Please send your ADVICE to two single women, whose lives are suddenly crashing in chaos!  Zoe and Sophia, BFFs for thirty years, find themselves unexpectedly cast into the world of re-creation and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty.  They need advice from anyone willing to help them.   For instance, what advice would you and your BFF give if you asked each other “WHERE ARE WE GOING?  AND WHAT WILL WE FIND?”  Any advice you can give to Zoe and Sophia would be helpful, but this is what they said to each other.

The day started softly with the rising sun. Mist hung like chiffon over the water behind Sophia’s house. Swiftly, two great blue herons rose through the mist, fleeing a sudden invasion of mallards and Canada geese. An ancient snapping turtle swam the center lane of the lake as he journeyed toward the dam at the other end, sinking every few yards, foraging for prey. Ospreys hovered overhead then plunged feet first into the shimmering surface when they spotted a good catch old snappy had missed. Once the ospreys ascended, clutching fish in their claws, they broke toward the sky, their slow wing-beats changing to glides as they soared.

Zoe rolled over and watched Sophia wake up. She reached out and stroked Sophia’s soft, light hair. Poignant pictures pricked her, snap shots of moments that filled thirty years of their sustained love as best friends. Sophia’s eyes fluttered open, and a smile sprang out to greet Zoe.
“Don’t give away your power, Sophie.”
“I won’t. Never again will I give away my power.”
“Let’s take a walk.”
“First, I need coffee.”

Because the days were closing in on Zoe and Sophia before Sophia’s permanent exodus from New Hampshire to Florida, the friends spent many nights together. They framed each other, stored up each other’s warmth and energy, like birds gathering food in autumn, preparing for the long stretches to come during which they would know each other’s voices and words, but be too distant for touch, smell and sight.

Zoe and Sophia walked down to the water, holding hands like school girls in a playground. They dipped their toes in the lake, and as brave as Zoe was about icy water, even she gave up the idea of swimming. But they giggled as they splashed each other. Side by side they perched on the arms of a weathered Adirondack chair, watching their dogs Sparky and Voltaire chase a tennis ball up and down the shoreline. A chilly breeze finally drove them back inside.

Sophia built a small fire in the fireplace, while Zoe made another pot of coffee.
“What about you, Zoe. Are you going to hold on to your powers too?”
“Which ones? I mean, what do you see as my powers?”
“The same as mine, the same as everyone’s. If you can see my powers, you can see your own.”
“Do I have your power in the strength with which you love?”
“Of course you do.”
“I guess I knew that. How about the way your creativity gives you power,” asked Zoe.
“Ah huh, yours does too.”
“But Sophie, that’s your work. Writing is what you do. I have a wonderful job, but it’s not creative.”
“I suppose it’s a matter of semantics, but you spend much of your time at work thinking about creative solutions for people.  How we spend our time is a huge factor in what defines us—don’t you think?”
“I guess.”

“When Marty and I were together, I used to say work was what I did, but my marriage and home were who I was.”
“I remember,” said Zoe, lifting her eyebrows. “I never felt that way except toward motherhood, which was all about who I was. Otherwise, I was often happiest at work. But my marriage to George was pretty volatile from the beginning and always lacked mutuality.”
“Do you think my closeness with Marty was one of the ways I gave up my power, Zoe?”
“Maybe. You let Marty define certain aspects of you. You lived for and around him so totally. Actually, he was the same way with you. I’m not sure I’ve ever known a more symbiotic couple. It worked for you when it worked, making his betrayal all that more crushing. But that’s not the power I was worried about you giving away, Soph.”

“What did you mean?”
“I meant the power you’ve given to Marty to hurt you since the split.”
“Yes, I need to take back the power of finding my own value. Marty can never again be at its core. Long before the split though, I was trying to resurrect him. What a sad waste of time. The Marty I knew died when he began his affair with Fugly.”

“I don’t wanna talk about Marty right now or about that ugly, rich, predatory girlfriend of his. Even thinking about them robs you of your power. Right now, I wanna talk about us. What else gives us power, Sophie?”
“Our curiosity and intelligence.”
“That’s true. Neither of us questions those qualities in ourselves. But if we’re all that intelligent, why do we give away our power?
“Do you know what Pema says?” Sophia was referring to Pema Chodron, their favorite American Buddhist writer.
“What does Pema say?”
“She says fear drives most people and our instinct is to run away from our fears. But when we run from them, we give the power to our fears. She thinks we should run toward those things we fear then fear loses its power.”

“That sounds like Psychology 101,” said Zoe as she walked into the kitchen and grabbed a half-eaten bag of Chex Mix.
Sophia followed her to the kitchen. “That’s true, Zoe, but it’s one thing if you’re talking about fear of heights or dogs or the dark. It’s another thing to talk about the deep-seated emotional fears that can become the driving motivation for how we fashion our lives.”

“Okay, Sophie. Give me an example. What do I run away from?”
“You run from fear of being alone and have since you were a child. You can probably look back on your life and see how fleeing that fear was the cornerstone of some of the most important decisions you made.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe what attracted you to George was his unhealthy fixation on you. He wouldn’t let you out of his sight. You found someone whose insecurity matched your fear of being alone.”
“Interesting. I wonder if I can extricate myself from that fear.”
“Maybe. If you could view aloneness as a state of nature that won’t harm you, then you wouldn’t be so afraid of it. I wish you enjoyed you as much as I enjoy you.”
Zoe laughed. “I kinda see what you mean. No one can live inside of me except me. It’s just I and I in the end.”

“Okay, Rasta sistah, what do I run away from?”
“You run from the fear of loss.”
“Ya think?” laughed Sophia.
“If you could transform your ideas about loss it might help you.”
“Meaning?”
“Every second of every day, everything changes. If you could substitute the idea of loss with the concept of change, maybe your fear of loss would lose its power. Change is like time; it never stops. Time is the rhythm of life, change is the melodic sound—they are inextricable.”

“Deep. But you’re insinuating that all change is good, Zo.”
“Not really. It is what it is. Why fear what we can’t control?”
“Why fear anything?” asked Sophia quietly.
“There you go,” said Zoe as she took a bow. “It’s easy to say, and hard to do, of course. But let’s get back to the power thing. What do we feel when we feel powerless?”

Sophia tossed a handful of Chex Mix into her mouth and crunched for a few seconds before answering. “I’d say when we feel powerless, we feel our lives lack value, and that really, really scares us.”
“Okay, I’m done for now, Sophie. Hand over the Chex Mix. This discussion gave me a headache. What are we gonna do with this gorgeous day?”

“I dunno” said Sophia, ”work in our flower gardens?”
“No, no, no,” Zoe said, shaking her head emphatically. “I’m not watching you talk to twenty flower beds filled with “your babies” and cry hysterically because you’re not gonna be here when they blossom. Let’s go to New York.”
“That’s kinda far for a quick jaunt. Anyway, we’re going there next week.”
“Okay, let’s do Boston then.”
“Can we go to the Museum of Fine Arts?”
“Why not? We’ll do lunch. Hey, maybe we’ll meet some interesting men.”
“Or maybe we’ll just see some interesting art work.”
“Either way works for me, Sophie. Let’s shower.”

After they showered, the women stood in their panties and bras as steam billowed around them. They rubbed lotion over their slender torsos and long lean legs, but the mirror was too clouded for them to see their reflections. Sophia tugged on the bathroom window, which stuck like so many others in her 1770 home. When she finally pulled it free, she propped it open with an old hairbrush. Soon the steam floated outside into the warm spring air. Zoe and Sophia bent upside down, drying their blond hair before they applied moisturizer and subtle makeup to their faces. Because the day was warm enough, they dressed in tank tops and shorts, and slipped sandals onto their feet. But even in the sunshine, Boston’s wind off the harbor would have a chilling dampness, so they packed sweaters.

Meanwhile, Zoe’s stroke-impaired yellow lab Sparky was in a power pout, his face turned to the wall. He was upset because Voltaire, Sophia’s border collie, insisted on dividing his time fairly between Sparky and Tolstoy. Tolstoy was Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat. Sparky was less than fond of Tolstoy, but Voltaire adored the cat. Voltaire lay by the fire on his side with one paw slung around Tolstoy, who was plastered to Voltaire’s chest, licking his face. Not only did Sparky not get how anyone could love Tolstoy, but his feelings were hurt because he felt left out. Sparky glanced over at the “love birds,” and Tolstoy shot Sparky a slit-eyed look, for no other reason than just to rub it in. Tolstoy’s a bastard, thought Sparky. Sparky’s a dweeb, thought Tolstoy. Voltaire rolled his eyes, shook his head, and wished everyone would just get along.

“What are we gonna do with the dogs, Zo?”
“I’ll call George and tell him I’m dropping them off at the house. He’ll let them out and feed them later.” Although Zoe and George’s divorce was just a few weeks away, they still lived on the same property. Zoe lived in the 1790 house, and George lived in the guest cottage.
“That’s probably best. It’s too warm to leave them in the car for long, and that way we won’t have to hurry home. We can just go where the wind blows us.”
“Whatever,” said Zoe, grimacing at Sophia’s metaphor.
“What’s wrong,” asked Sophia.
“Go where the wind blows us? Fuck sake, Sophie.”
“Fuck you, Zoe. Okay, we’ll ride the tail of a falling star and land where it drops us.”
“Skip it. Do you know what the special exhibit at the MFA is right now?”
“No, but we can Google it. Anyway, I’m in the mood for the ancient Egyptians. Maybe we can even walk over to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and look at the garden under the atrium. I bet the flowers are lovely.”
“Okay, but let’s get going and please bring something to eat for the ride.”

Sophia walked hurriedly to the kitchen cupboard and grabbed a new bag of Chex Mix, a jar of Nutella and two spoons and stuffed them in a cloth bag. Then she drew from the fridge four bottles of vitamin water and dashed out the door.

