxatives, the ovals of pink felt for the bony joint of my mother’s big toe, sore and swollen from years of stuffing her wide, flat feet into dainty pumps. Carolyn’s medicine chest would contain no evidence of the sad, secret maintenance a woman’s body requires: the depilatories and mustache bleaches, the yeast treatment creams, the Midol. I know this is true because I’ve checked.

“Nora, that’s one hell of a dog you’ve got,” she says, rinsing 
her hands under the faucet. “He’s 
a champ.”

I smile. “He says the same about you.” Naturally, Buck loves Carolyn. She grew up on a dog ranch in northern Minnesota with a father who bred huskies and raced dogsleds. I wonder if that cold childhood is responsible for her fast metabolism, her miraculous pink-and-white-skin.

She watches me drain the boiled potatoes into the sink. “Can I help?”

“Can you peel potatoes?”

She frowns. “How tough can it be?”

Reuben laughs. “I’ll be out on the porch,” he says. 
“Nora, keep her away from the stove. And don’t let her
 chop anything.”

On the climbing wall Carolyn can balance her entire weight on one toe and four fingers, so graceful it hurts to watch her. In the kitchen she’s like a teenage boy, all 
knees and elbows. I stand next to her at the sink and 
show her how the skins slip right off when the potatoes 
are cooked long enough.

“Will you look at that?” she marvels, as if I’ve demonstrated an ability to move objects with my mind. She digs into a potato with her fingers and laughs delightedly as the skin peels away. “Where did you learn this?”

“I’m an Irish girl. I was peeling potatoes before I could walk.” I cut the potato into quarters. “My mother could peel a dozen a minute.”

Carolyn whistles through her teeth. “Geez. I don’t know any of this stuff.” She reaches for another potato. “You can do anything.”

A flush warms my face. Like all redheads I have treacherous skin, the kind that hides nothing. “You’re joking.”

“No, really.” Carolyn touches my arm. “You’re like an Amish woman. You make all this amazing food, and you don’t even have a microwave.”

I laugh out loud. “You’re too much.” I set down my knife and do something I’ve never done before: I give Carolyn a hug. She’s a foot taller than I am; I stand on my toes to grasp her shoulders. She smells of soap and grass and chewing gum, like a little girl.

The screen door slams; we hear Ted’s whistle, his heavy footfalls. Carolyn releases me, like a teenage brother too embarrassed to touch. Ted comes into the kitchen carrying a couple of empties.

He says, “Did Carolyn really peel a potato?”

We eat on the screened porch. Carolyn tells another story, and Reuben raves about the fresh artichokes. Ted keeps our glasses filled.

“I talked to the travel agent,” says Ted. “She found us 
a terrific condo on Cayman Brac, but we have to reserve 
this week.”

Carolyn glances at me. “I’m not sure we should drag these guys on another dive trip.”

“Nora doesn’t mind,” says Ted.

Our last time in the Caymans, Ted and Carolyn did 14 dives in 10 days. I spent every afternoon drinking margaritas in the tiki bar with Reuben. It wasn’t a bad trip.

Ted clears the plates from the 
table. Reuben and I each left some potatoes; Ted’s and Carolyn’s plates are as clean as if they’ve licked 
them. He takes the leftovers down 
the porch stairs and whistles for the dog. Reuben leans back in his chair and smokes a cigar. He and Carolyn hold hands under the table. That’s something kids do, something Ted 
and I used to do, so long ago I can’t remember what it felt like.

I turn to Carolyn. “I heard the 
news. Reuben already told me. You must be thrilled.”

Carolyn looks at Reuben, confused. “News?” she repeats.

I refill my wine glass. “About his retirement.”

Carolyn laughs. “Oh, that good news.” She runs a hand through her hair. “Yeah, it’s great. Two more weeks and he’s a free man.”