On the drive to Boston, the women first sang along with vintage Jill Scott. When their favorite song, Living My Life like its Golden, began to play, they looked at each other and smiled then threw back their heads and bellowed the words from the base of their stomachs. But by the time the song ended, Sophia’s voice wobbled.
“What’s wrong, Sophie?”
“This was the theme song for my life when Marty and I were together. I was so smug in my marriage. I adored him, you know.”
“Yeah, but you had to overlook a lot.”
“Meaning?”
“You had to overlook his hardcore narcissism.”
“In what ways?”
“Marty’s the kind of person who thinks primarily of his own needs, rarely apologizes, lacks true empathy, shows little compassion, is vain glorious, and feels others are always being thoughtless and lacking in care towards him.”
“Well, that’s quite a laundry list.”
“I’m not done, Sophie. Marty has a way of forcing others to explain their actions, rarely visa versa. And do you know how often in an hour you used to say “I’m sorry” to him? It made me wanna puke sometimes. You lived in constant fear of disappointing him because he was impossible to please. Nothing was ever his fault and everyone else was always “wrong,” never him.”
“What prompted this rant, Zoe?”
“It’s not a rant; it’s clarity I wish you would see. You were a perfect foil to him, the eternal optimist who trusted him irrationally to your detriment. Sophie, you’re the only adult I know who still believes in Tinkerbell.”

“I accepted him for who he was,” said Sophia.  “Growing up, he was modeled that people were either for you or against you. He’s all about black or white, no gray. Remember how judgmental he was about people who had affairs? Now, he has to make what he did be “right,” and he can’t stand the mirror I hold up to him. Since I no longer worship him because he cheated on me and left the marriage, I fell from grace.”
“Go figure, Sophie. He’s the troll fucker, but you’re the bad guy.”
“That’s an interesting nickname.”
“Well, Fugly looks and walks like a troll, she’s not that bright, and she has the depth of a flyswatter. All she really has going for her is a lot of money that other people earned.”
“Well, I’m moving past that now, Zoe. I think a better name for him is the ‘deconstructed half-man.’”
“Meaning?”
“Marty’s whole motif was vested in integrity and accountability and doing meaningful things with one’s life. He can’t argue that what he did to me reflected either integrity or accountability. And recently, I asked him what he and Fugly did all day. He said they sat around and watched TV, and when he was working, she invented stuff to do. He said she’s looking for meaning.”

“Well, you’ve written two books since this whole shit started. That’s not half bad, Sophie. Cream always rises to the top.”
“That’s what my mother used to say when I didn’t feel good about myself.”
“You have so much value, Sophie, but Marty’s too stupid to know it.”
“Not necessarily, Zo. If financial security was his objective, he certainly achieved it.”
“Good point.”
“Zo, the mountain I struggle to climb is to release all expectations of Marty. Mercifully, the summit just might be in sight. And once I bury him atop of it, I will dance on his proverbial grave. There are no bridges back to Marty. Now, could you please turn up the music; I don’t wanna talk about him anymore.”

As they drove, the women listened to the South African musician, Hugh Masekela. His songs were political, uplifting, and lively. They sang along, snapped their fingers and danced as vigorously as they could, pinned in by their seatbelts. But pretty soon, Zoe could tell Sophia was growing restless.
“What do wanna talk about now, Sophie?”
“I wanna talk about The L Word.”
“What is your obsession with that show?”
“I love all the universal themes reflected from a purely female perspective.”
“Lesbian female perspective you mean.”
“Not entirely. One of the main characters, Kit, is straight and some of them are bi-sexual and transsexual. Some characters are even gay and straight men.”
“Who are your favorite characters?”
“The writer Alice and the museum art director Bette,” said Sophia.
“Why those two?”
“I identify with them. Can you believe Bette was reading Pema on the show? I nearly fell over.”
“Weren’t you watching in bed?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I like Alice and Bette too,” said Zoe, “but my favorite character is the sex magnet, Shane.”
“Does she remind you of yourself?”
“No, not really, but I do relate to her pain, especially when I was in my early twenties.”
“I’m beginning to panic, Zo. I only bought DVDs of the first four seasons, and I’m nearly done watching those. Maybe we can stop at Barnes & Noble so I can buy the last two seasons.”
“I wanna go to a lesbian bar tonight to dance,” said Zoe suddenly. “I haven’t been to one since we lived in Boston, before you met Marty. We used to have so much fun dancing, remember?”
“I do. But how did we go from watching The L Word to dancing at a lesbian bar?”
“How did we go from Shane the sex magnet to Barnes & Nobel?”

“I’m sorry,” said Sophia.  ”Did you want me to explore further why you like the Shane character so much?
Zoe nodded. “Do you think she’s a sex addict?”
“I’m not sure what that is, Zo.”
“I guess it’s a person who uses sex like alcohol or drugs, to mask insecurity and pain.”
“Well, I think the Shane character uses sex because it simulates love without her having to feel love, which she’s afraid to do because she was abandoned by her parents as a child.”
“Do you think I’m a sex addict, Sophie?”
“Do you think you are?  I think you have a highly tuned libido, but you never screwed around on George all those years until the end.  You might be drawn to wanting male attention, but perhaps that has more to do with wanting to be loved than with wanting to have sex.”
“Hum. Interesting.  Let’s talk about something else.”

A few minutes later the women walked into the Museum of Fine Arts. First, they visited the darkened, hushed room where the Egyptian mummies lay encased in glass. Next, they found the brighter room where the Impressionist paintings hung. By mid-afternoon, Zoe and Sophia were hungry. Because the day was warm and sunny, they decided to go to the cafeteria and take a tray of food outside to eat in the museum’s enclosed courtyard. In the courtyard young mothers sat talking, watching their children play on the grass amidst fearless birds that pecked at crumbs on tables and in the dirt. But no interesting-looking, single men were afoot.

After lunch, Zoe and Sophia walked the couple of blocks to the Isabella Stuart Gardiner Museum, a place they had visited many times, especially when their children were young. They knew the eclectic, extraordinary exhibits well, so instead of meandering from room to room, they perched on the low wall surrounding the amazing indoor garden. The museum itself was patterned after a Venetian palazzo, and the garden, its centerpiece, was crowned by an atrium five stories above.

“Would you have envisioned us living the lives we are now when we were in our twenties?” asked Zoe.
“No. But I’ve never really thought about it either.”
“Didn’t people in their fifties seem ancient to us?”
“Practically dead. But, you know what–I don’t feel old. Do you, Zo?”
“Nope. I still feel young inside.”
“Well, fortunately, you still look young too. Not a day over forty.”
“Forty’s not young either when you’re twenty. But you too, Sophie, are well preserved.”
“Maybe that’s because we don’t feel old. Well, most of the time I don’t. On days when I’m utterly miserable about Marty, I feel pretty old. I don’t like what all the crying does to the lines around my eyes.”
“Those lines have a way of disappearing when you stop crying.”
“That alone is a good reason to stop. Thank God for Elizabeth Arden, Lancome, Clinique….”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, enough with the product lines. You’re broke, so maybe you shouldn’t spend so much on that stuff.”
“Like hell I shouldn’t, Zo. It’s worth every penny. As much as I cry, imagine what I’d look like without that shit to count on.”
“Why are we talking about facial moisturizers?”
“Would you rather talk about the orchids and the lilies? Hey, look over there. Those guys are checking us out. Work your magic, Zo. Send out that vibe. Maybe they’ll come over to meet us.”
“You’re a big talker,” said Zoe as she turned around to see the men Sophia spied.
“They look like brothers,” said Sophia.
“Yeah, they do. Not bad looking, well dressed—I like guys who wear oxford shirts under sports jackets over jeans,” said Zoe as she caught the men’s eyes and smiled gently.

Before long the men walked over and sat down on the garden wall next to Zoe and Sophia. One of the men struck up a conversation by asking Sophia the name of a nearby flower. Sophia could identify the names of everything growing in front of them. Had she only answered the man’s question about the single flower, she might have avoided toppling into the rabbit hole of her nerves. But no, she babbled on randomly about flower after flower until Zoe jabbed her in the ribs to shut it before she blew it. Sophia halted in mid-sentence, expelling air from her lips instead of words, and the two men looked askance for a second wondering where the rest of Sophia’s thought had wandered to. Zoe took up the conversational mission, wrapping the men around her words with her charm. Soon, they asked Zoe and Sophia if they knew of a place nearby where they could walk to have a glass of wine.

As the foursome strolled to a nearby wine café, Zoe and Sophia learned that they were fifty-something brothers, two years apart in age, lived in California, and were in Boston to attend a family wedding. Both men were divorced, had grown children and did something behind the scenes in the film industry. Since this was Zoe’s field too, of course she found immediate commonality. Unfortunately, Sophia did not. The older brother, Dave made no secret that he was gunning for Zoe, and with an almost imperceptible nod to Sophia, Zoe made known the feeling was mutual. The younger brother, Nick, was solicitous and sweet to Sophia, tried everything to draw her out on the walk, but her brain was so busy saying,“I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay,” that she missed the more subtle nuances of his gallantry. But each time she glanced into his eyes, she was aware of how attractive she found him.

They sat at a small table in the crowded café, and Zoe continued her animated conversation while the waiter brought them a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a platter heaped with cheese and crackers. Sophia, still unable to contribute much to the conversation, nodded like a fool and laughed at the wrong times. Zoe threw her a bone, encouraging Sophia to talk about how she was turning one of her recent manuscripts into a screenplay, but Sophia dropped the bone with a monosyllabic response and stuffed her mouth full of crackers instead.

Unfortunately, the crackers in Sophia’s mouth were like dust bunnies clogging a vacuum cleaner, and when she took a swig of wine in an attempt to soften the mass, she choked, and a ball of half-masticated crumbs spewed from her mouth and shot across the table, hitting Zoe in the left side of her head as she gazed flirtatiously into the lovely eyes of  Dave.  The men turned slowly and stared at Sophia.
“Fuck sake, Sophie, eat much,” said Zoe, raking her fingers through the mushy mess clinging to her hair.
“Sorry,” said Sophia as she wiped from her chin the soggy crumbs that hadn’t made the journey across the table.

The men pretended nothing had happened and resumed their lively repartee despite that Zoe’s attention was distilled into a steady glare, which shrieked at Sophia to cut the shit. Feeling she needed to redeem herself, Sophia risked a conversational maneuver.
“My favorite TV show is The L Word. Do you like it,” she asked.
“I thought that show finished up,” said Nick.”
“It did, but I just bought the first four seasons on DVD. They were on the sale table at the bookstore.”
“That’s nice,” said Dave.  A glazed look crossed his eyes as he cocked his head to one side in bewilderment.

From this bit of encouragement, Sophia launched into the same discussion of her favorite characters, which she had with Zoe earlier in the day. Two sentences in, Sophia glanced at Zoe’s slitted eyes, which screamed “change the subject,” and once again, Sophia stopped in mid-stream, failing to complete a cogent thought.
“I never saw The L Word,” said Nick.
“Neither did I,” said his brother.
“Well, okay then,” said Sophia as she pushed several slices of cheese into her mouth as if to plug the portal through which stupid thoughts could not escape her brain.

Despite Sophia’s incompetence at coherent speech, Nick realized that she suffered from nerves, and he found her very attractive, so he tried once again to engage her by asking whether she liked to travel. Since Sophia’s mouth was too full of cheese to answer, Zoe jumped in and told the men about their recent trip to Naples, Florida, which spawned Sophia’s desire to move to Naples as soon as the house she planned to rent became vacant. Zoe also explained how a complication with the owner of the house and the departing tenants held up Sophia’s original timetable, and that Sophia was frustrated because she had packed everything in her New Hampshire home, and just awaited the final word that the Florida house was free. Zoe hoped that perhaps this explanation would help justify Sophia’s strange behavior.

Unfortunately, when Zoe mentioned Sophia’s imminent move, Zoe’s emotions suddenly rushed to the surface, and she decided to contain them by also stuffing her mouth with cheese. So, when Dave asked Zoe what her plans were for the evening, Zoe tried to explain that she and Sophia were going dancing at a lesbian bar. But it came out as “doeing dandding ah a desblian blah.”

Sophia’s palate was clear by this time, so she translated for Zoe. And just as Sophia was about to invite the men to come along, Zoe coughed and gagged on her cheese. Since snot ran from her nose, she was able to spit the blob of cheese into a napkin and blow her nose at the same time. The The brothers were very cordial in the way they placed fifty bucks on the table as they said their goodbyes and hurried out the door.

“That went well,” said Sophia.
“Not too bad,” said Zoe.
“You know, I’m too tired to go dancing tonight.”
“Me too. Let’s just go home. We can save our dancing energy for next week when we go to New York City.”

As Zoe and Sophia stepped outside into dusk, muted lights sought to twinkle. They walked in silence for a minute in the soothing, warm air then Sophia said, “I read a quote yesterday that I really liked.”
“What did it say?”
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Sophie?”
“Sounds like.”

Again, the two friends walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Sophia turned to Zoe and asked, “WHERE ARE WE GOING?”
Zoe turned and smiled at Sophia as she then asked,  “AND WHAT WILL WE FIND?”
As Sophia climbed into the passenger seat of Zoe’s car, she said, “I BELIEVE WE’VE HIT THE INHERENTLY UNKNOWABLE IMPASSE.”
“YES, I BELIEVE WE HAVE,” said Zoe as she pulled out into the city traffic.

As the two astonishingly confused, but shimmering fifty-something best friends wove along the back streets of Boston, they danced, straining against their seatbelts. Jill sang Living My Life like its Golden, while Zoe and Sophia belted out the tune, roaring like lionesses. And as darkness closed the curtain on the day, they raced over the Tobin Bridge heading toward home, off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…but if you want to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog.  Easiest access is to click on the bolded dates in the calander to the right of the story.  And keep sending in your wonderful comments.  Thank you.

Please send your ADVICE to two single women, whose lives are suddenly crashing in chaos! Zoe and Sophia, BFFs for thirty years, find themselves unexpectedly cast into the world of re-creation and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty. They need advice from anyone willing to help them. For instance, what advice would you give your BFF if she asked, “WHY DOES MOVING TO FLORIDA FEEL SO RIGHT EVEN THOUGH I’M UPROOTING MYSELF FROM MY LOVED ONES AND EVERYTHING FAMILIAR THAT I CHERISH?” Any advice you can give to Sophia would be helpful, but this is what Zoe said.

As the sun began to rise, Sophia lay sleeping in her 1770 home in New Hampshire. Canada geese squawking overhead awakened her. Voltaire, her border collie, lay by Sophia’s side. She tried to reach over to pat him, but her huge Maine Coon cat, Tolstoy, was asleep on her stomach, pinning Sophia on her back like a beetle. She poked Tolstoy until he moved off, then she rolled over and wrapped her arms around Voltaire, smelling the scruff of his neck. Finally, she arose, walked to the french doors of her bedroom, and looked down at the lake behind her house. A few feet beyond the doors, mist hovered over two weathered rocking chairs, where several birds perched. When Sophia opened the French doors, her pets bounded outside, and the birds took flight.

Sophia stepped out of the room and stood on the dew drenched grass for a moment. She breathed deeply the spring air, which reminded her of a San Diego dawn in December, delicious and inviting. When she turned to go back indoors, her eyes scanned boxes of books, suitcases filled with clothes, paintings stacked against the wall, and electronic cords wrapped with tape. Contemplating another day of sorting, discarding, lifting, cleaning and packing heightened the stiffness in her limbs. Anticipating another day of culling through decades of joy, struggle, pleasure, pain, dreams, disappointments, love, and loss deepened the heaviness in her heart. But what she tried to avoid was starting the day feeling anger and pain about her husband Marty’s betrayal and departure from the marriage. Her move to Florida was an attempt to regain the spirit that seeped from her daily, an attempt to retake her power instead of handing it over to him, like a nameless servant delivering wine to a drunk king.

Zoe sat at the kitchen table of her 1790 house on the same lake, five miles up the road. She’d been awake since four o’clock, unable to shake off an anxiety dream that awakened her. In front of Zoe was a compartmentalized box containing hundreds of beads. Until recently, her laptop would have sat where the beads now were, and Zoe would have been studying the pictures and informational profiles of dozens of strangers on dating websites. But she had decided to stop obsessively connecting online with men, and instead, spent countless hours stringing beads onto wire, creating an exquisite line of necklaces and earrings. Her devotion to filling time this way stemmed from an intense need not to feel alone. That need was especially strong as she pushed from her mind Sophia’s eminent move to Florida.

Zoe looked at her watch, hoping Sophia was awake. Just then her phone rang.
“Hey, Zo. Whatcha doin?”
“Beading. You?”
“Getting ready to start more packing.”
“You need help?”
“I need boxes. Help is good too,” said Sophia. “Why are you beading at this hour?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“Stress. Do you have any food at your house?”
“Not much,” said Sophia.
“You wanna go out for breakfast?”
“Not really. Once I get my packing momentum going, I don’t like to stop.”
“You gotta eat,” said Zoe.
“Why?”
“Duh.”
“Shut up. Okay, I’ll go out to breakfast with you.”
“I’ll be over in bit. You need anything?”
“Some dog food. I’m almost out.”
“Hey, you must be so happy to have Voltaire back with you.”
“Zoe, I can’t even describe what a source of comfort and joy he’s been.”
“Has Marty tried to fight you about keeping the dog?”
“Marty who?”

When Marty left the marriage to go live with his girlfriend, Fugly, he took the dogs, Voltaire and Dickens with him. Fugly was married to a famous musician, who was the son of someone really famous, Famous Father. When Fugly moved out of the marital home, she left behind three small children whom she saw on a visitation schedule. Pressure was applied in such a way that Marty had not been allowed to stay at Fugly’s on the nights she had visitation. So, for months Marty stayed those nights at a dumpy motel near Fugly’s house. The dogs were not allowed to stay at the motel. But rather than letting the dogs stay with Sophia on those nights, Marty insisted they stay at Fugly’s, and Sophia suspected it was because Fugly wanted the dogs to be her dogs, the same way she wanted Sophia’s husband to be her boyfriend. From the day Sophia met Fugly, before Fugly and Marty started their affair, when the two were first involved in the project funded by Famous Father, Sophia’s impression of Fugly was that she was a predatory woman without boundaries, who took whatever she wanted out of a ruthless sense of entitlement.

Just a few weeks before, after months of absence, Marty re-entered Sophia’s life and said he wanted to reconcile with her. They spent two intense, (and at times brutal), weeks together before Marty returned to Fugly. Sophia figured out the main reason Marty decided to come home was to force Fugly’s hand about living with her full time, not just on the “off visitation” nights. Fugly had probably called Marty’s bluff when he threatened to return to Sophia if he couldn’t get what he wanted. But Marty never bluffed without being willing to carry out the threat behind it. Once Fugly took care of her end regarding the children, Marty left Sophia again, and moved in full-time with Fugly.

When Marty left the second time, again he took the dogs, despite Sophia’s repeated pleading that Voltaire and Dickens belonged to Sophia just as much as they did to Marty. Then, serendipity intervened. On their first weekend back together as a couple, Marty and Fugly wanted to go off for a romantic getaway. Rather than asking Sophia to tend the dogs, Marty asked their daughter Poppy and her husband Fonzi to care for the dogs. Poppy mentioned the arrangement to Sophia on the phone.

After Sophia’s call with Poppy ended, she tried to calm the rising torment and rage. But inside, something cracked and Sophia began to scream and scream. She screamed so long and so loudly that she thought her voice might travel the distance of an ocean. When the screaming finally stopped, Sophia sat limply in a chair in front of the fireplace, sobbing. And then, Sophia decided to stand up, to take back her power.
Sophia drove to Poppy’s home. During the drive she thought about what to tell Poppy and Fonzi to explain her actions. But when Sophia tried to talk, she couldn’t be heard. Her voice was too hoarse from the strain of screaming. Instead of speaking, when Sophia opened Poppy’s front door, she whistled to Voltaire, the ten-year-old border collie. He ran straight to her, wagging his tail. She gestured for Voltaire to follow her outside, and then she closed the door. It broke her heart to leave young Dickens behind, but Sophia wanted to be fair. She wouldn’t dream of depriving Marty of both dogs.