We have coffee and dessert on the porch; Reuben helps me clear the cups and plates. When I come back outside Carolyn is leaning over the railing, staring into the distance. Ted has his back to us, his fingers in a pot of saguaro cactus, checking to see if it needs water.

“Climbing in the morning?” he asks. “6:30?”

“Me?” says Carolyn.

“Of course,” says Ted. “Who else?”

He’s right—neither Reuben nor I would be caught dead rock climbing—but the remark comes out sarcastic and a little cruel.

“Sure,” says Carolyn. “I’ll meet you at the wall.”

At 11:00 p.m., Reuben and Carolyn get up to leave. We walk them down the porch steps to their Jeep. Reuben’s arm is around Carolyn’s waist and they stumble slightly, trying to walk side by side down the narrow stairs. For a second I feel Ted’s hand at the small of my back. Then it goes away so quickly I wonder if I imagined it.

“I have to tell you guys something,” she says. “I’m going to burst.” She turns to me. “We’re adopting a baby girl from Romania. She’s not coming for another three weeks, but I couldn’t wait.” She grabs my hand, not Ted’s. “I wanted you to be the first to know.”

Baby. I remember a time, months ago, when I ran into Carolyn in my gynecologist’s waiting room. It surprised me, then, that Carolyn would need such a doctor; that she possessed the same invisible network of tubes and organs I did. Equipment we’d both opted—I thought—not to use. She’s been trying all along, I think. Trying to have a baby.

“A baby,” I say. For the second 
time that night I take her in my arms. “A baby.”

I can imagine her as a mother. I’ve seen the transformation before, ambitious friends who quit their jobs in advertising or finance; glamorous friends who cut their hair and began wearing sweat suits. Somehow on Carolyn motherhood will look different, a breathtaking feat.

Ted won’t see Carolyn for a couple of months. Week after week she’ll break their climbing date. “She’s busy with the baby,” I’ll tell him; but he’ll be dejected, inconsolable, like Buck when we leave for a weekend and put him in the kennel. When Reuben and Carolyn finally invite us to their place, Ted will bring gifts he picked out himself: a miniature fishing vest, a GoreTex windbreaker. “It’s technical,” he’ll say of the windbreaker, as though the baby might find herself in a rainy wilderness where hypothermia was a danger. Carolyn will exclaim over the tiny clothes, but she’ll fold them and put them back in their boxes, and Ted will know that he has lost her.

Ted doesn’t know any of this now, but he suspects. I feel it in his body, his arm creeping around my waist. Together we watch the Jeep back out of the driveway. Carolyn drives one-handed, her left arm hanging out the window. We stand in the yard a long time, until the red taillights disappear at the end of the street.

Cutaway The Saturday Evening Post

Read “The Geometry of Love” by John Cheever [PDF]

The Geometry of Love, by John Cheever The Saturday Evening Post

Love and Marriage: A Cartoon Gallery The Saturday Evening Post

Wife to husband: “One of those trout you were fishing for last weekend called and left her phone number.”

Karen S. Chilos

Hook, Line, and Stinker The Saturday Evening Post

Gary DaSilva

Special Delivery The Saturday Evening Post

Now the 11th  generation of Americans has been born; now it is starting through the fundamental phases of life. Each phase prepares for the next: The love the infant learns in his mother’s arms helps him become a loving child; puppy love introduces the adolescent to a deeper kind. So natural is the process that we assume it, yet often the transitions are difficult. Many of us falter, even fail. But just as every failure spreads to affect other lives, so does every success, and there is in fact much love in this land. On these pages are seven glimpses of today’s Americans as, in their own manner, they obey the ancient urges to share the prime intimacies of life and to send posterity into the future they will never see.

View the 1966 photo gallery.

The Seven Ages of Love The Saturday Evening Post

“But I’m not getting married until tomorrow,” said the groom.

“I know that,” replied the uncle.

—Christopher Tome

Oh, Happy Day The Saturday Evening Post