“Sophie, are you there,” hissed Zoe. “You zoned out on me.”
“Sorry. I was thinking.”
“Tell me what happened when you told Marty you were keeping Voltaire?”
“I didn’t tell him. I texted him. I said if he fought me on this, then I would have a ‘voice.’”
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“He knew what I meant. Marty has too much at stake and too much to hide from Fugly, particularly about what went on here and what was said while he was back with me. My “voice” will speak the truth, and he can’t risk that. He has to live in the shit he created for himself. But I don’t wanna hurt him. I just wanted my fucking dog back. Now, Voltaire is home, and that’s all I care about.”
“You sound empowered, Sophie. Good for you. Look, I gotta go. I’ll see you in a bit.”

As Zoe stood in the shower, a sense of excitement about spring began to stir in her. Hot water jettisoned her back, down her bottom and onto her thighs as she thought how novel it would be to buy food and actually cook a meal. A hot brunch would make a nice change from the Chex Mix and Nutella that Sophia practically lived on these days. Perhaps they could eat outside in the one of Sophia’s many gardens.

After Zoe slathered her body with lotion and blow-dried her hair, she selected clothes to wear and carried them into the kitchen to dress. But as she walked past the table, she glanced at the bead box and decided to create just one more pair of earrings before driving to Sophia’s. Zoe strung a fabulous dangly earring with tiny, pale jade beads mixed with even more delicate crystals and one pink onyx teardrop bead at the end. When she looked for a second teardrop bead to make the other earring, she realized she’d used the last one.

Why the lack of a bead became so bewildering was hard to say, but Zoe felt abandoned suddenly by her beads. Knowing her reaction was absurd, she pushed away from the table and walked outside to see whether any daffodils were open yet. As Sophia had earlier, Zoe breathed in the spring smells. And there was some quality about that amazing spring air that gripped her with yearning to be with a man again. It had been weeks. As if guided by a force beyond her control, Zoe walked back inside, turned on her laptop, and fell to the temptation of her dating sites.

For the next three hours, Sophia tried calling Zoe several times, but she didn’t answer. Concerned that Zoe might be living on Planet Nuts, Sophia decided to take Voltaire up the road to Zoe’s. The day felt like mid-June rather than early April, and Sophia lowered the car windows, letting the warm air stream in. When she drove into the yard, Sophia’s eyes widened at the glorious sight of hundreds of opened daffodils growing in flower beds and around trees that surrounded Zoe’s home.

Sparky, Zoe’s stroke-impaired yellow lab lay in the sunshine on the front porch. He struggled to his feet, dragged his hind end down the three porch steps then ran sideways out to the car to greet his guests. Normally, Sparky was less than keen on Sophia’s visits, and he was even less ardent about visiting at Sophia’s house. He thought Sophia was a bitch who monopolized his lovely Zoe. She also lived with that mean, bully-boy Tolstoy, the biggest, most intimidating, territorial cat Sparky had ever known. Except for the food Sparky stole from Tolstoy’s bowl and the cat crap he enjoyed as dessert, Sparky saw no point in gracing Tolstoy or Sophia with his presence. But today, his senses told him Sophia had brought someone so special, that he could overlook Sophia’s shortcomings. Voltaire was back!

Voltaire danced around in the back seat the minute he heard Sparky’s howl. Sparky and Voltaire had loved each other since they were puppies. Voltaire thought Sparky’s stroke was an unfortunate turn of events, but Sparky certainly had more vigor than the last time Voltaire saw him. The minute Sophia opened the back door of her car, Voltaire bounded out and the two old friends dashed across a field and into the woods to wrestle and catch up on old times.

Sophia hurried into the house in search of Zoe. She found her at the kitchen table sitting in her bra and panties, with the clothes she’d neglected to dress in still slung over a chair next to her.
“Fuck sake, Zoe, what happened to breakfast?”
“Hi,” said Zoe, looking up at her friend with a distant dreaminess in her eyes.
“You’re cruising the dating sites, aren’t you?”
“I was missing a bead.”
“Huh?”
“I’m just gathering pen pals, Sophie. No dating, I promise.”
“Why are you promising me that, Zo? You’re an adult, single woman. You can do anything you wanna do.”
“Yeah, but I’m afraid you’ll judge me.”
“Not my dealeo. You’re the one who thought the dating site business was becoming compulsive. I don’t judge anything you do. I love you just as you are.”
“Thank you, Sophie.  Are you hungry?”
“Not really. But are you gonna get dressed today?”
“I guess I should.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here. It’s gorgeous outside.”
“I don’t know, Sophie. I’m pretty happy sitting right here.”
“Suit yourself. But I’m going back home then. I’ve got shit to do.”
“Like what?”
“Well, apart from sorting and packing up the house and barn, I haven’t even cleaned out my flower beds.”
“Why are you gonna bother to clean out all those beds? You’re not going to be living there?”
“My gardens are a masterpiece I spent nearly two decades cultivating. I can’t just let them go—not while I can still see them. Zoe, I gotta tell  ya–you are acting really weird.”
“Am I?” asked Zoe as her eyes slowly drew away from Sophia’s and focused once again on the laptop screen filled with strangers’ faces
“I’ll see you later,” said Sophia. Zoe didn’t bother to respond. Outside, Sophia whistled to Voltaire who reluctantly parted from Sparky.

As she drove home, Sophia felt odd. Sensing a disconnect from Zoe was foreign to her. But once home, she shook off the feeling by putting on some Cuban jazz.  Then she changed into a bathing suit and rubbed olive oil onto her legs and arms. Her mood lightened instantly as she danced out to the barn to find a rake, with Voltaire prancing by her side, trying to herd Sophia’s every step. Before long, Sophia was enraptured as each rakeful pulled back layers of leaves, revealing the very tops of thousands of plants, which were just pushing through the soil of her twenty flower beds. To someone who didn’t know flowers, they just looked like masses of green things. But Sophia could see in her mind’s eye what they would look like when they bore the blossoms of lilies, oriental poppies, foxglove, phlox, peonies, roses, purple coneflower, coreopsis, campanula, Shasta daisies, bee balm and a myriad of other flowers. Soon, Sophia was talking to them, to her “babies.”

Several hours later, Zoe grew hungry. She still sat at her table and starred at her laptop as she sent off dozens of pithy emails to men she cared nothing about. It wasn’t until her stomach churned after one particularly interesting exchange, that she noticed Sophia’s absence. She felt something akin to panic when she realized the place to which she had let herself go. Zoe picked up her phone and called Sophia, but there was no answer. Hurriedly, Zoe dressed and dashed from the house, calling to Sparky. Excitedly, Sparky galloped sideways toward the car, involuntarily dropping turds in his wake, a common expression of Sparky’s delight. Together, they jumped in her car and barreled toward Sophia’s house.

When Zoe drove into Sophia’s, she heard loud music blasting from the windows and noticed that all six doors stood open. Tolstoy, dreading the sight of that bitch Zoe and her moronic, lame dog Sparky, sprinted into the woods.  But Voltaire barked with glee and ran to greet them. Sophia was nowhere in sight. Zoe walked inside, looked around mystified then called out for Sophia. As Zoe walked through each room, she was appalled by what she saw. Finally, she hurried back outside and walked down to the rose garden, which was surrounded by a white picket fence. Under the white arbor she saw a massive pile of leaves thrashing all by itself, and she heard the low tones of unmistakable keening. Next to the leaf pile lay a rake, which Zoe picked up and used gently to poke the gyrating, noisy heap. Before long, Zoe uncovered Sophia curled in a fetal position, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down her face.

“Fuck sake, Sophie. Why are you under the leaves?”
“I don’t know. I guess it feels safe here.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m bonding with my earth before it’s not mine anymore.”
“That makes no sense. Stand up.”
“No.”
“You have avoided living on Planet Nuts for awhile now. What happened?”
“I started thinking,” said Sophia as she sat up. Leaves clung to her hair and face.
“Meaning?”
“I realized once I move, Marty will bring Fugly here, and they will claim this land as theirs. They will sit and walk and play amidst the beauty I labored to create for so many years. It will be as if I never existed.” With this, Sophia wound into a whole new round of sobs.
Zoe sat down next to Sophia in the leaves and rubbed her head.
“Sophie, here’s a visual that might ease your pain. Picture Fugly, who looks and walks like a troll, stomping around the grounds on her gross, misshapen thighs with the purple pimples on them. She’s apt to offend the flowers. And you know she is gonna scare away the birds with that weird, manly voice of hers.”

Sophia began to laugh and Zoe joined in, then they both lay down on the leaves and stared up at the blue sky.
“Sophie, you’ll create new, magical gardens, tropical ones. Won’t that be fun?”
“You’re right. It’s just hard to let go.”
“By the way, what the fuck is going on inside the house?”
“What do mean?”
“You’re not just packing up. You’ve re-designed the rooms.”
“I want to leave the house looking beautiful, different, but still beautiful.”
“Why?”
“I dunno.”
“If I were you, I’d just move my shit out and walk away.”
“I can’t do that, Zo.”
“Don’t get me wrong. The place looks incredible. I miss your antique blue and white china on the mantelpiece but I see why you replaced it with the muted pottery.  It’s more masculine.  But how come you’re leaving so many of your paintings behind? Never mind that.  Why are you leaving the house perfectly arranged?  Is it to please Marty–so he’ll remember you a certain way?”
“Hard to say,” said Sophia as she paused to think for a moment. “Not really, I guess. I just can’t leave it all ugly and empty looking. My spirit is in this house. It’s not fair to the house. Also my family will visit here, and I want it to look nice for them. Marty has no imagination when it comes to decorating. He hangs pictures too high and doesn’t really think about colors and spatial relationships that complement one another, things like that.”
“You need to stop caring, Sophie. You have to let go.”
“I know. But I’ve never been able just to drop anything and walk away leaving a mess.”
“Kinda like Marty did with your marriage and your so-called reconciliation?”
“That’s how Marty and I differ. I like tidy endings, Zo. You know that.”

Just then, Zoe remembered why she’d rushed over to find Sophia in the first place. She sat up quickly and thought for a moment how she would broach the subject. But she couldn’t come up with a graceful segue, so she just took a deep breath and dove in.
“We have dates tonight.”
“WHAT?” cried Sophia.
“And they’re coming here to pick us up?”
“HUH? When did you arrange these dates?”
“This afternoon. I’ve just been doing a little rekindling of on-line friendships, that’s all.”
“Okay,” said Sophia, shaking her head in resignation.
“Don’t worry,” said Zoe calmly. “We already know these guys. We had dinner with them in Portsmouth a few months ago. They’ve been friends with each other for years. You know, the ones from Boston. One of them is an accountant and the other teaches literature at Emerson College. Anyway, they’re up here on a fishing trip for the weekend. In fact, they’re staying on the lake, just down the road.”
“And they’re coming here because?”
“I thought it would be easier if they picked us up.”
“Jesus, Zoe. I’m not sure I can pull it together to be charming tonight.”
“How’s that different from the last time we had dinner with them?”
“Fuck you.”
“What would you be doing instead, Sophie? Crying? Watching old DVDs of Nash Bridges with your boyfriend Don Johnson?
“No, you bitch. I finished watching all those. I would be watching the second season of The L Word.”
“I thought you didn’t watch TV.”
“I don’t. I was in the bookstore the other day, and they were having a sale on DVDs. Early seasons of The L Word were the cheapest thing on the sale table. I got the whole first season for ten bucks. It was worth every penny to save my sanity in the middle of the night. According to my shrink, my psyche’s had a setback, which translates into intrusive thoughts and uncontrolled crying, especially at night. When I’m this bereft, I can’t concentrate enough to read. But I can’t watch crap either. With something well-made, I’m engaged enough to find a little peace.”

“I’ve seen a few episodes of The L Word,” said Zoe, smiling. “What do you like about it?”
“I love all of it,” said Sophia. “But it’s kinda funny how behind I am on everything. Entire shows air on cable, run a few years, have finales, and I don’t see them until they end up in boxed sets on the bargain table of bookstores.”
“Well, no one would accuse you of being in the loop, Sophie.”
“Just as well. Anyway, I love the lesbians and their friendships. And I think the writing and acting are amazing. You know, I might try writing some screenplays.”
“You should ask your agent what he thinks.”
“I will. So what time are these guys picking us up?”
“Eight.”
“That’s in two hours. We’d better shower.”

A little while later, the two old friends stood in bras and panties, in front of the bathroom mirror, rubbing moisturizers over their slender bodies and long, lean legs. After they dried their blond hair, their eyes met in the mirror as they artfully applied subtle make-up.
“Zoe, why am I having such a hard time letting go of my marriage?”
“As you pack and sort through all the stuff that reminds you of the wonderful years, your emotions get stirred up.”
“It’ horrible.  I can find no peace here.  I hate Marty. He’s a fucking bastard.”
“That’s the problem, Sophie. You don’t hate him. You’ve tried to feel indifferent toward him, but that doesn’t work because you still love him. Then he rejected you again, so all you’re left with is hate, but it’s not hate at all. If you could just understand that he’s not a very good man. He’s acutely narcissistic and is absolutely incapable of holding himself accountable for his actions. In his mind everyone else is the problem. With Marty, there’s no gray, no middle ground. He’s always the hero of every story, so if people don’t worship Marty, he dislikes them. Right now, he spurns you because you hold up a mirror of himself that he doesn’t want to see. Anyway, fuck Marty. Why are we talking about him?”

“Wow, Zo. You sound like my therapist.”
“Can we talk about a far more pressing matter, Sophie? Me? I’m having trouble thinking about your move. It’s really starting to depress me, even scare me a little.”
“Me too, Zo. I can’t bear the thought of us being so far apart. Yet….”
“Yet, what?”
“ZOE, WHY DOES MOVING TO FLORIDA FEEL SO RIGHT EVEN THOUGH I’M UPROOTING MYSELF FROM MY LOVED ONES AND EVERYTHING FAMILIAR THAT I CHERISH?”

Zoe rolled a hank of hair onto the curling iron.  She held the iron still for a couple of seconds.  Then, as she released her grip and a curl sprang free, she answered.  “IT’S ABOUT SAVING YOURSELF, SOPHIE. YOU’VE DECIDED THAT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN GRASPING AND FIXATING ON THE PAST. YOU’RE NOT AFRAID TO STEP INTO THE GROUNDLESSNESS, THE OPEN SPACE. YOU ARE TAKING THE ULTIMATE, FEARLESS RISK. I’M PROUD OF YOU.”

Just then, they heard the doorbell ring.
“Fuck sake, the guys are early,” said Zoe as she dressed quickly and ran to the front door to let in their dates. Zoe greeted the dates warmly and offered them a beer and a seat on the couch. She then went back to the bathroom to check on Sophia. Sophia looked radiant and unusually confident. Zoe followed her to the living room, and they sat across from the men and engaged them in a lively conversation.

Once the four agreed it was time to leave for the restaurant, they stood up and walked through the dining room.  In the kitchen Tolstoy stood over Sparky glowering at him.  He was pissed because he wanted to take a nap next to Voltaire, but Sparky and Voltaire lay curled around each other, sound asleep.  Tolstoy was mortified at having to share Voltaire with Sparky.  As Sophia stepped into the kitchen, she was looking behind her, attempting to come across as demure and flirtatious with the literature professor, a tall, handsome, forty-something man with longish brown hair and beautiful blue eyes. He asked Sophia if she would be willing to look it over a manuscript of his. She said it would be her pleasure. Then just as she asked whether he would be one of her readers too, Sophia walked into the sleeping dogs and started to fall face first. Two strong hands grabbed her by the waist and caught her fall. She turned and blushed, smiling up into the man’s lovely eyes. She realized she really liked this man, and suddenly she felt that distant, almost forgotten tingling, of sexual longing.

“Wait a sec,” said Zoe, “We better let the dogs out before we take off.” Zoe opened the door and the dogs trotted outside. Zoe then closed the door and leaned her back against it, smiling up seductively at her date, a handsome, bald, fit, African American man.  Just then, they heard a terrible clatter, and the dogs bayed pitifully to be let back inside. The source of their desperation was no secret.

Sparky and Voltaire lurched through the doorway, frothed at the mouth, and then ran in circles as their stunned, miserable eyes sought Zoe’s and Sophia’s. The men jumped back at first and then bolted from the house, followed by Tolstoy. Zoe and Sophia just looked at each other frantically.
“FUCK,” they said in unison, “Skunk.”

After the dogs galloped through the downstairs and up to the second floor, the women finally cornered then and drove them back outside. Zoe and Sophia declined the meek offer of help from the men. Instead, they stood in the doorway waving goodbye to their dates, trying to look sexy while gagging on the dense, ghastly smell. Sophia’s date held his thumb and little finger to his ear and mouthed “I’ll call you.” But Sophia wondered vaguely whether he would.

Like reluctant soldiers going into battle, the women forged ahead with the necessary tasks. Sophia ran around the house and opened dozens of windows while Zoe made a bathing concoction for the dogs. It took both women to lift each dog into the bathtub for soaking, and even then, the dogs were so startled, so overwhelmed by the direct skunk hit, that they splashed much of the solution onto the bathroom floor.

Two hours later, Zoe and Sophia knew the smell was still too strong to sleep in the house, so they piled the dogs into the back of Zoe’s car. But just before driving away, Sophia opened her door and jumped out.
“I forgot something,” she called to Zoe as she ran back into the house.
When Sophia reappeared, she juggled in her hands boxed DVD sets of The L Word and the book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, Zoe’s and Sophia’s favorite American Buddhist writer.
“What are you doing?” asked Zoe.
“I thought maybe we could read a bit of Pema. After that, I want to watch these shows. I like my imaginary lesbian friends, plus the stories are full of important political ideas and poignant universal themes about love, loss and humanity.”
“God almighty, Sophie, you are so strange.”
“Don’t you want to watch my shows?”
“Maybe I’ll watch them or maybe I’ll bead. Right now, I can’t think about anything but fleeing this disgusting stench.”
“Your house is gonna stink too, you know, just from us.”
“Oh well. It’ll be better after we shower. I think getting skunked was a sign, Sophie.”
“Of what?”
“I fell off the straight and narrow today with the dating websites, and you are creating a footprint rather than detachment with all your work in the house, creating beauty for Marty that he’ll never appreciate.”
Sophia smiled. “Ironically, the embedded skunk odor might be a lingering parting gift for Marty.”
“That would be apt. But I still think the gods are punishing us.”
“That’s ridiculous, Zo. Now, listen to me. I’ve wanted to say this to you for awhile. Most artists are driven by compulsion. As I writer, I know I am. What you’ve done recently is to use your compulsion to create some magnificent jewelry. Most of the creative people I know are filling some black hole or another. It shouldn’t be a source of shame.  When you cruise the web for men, you are compelled to express through words. Now, you’ve transformed that energy into fantastic artistic expression. I’m really impressed.”
“Wow, Sophie, I never thought of it that way.”

“Zo, do you think those guys liked us?”
Zoe shrugged. “Hard to tell—there’s just nothing sexy about skunk musk. So, I wouldn’t call it the most romantic second date, but it wasn’t the worst one we’ve ever had together.”
“Do you think those guys would come over to your house after we shower, you know, for a nightcap?”

“I think they’d rather eat bat shit.”
“Bats shit?

“Everything shits.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”

Once Zoe and Sophia were clean again, they tucked into Zoe’s warm bed. They could barely smell the skunk on themselves as they lay alternating handfuls of Chex Mix with spoonfuls of Nutella. For hours, The L Word drama unfolded, filling the heads of the two old friends with fascinating imagery–until they finally drifted to sleep–off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…but remember, if you want the whole story, begin at the bottom of the blog. The easiest way to find earlier episodes is to go to the calendar in the right-hand column and click on the bolded dates. And please, keep those comments coming. Thanks.

Please send your ADVICE to two single women, whose lives are suddenly crashing in chaos! Zoe and Sophia, BFFs for thirty years, find themselves unexpectedly cast into the world of re-creation and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty. They need advice from anyone willing to help them. For instance, what advice would you give your BFF if she asked, “HOW DO I FORGE A RELATIONSHIP WITH GEORGE THAT ENCOMPASSES RESPECT, COMPASSION AND GOODWILL IN ORDER TO HONOR THE YEARS WE SPENT TOGETHER?” Any advice you can give to Zoe would be helpful, but this is what Sophia said.

At midnight Zoe and Sophia were wide awake. Both women sat at their laptops in their 1700s New Hampshire homes, five miles apart. Zoe was feeling acute stress about her divorce trial the following morning, but she also felt grateful that her sister Chloe had traveled from Boston to support her.

Sophia worried about Zoe’s divorce hearing too. She knew just how vulnerable her best friend was and that it would take very little for her to cave into her pain. But Sophia was also consumed with releasing her anger toward her husband Marty and the way he recently dipped selfishly back into her life for a couple of weeks, and then returned to his girlfriend Fugly.

Since Zoe could see that Sophia was online, she typed into her Facebook chat box, “Call Me.”

“Hey, Zo. You should try to sleep. You’ll need your wits about you tomorrow.”

“It’s a nice thought, but my mind won’t shut up.”

“My mind’s running too. Why won’t yours shut up?”

“Well, I just keep wondering how two people who were married for decades, who shared their innermost thoughts, their joys and struggles, could become so disengaged and need to spend so much money on lawyers. Why couldn’t George and I have talked more and sorted this out for ourselves. What happened to the love, Sophie?”

“Anger, bitterness, loss, rejection, humiliation, resentment….”

“Okay, okay. I get the point.”

“Maybe you and George could still talk,” said Sophia.

“It’s a little late for that. Anyway, what would I say to him?”

“If I were George, I know what might make me feel better.”

“What, Sophie?”

“Let George know you appreciate the positive aspects of the marriage. I wish Marty had the decency to let me know the good stuff instead of mostly demonizing me.”

“I haven’t done that to George—not the way Marty has with you.”

“I know, but have you actually talked to George about the good things he brought to the marriage?”

“Not so much. What would I say?”

“You have four amazing children. He had something to do with that.”

“True.”

“George also knew how to take care of your heart when you mourned losses in your life.”

“He did indeed.”

“He could make you laugh, Zo, and you always said the sex was good.”

“True again, but why would I say these things to George now?”

“It’s time to find some closure. I hate that word, but it fits. Zoe, your motivations for leaving only suggest that, in the end, the positive did not outweigh the negative, but you can’t deny there was good stuff there too.”

“So, you think by talking to him we might find some closure?”

“It can’t hurt. Part of why you two don’t speak often is that he probably still feels resentful and abandoned. You left him, and he is, no doubt, struggling to find self-worth.  If you let him know that he has value in your eyes, it might help him heal. I can relate, you know. Of course, it would be nice if George were receptive and realized just how much grace and selflessness you’ve shown over the past year. It’s obvious to me that you still care about him.”

“Of course, I do. I love George. I wish him only the best and have gone out of my way not to cause him harm–not like Marty. He’s been a bastard to you.”

“No kidding, but I have to let it go, Zo. And honestly, now I’m grateful because the most destructive aspect of the equation has stepped out of my turmoil.”

“Fuck sake, Sophie, speak English. I know it’s late, but could you try to be more literal and less metaphorical.”

“I never asked Marty to come back. He came to me. But before he did, I was gripped by my longing for him. I knew I could forgive the affair, the lies, even the cruel treatment and learn to trust him again. But it was not the Marty I knew who came back. That person is dead in a sense. Now, that place inside of me that longed for him has vanished. I don’t want to be anywhere near Marty. I don’t want his energy, his eyes, his body, his touch, his smell, his thoughts or his words. He is not someone I care to know any longer. That’s progress.”

“I’ll say it is.”

“Hey, Zoe, at least you have your trip to Florida to look forward to.”

“I cancelled the reservation today.”

“Why?”

“I realized I was just running away from what I need to feel,” said Zoe.

“What do you mean?”

“I was flying down to see Jackson as a temporary fix. I need to stay here and deal with my feelings about the divorce. I’ll go see Jackson after you move down there, and hopefully he’ll still want to be with me.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I have a feeling he’s conflicted about me.”

Since Zoe’s separation from George, she had dated several men. But for the past few weeks she suspended cruising the internet dating sites, and she let go of all her relationships except the one with Jackson. He was the only man for whom she felt a true attachment that encompassed a deep friendship.

“I need to go to sleep, Sophie, at least try. Chloe went to bed earlier, and maybe if I climb in next to her, just the comfort of having her here will help me to drift off. My sister is very good to me.”

“Yes, she is. You’re lucky to have her.”

After Zoe hung up, Sophia walked slowly up the stairs to her bedroom. She felt a jab of aged sorrow, wishing her sister were still alive to climb in to bed with for comfort. But the only living thing in her bed was Tolstoy, her huge Maine Coon cat. He lay sleeping on what was Marty’s side of the bed, next to Sophia’s goodie bag. Sophia silently slid between the sheets, not wanting to wake Tolstoy. If he were awake, he’d leap on her stomach and pin her down until morning, and Sophia really wanted to sit up and watch an old DVD she found in the closet while she was packing for her move to Florida.

Zoe made fun of Sophia a few days before when she proudly brandished three seasons of the old TV show Nash Bridges. They were on a shelf next to DVDs of the entire series of Miami Vice. Something about Don Johnson’s sex appeal had always captured Sophia’s attention. She regarded him as a secret fantasy who had been hanging around in the wings of her mind for twenty-five years. Zoe shrugged at the sex appeal bit and nearly shouted that Sophia couldn’t seriously think Don Johnson was a good actor. But Sophia defended him even on that score. She thought Don Johnson was underrated. Finally, they agreed to disagree. Of course, Zoe had to admit she never watched even one episode of Nash Bridges—she said she would rather eat arsenic.

Once Don Johnson and his sidekick Cheech Marin actually sprung into action on the TV screen, Sophia was so tired that she forgot to eat her usual Chex Mix and Nutella evening snack and fell fast asleep.

The next morning George was the only African American at the courthouse. Eyebrows arched when he first walked into the courtroom for the divorce trial. He was distinguished in a suit and tie, and each time Zoe glanced over at him, she thought how handsome he looked, but thinner than usual. From time to time, George leaned in to his attorney’s ear to whisper. Zoe didn’t try to guess what George was saying. She really didn’t care. She just wanted the whole thing to be over.

Zoe looked limp as she shuffled back into the courtroom after a recess during the trial. She hoped today would mark the resolution of her long marriage. But it was beginning to look as if too many issues remained unresolved, from a legal standpoint, a practical one, and to Zoe’s surprise, an emotional one. Zoe and George took the stand and testified as to their truths. Soon, the judge would hold in her hands the facts, and with them, the power to divide the aspects of their former lives, which the couple were unable to agree upon. But no judge could guide Zoe about how she should feel. She felt empty and shadowy and confused.

Occasionally, she glanced back at her sister, wishing she could walk over and fold herself in Chloe’s arms. Chloe bent forward, straining to hear every word the witnesses spoke. She had the luxury of detachment and distance, so she could track the judge’s demeanor and that of the two attorneys. She tried to keep her face free of expression, but a few times she wanted to gasp at what she deemed outrageous unfairness in the process she observed.

Chloe and Zoe were undeniably sisters in their pretty facial features, but their statures were quite different. Zoe was tall, lean and long legged. Chloe was petite, with the small, lithe limbs of a ballerina. They both had blond hair and their mother’s smile, which radiated across any room. Chloe’s cornflower blue eyes compassionately sought Zoe’s hazel ones during Zoe’s examination on the witness stand. Chloe was relieved that Zoe’s testimony was clear, articulate and came straight from her heart, without rancor, without spite. But Chloe still felt helpless to protect her younger sister from the pain that emanated from Zoe’s eyes. Protection of Zoe was something Chloe had felt responsible for since they were children, especially after the death of their father, which left a mother and her three young daughters in emotional shambles.

Zoe also wished Sophia were in the courtroom, but Sophia purposely stayed away. She didn’t want to upset George, who was once one of her dearest friends. George cut Sophia loose as a friend on the day Zoe left him and temporarily moved into Sophia’s house, over a year before. Sophia knew her presence at the trial would just serve to remind George of the harshest period, the first few months following Zoe’s departure from the marriage.

Meanwhile, Sophia was too preoccupied to devote meaningful time to editing her current manuscript. She decided to work off nervous energy a couple miles away from the courthouse, until the trial was over. She planned to meet Zoe and Chloe for a meal and a debriefing. Shopping was the only way Sophia knew how to distract herself fully from worrying about Zoe. Shopping also helped obliterate every image of Marty that popped into her head. Her mind, though, was so vigilant in its scrutiny of these thoughts that she was mentally exhausted.

But physically, Sophia was fine as she streamed up and down the aisles of a TJ Maxx and filled the shopping cart to overflowing with clothes she would try on but could not afford to buy. A couple of times she grated the heels of other shoppers, when her shopping cart went straight ahead, but her eyes caught something in another direction. Before long, people saw Sophia coming, saw the glazed look in her eyes, and eased out of her path as diplomatically as they could. Sophia was unaware that she appeared like something between a crazed monkey and a rabid bat.

At one point three shoppers came into the store together, shared a cart and were having a lively discussion as they browsed the racks of clothes. They didn’t see Sophia, who was pushing her cart at full tilt, as her eyes focused downward on the cell phone, willing it to ring. Unfortunately, one of the three women stepped out into the aisle as Sophia rushed past her. Sophia’s foot caught the woman’s ankle. The woman tripped and fell into one of her friends. The friend was knocked off balance and grabbed hold of the third friend to try to break her fall. The third friend wasn’t paying attention, and as she took her next step, she keeled over on top of the other two women who lay on the floor, under an entire rack of fashionable spring jackets that had landed on top of them.

Sophia heard the cries of the three women and turned around to see what was wrong. They glowered up at Sophia. Within seconds, other shoppers rushed to help the fallen woman. Concerned, Sophia started to hurry back toward them too, but just then, her cell phone blinged an incoming text message from Zoe. Sophia stopped to read it, directly in the path of two salespeople who were also rushing to the scene of the accident. In their efforts not to mow down Sophia, they bumped into each other, tripped and knocked down the three fallen shoppers, just as they were getting back on their feet. Zoe’s message told Sophia to meet her right away, and to everyone’s relief, Sophia’s dashed from the store, leaving a cart full of clothes by the door.

Two tall, slender blonds flanking a third, smaller one, strode confidently down the busy street in Dover. Chloe’s elfin, graceful walk was accentuated by Zoe’s and Sophia’s long strides. On any other day, the sheer delight of the warm spring air would have been enough for them to throw back their heads and laugh at nothing much, since easy laughter was a quality all three shared. But today, their expressions were somber, helpless.

The trial had not yielded an end result, and after three hours of testimony, the case was continued for another month. Although Zoe and the other two were headed to an Italian restaurant, when they walked past an Asian one, they saw through the window an empty table. Sunshine steamed down on the table. Their collective need for light, to dispel their internal darkness, was so compelling, that they walked into the Asian restaurant, sat at the illuminated table, and soaked up the light, waiting to order food for which they had little appetite.

While they waited, Zoe and Chloe filled Sophia in on some of the stickier issues during the trial, which required further evidence and resulted in the month’s delay. Both women talked through tears. By the time the charming, young Chinese woman arrived at their table, they realized that a cup of soup and a glass of wine was all their stomachs could abide. When the wine arrived, they raised their glasses to toast, but their minds went blank.

“To new beginnings?” asked Chloe finally.

“To family, newly configured?” asked Zoe.

“Shit,” said Sophia. “Let’s just toast to the passage of time, and that we won’t always feel this bleak. Life is what we make it, right? Here’s to joy.”

“Never mind,” said Zoe. “Skip the toast. What are we gonna do with the rest of the afternoon and evening. Sophie’s right. We need to find our joy. Can you stay another night, Chloe?”

Chloe’s bright blue eyes lit up and an impish smile spread across her face.

“I’ll call Thomas and let him know I won’t be home,” said Chloe. Thomas was Chloe’s husband.

“We could read out loud from When Things Fall Apart,” said Sophia. She was referring to a book by the American Buddhists writer Pema Chodron, whom Zoe and Sophia adored.

“NO,” said Zoe and Chloe in unison. “Maybe later,” added Zoe.

“Then what should we do?” asked Sophia.

“Well, shopping is a pretty good curative when I feel like shit,” said Zoe.

“Okay, but we have to go some place other than TJ Maxx. I can’t go back there today,” said Sophia.

The other two looked at her quizzically.

“It’s a long story,” said Sophia.

“Fuck sake, Sophie, does it involve broken bones or blood?”

“No, Zo, it does not. Never mind, okay?”

“I’ll just use my imagination,” said Zoe.

Chloe, uncertain of why the conversation had become so cryptic said, “Later, can we go hear some music, maybe go dancing? My night life is pretty staid these days. I like getting together with the same couples for drinks and dinner and talking about familiar stuff, but I’d like to do something different.”

Zoe and Sophia looked at each other, smiled, then nodded at Chloe. The memory, now fading, of being married for decades snagged them. And it occurred to both women, that although sometimes they looked back with melancholy at the loss of a spousal devotion and comfort, they didn’t miss certain aspects of long-married life, like the tedium of predictability.

Zoe and Sophia took Chloe to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Fox Run Mall in Newington. They weren’t in the mood to buy much, but walking from store to store, and chatting as they perused books, jewelry and the new spring lines released some of their stress.

By late afternoon they pulled up to Zoe’s house to shower and change their clothes for the evening. Sparky, Zoe’s stroke-impaired, incontinent yellow lab barked loudly as they approached the front door. Zoe went in first, but the force field of smell reached the women behind her. Normally, Sparky would have been in the car with Zoe all day, but she wanted to spare him the intensity of what she anticipated feeling once the trial was over, so she had left him at home.

Apart from incontinence, Sparky’s stroke rendered him incapable of walking straight, so Sparky bounded out the door sideways and slammed right into Chloe who didn’t know she was supposed to jump out of Sparky’s way. In his excitement, he let out a stream of yellow stuff that barely missed poor Chloe, who lay stunned on the front porch.

“What…was THAT,” yelled Chloe.

“Sorry,” called Zoe as she raced around the downstairs cleaning up the piles Sparky had deposited throughout.

Sophia turned to shut the door, just as Sparky tried to run back inside to say hello. In the last inch before the door closed, Sparky caught Sophia’s eye. That bitch, he thought. I’ve been stuck here all day without my beautiful Zoe, and that awful Sophia will probably make me stay out here forever. Why does she have to come to my house, anyway? She should just stay home with her big bully cat Tolstoy and have a mean-person party with him. Sparky slunk off to sulk under a tree as the women took turns showering.

Although the downstairs bathroom mirror was a little crowded, Zoe, Sophia and Chloe all managed to wedge in front of it, as they stood in their panties and bras lathering moisturizers on their bodies, drying their blond hair and artfully applying make-up.

“Where are we going, Zo?” asked Sophia.

“I don’t know. What type of music do you wanna hear, Clo?”

“I’d love to hear some live R & B,” said Chloe.

“Tonight there’s an R & B band at the Dolphin Striker in Portsmouth, and the food’s pretty good.” As Zoe said this, she caught in the mirror the discomfort reflected in Sophia’s eyes. Sophia sighed hard. “What do you think, Sophie? Can you handle that place again?”

“I guess,” said Sophia.

Chloe looked in the mirror, back and forth, into the eyes of the other two. “Is there a problem?”

Sophia took a deep breath before answering. “Marty found me at the Dolphin Striker the night he told me he wanted to leave his girlfriend Fugly and come back home to me. Zoe and I haven’t been there since.”

“I don’t care where we go, Sophie,” said Chloe. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“No,” said Sophia. “I’ve been traumatized, Chloe, and everywhere I turn has some association with Marty that triggers either despair or panic. That’s the main reason I don’t want to live here anymore. In Florida, I won’t have to be constantly reminded of the nightmare of Marty. I might even be able to accept the situation and find some compassion for him.”

Just then Zoe’s eyes began to brim with tears. “Sophie, please talk about something else. Until now, I’ve been able to stuff my feelings about your move, but it’s been a tough day, and I don’t have the emotional stamina.”

“Okay, Zo.”

“Wait,” said Chloe, “I wanna hear what happened when Marty came back. What were his reasons?”

“I’m gonna go get dressed,” said Zoe as she turned and walked from the bathroom. “I’ve heard the story and it makes me sick.”

Sophia shrugged and looked at Chloe in the mirror. “Marty said we belonged together. And he said a lot of other things like that he was an old curmudgeon and that I understood him.”

“Wow, that’s weird…and not that romantic,” said Chloe.

“But before long he started telling me everything he gave up to come back to me, kinda like guilting me for his choice.”

“What did he give up?”

“He said Fugly was willing to pay off all his debts and set him up with a new business.”

“I thought it was her famous husband and really famous father-in-law who had all the money.”

“I guess she must have plenty too if she was able to do all that for Marty. Well, now he doesn’t have to “give up” anything for me, does he?”

“Do you think that was some of his motivation for going back to her?”

“I dunno. Could be.”

“Does she have kids?”

“Three young ones, but they stayed with their father. She sees them on a visitation schedule. When Marty came back, he admitted that it really bothered him that he wasn’t allowed to stay with Fugly on the nights she had her kids. He had to stay in a dumpy little motel near her house. A couple of days after he went back to her, we were on the phone, and he told me that’s all been taken care of, and he’s allowed to live with Fugly full-time. I guess coming back to me was the leverage he needed to get Fugly to do what he wanted.”

“That’s diabolical, Sophie. Although I don’t know Marty well, I’ve known him a long time. He always struck me as arrogant, but I had no idea his selfishness was so extreme.”

“Hey, he’s probably not that different than anyone else, Chloe. He wants to get his needs met. He just had different needs when we were together. People change. From everything I’ve observed, Fugly is a predatory human being. She aggressively seeks whatever she wants even if she hurts other people in the process. I guess Marty’s espoused that way of thinking. It ignores a little thing called Karma, of course, which follows us wherever. But he’s not my problem anymore.”

Chloe looked at Sophia in the mirror for a moment before asking, “What is Zoe going to do without you?”

Sophia lifted her eyebrows and shook her head. “Dunno. And what am I going to do without Zoe?”

Just then, Zoe called from the living room for them to hurry up. Minutes later, the three women drove toward Portsmouth. Chloe sat in the passenger seat talking to Zoe about Zoe’s despair. Chloe said she was relieved that her sister chose to curtail her frantic connection with several men at once. When Zoe asked her why, her sister said that the emotional emptiness that motivated Zoe’s actions wasn’t going to be filled by other people. Zoe needed to work on loving herself more. Sophia, who sat in the backseat listening, pulled from her purse a book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

“You know what?” said Sophia, “I just read something about that. It has to do with the laws of attraction and rearranging the way we think about ourselves. Do you mind if I read a passage from this book?”

“Go ahead,” said Zoe.

Sophia started to read:

“The reason you have to love You is because it is impossible to feel good if you don’t love You. When you feel bad about yourself, you are blocking all the love and all the good the Universe has for you.
When you feel bad about yourself it feels as though you are sucking the life out of you, because all of your good, on every subject—including health, wealth, and love—is on the frequency of joy and feeling good….When you don’t feel good about You, you are on a frequency that is attracting more people, situations, and circumstances that will continue to make you feel bad about You.

You must change your focus and begin to think about all the things that are wonderful about you. Look for the positives in You. As you focus on those things, the law of attraction will show you more great things about You. You attract what you think about. All you have to do is begin with one prolonged thought of something good about You, and the law of attraction will respond by giving You more like thoughts.”

“Hum, it’s sounds a little simplistic, but plausible,” said Chloe.

“Good point,” said Zoe, ” but I’ve learned that the wisest solutions in life are often the most simple ones,” said Zoe.

“Let’s play a game,” said Sophia. “Let’s take turns naming good things about ourselves.”

“Okay,” said Zoe. “I’m intelligent.”

“I good at nurturing,” said Sophia.

“I’m resourceful,” said Chloe.

“I’m a good lover,” said Zoe.

“I’m creative,” said Sophia.

“I’m ingenious,” said Chloe.

“I’m done with this game,” said Zoe. “We’re almost there, so let’s send out into the universe our desires to find a good parking spot, a good table, good music, and a cute waiter.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”

Chloe looked confused.

After parking right in front of the Dolphin Striker, the three women shimmered as they stepped into the sultry atmosphere. The R & B band had already started their set, and the women found an empty table right in front. They each ordered crab cakes and salad, which were delicious. The young man who waited on them was handsome, amusing and flirtatious.  Zoe and Chloe danced with abandon as partners. Sophia decided to opt out since she’d already caused one train wreck that day in the store. Tonight, she preferred to watch.

After a couple of hours, Zoe and Sophia thought Chloe might enjoy a dance club, so they walked across the street to the Gaslight. Unfortunately, the place was nearly deserted, owing perhaps to the unrelenting Techno music that split their ear drums. They danced for a couple of songs then called it an early night.

But when they got back to Zoe’s house, all three of them were still jumpy, wanting to dance. Zoe put on an old Marvin Gay CD, and Chloe and Sophia whirled around the living room in their sheer nightgowns. Zoe sat down at her laptop, turned on her Webcam, and began cruising a dating site, for the first time in weeks. She flirted with a fireman from Chicago before asking if he wanted to watch some dancing. He nodded enthusiastically, at which point Zoe jumped up and joined the other two. Sophia looked over at the stranger’s face on the laptop screen.

“What are you doing, Zo?” asked Sophia.

“I thought I’d show Chloe one of the things we do for fun.”

“But I thought you swore off Webcam dating.”

“I’m not dating, Sophie, I’m just dancing.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. But just then, one of her favorite songs, Sexual Healing, started to play, and she couldn’t help throwing herself into a series of perfect pirouettes. Zoe, eyes closed, moved sensuously, gracefully to the music. And Sophia grooved out spastically, thinking she looked fabulous with her best moves. Before long, the song transported the women to a distant place inside of themselves, where the excruciating ache of pubescent excitement still lived. When the song ended, Zoe walked over to the Webcam and turned it off then she lowered the volume of the music.

“Let’s talk,” Zoe said as she lay down across an oriental rug on the living room floor.

“What’s wrong, Zo?” asked Sophia as she joined her on the floor.

“This is a nice distraction, but I’m still perplexed and a bit sad.”

“What about?” asked Chloe as she lay down on the other side of Zoe.

“I need to move on with my life, but I’m dragged down by such old shit. Somehow, I feel that I need to sort things out with George before I can move forward with emotional clarity.”

“We talked about that last night,” said Sophia as she studied the knotholes in one of the old ceiling beams.

“I know. But I can’t remember what we said.”

“What was the question?” asked Chloe, as she glanced out the window at the full moon.

Zoe sighed before answering. “HOW DO I FORGE A RELATIONSHIP WITH GEORGE THAT ENCOMPASSES RESPECT, COMPASSION AND GOODWILL IN ORDER TO HONOR THE YEARS WE SPENT TOGETHER?”

Sophia chimed in first. “TO REACH GEORGE, YOU NEED TO MAKE IT ABOUT GEORGE. LET HIM KNOW, THAT DESPITE THE DIVORCE, YOU WILL ALWAYS LOVE HIM AND VALUE HIS CONTRIBUTION TO YOUR LIFE.”

Then Chloe spoke. “YOU CAN’T CONTROL ANYONE BUT YOURSELF, ZO. ALL YOU CAN DO IS LIVE BY EXAMPLE. IF YOU WANT A FRIENDSHIP BASED ON RESPECT, COMPASSION AND GOODWILL, DEMONSTRATE THOSE QUALITIES. THEN GEORGE MUST CHOOSE WHETHER TO RECIPROCATE. IF HE CHOOSES NOT TO, IT’S OUT OF YOUR CONTROL.”

Zoe listened carefully and as she did so, ideas of how to move forward with George sprung into her mind. But after a couple of minutes, her mind wandered away.

“Hey, Sophie, let’s take Clo to an all-night tanning salon.”

“I don’t do tanning salons,” said Chloe.

“Bummer,” said Sophia.

“Actually, neither did we when we were married,” said Zoe. “But people change. A tanning bed is a pretty good place to meditate.”

“You guys meditate?” asked Chloe.

“Of course, we do,” said Sophia. “How else would we manage our lives?”

“You manage your lives?” asked Chloe.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” cried Zoe.

Chloe threw her sister a look then said, “Oh well, since I’m living the singles scene tonight, I guess a few minutes in a tanning bed won’t kill me.”

Without bothering to get dressed, the fifty-something BFFs, plus one sister, threw coats over their sheer nightgowns and pulled boots on over their bare feet. Then they dashed out the door, laughing at nothing much, and drove into the night, under a full moon, off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…And remember to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog.  You can use the calendar in the right column and click on the bolded dates of publication.  And thanks for your wonderful comments.  Keep them coming!

Please send your ADVICE to two single women, whose lives are suddenly crashing in chaos! Zoe and Sophia, BFFs for thirty years, find themselves unexpectedly cast into the world of re-creation and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty. They need advice from anyone willing to help them. For instance, what advice would you give your BFF if she asked, “WHY DID I LET MARTY COME HOME? WHY DID I OPEN MYSELF UP TO BEING REJECTED ALL OVER AGAIN?” Any advice you can give to Sophia would be helpful, but this is what Zoe said.

Holy shit was Sophia’s first thought as she awoke. What am I doing? Over and over the words drummed in her head. Sophia lay in bed next to her husband Marty, from whom she’d been estranged for six months, since he admitted his affair. Several days before, Sophia put up no resistance to his request to come home. Marty found Sophia dancing with Zoe to Latino music at a restaurant in Portsmouth one night. He simply proclaimed that Sophia and he belonged together, and that was enough to convince her to reconcile with him.

For the first few days, their reunion was magical. Marty was kind, affectionate, attentive and apologetic. Sophia was forgiving, trusting and loving. And of course, the sex was amazing. Together, they read a book called After the Affair by Janice Abrahms Spring. They knew a blueprint was crucial to help them work through the pain of Marty’s betrayal, discover why the marriage had broken, and to heal the hurt of their animosity toward each other in the preceding months. Marty collected his belongings from his girlfriend Fugly’s house and told Sophia that he’d broken it off with her. Sophia made an appointment for them to see a therapist.

As husband and wife, Sophia and Marty talked and cried and laughed for endless hours. Sometimes they raged, released their anger and then reset, wrapping each other in tenderness and comfort. The time they spent with their daughter Poppy and granddaughter Lily cleansed the old bitterness, allowing joy to swim to the surface. The profound power of belonging to a united family again surged through them and overflowed, like a river after a long rain. Then slowly, like the drip, drip, drip of Chinese water torture, the worm began to turn.

It was six a.m. when Sophia slipped from the bed and crept downstairs to the dining room. She made coffee then sat at her laptop, hoping Zoe was awake. Sophia needed to talk to her.

Zoe was awake and had been for an hour, talking on the Webcam to Jackson in Florida. Recently, Zoe decided to pull away from her compulsive pattern of seeking male attention. She stopped cruising internet dating sites. She also ended relationships she had forged with various men over several months. Determined to face her terror of being alone, she began devoting herself to herself. The only man she now communicated with was Jackson, for whom she had trust, respect and deep feelings. From him, Zoe received wisdom, friendship and quite possibly, love.

Zoe saw Sophia’s two-word chat message come in on her Facebook page. It said, “Call me.”
“What’s up, Sophie?”
“What the fuck am I doing, Zo?”
“Meaning?”
“I feel as though my self-esteem has fallen through the floor.”

“Why?”

“I told Marty from the first day he came back that I loved him, but that I loved me more. During our discussions I was very clear that I wasn’t willing to go back to being the person he took out his frustrations on. Especially during the months he was hiding his affair, I was flattened by the constant criticism, by forever being told I was wrong and feeling sorry all the time, for every thought that came out of my mouth. Now, he’s treating me like that again. It hurts.”

“Do you know why he’s acting like that?”
“Marty’s pulled away. I can feel his heart isn’t in this.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Apart from the way he relates, he hasn’t unpacked his suitcases. They just line the bedroom walls, mocking me.”
“Not good,” said Zoe.
“The past few days he’s been sullen and distant. He sleeps all the time, and the joy seems to seep out of him hourly.”
“What does he say?”
“He says he been depressed for months.”
“Does he say why?”
“He says he’s having an identity crisis, that he’s lost his moral compass and that he doesn’t know who he is anymore or where he belongs. He also said he hated staying in that dumpy, little motel and that the contrast between his nights there, and his time at Fugly’s, where wealth and possessions were so abundant that they were taken for granted, was just too daunting. He said that’s why he wanted to come back to his own home.”

“Okay, but where did you fit in. What were the reasons he gave for wanting to come back to you?”
“He said he felt haunted by me. He said whenever he would start to feel good or enjoy some activity, he felt disturbed. He didn’t feel right enjoying life without me.”
“Well, that’s interesting. I gotta tell you, Sophie, it sounds like he’s come back for closure, not for you. He needs to assuage his guilt.”
“That’s the same thing Poppy said.”
“Hum. Well, at least you’re having sex.”
“We were and it was fabulous BTW, but last night he wouldn’t make love with me. He said he was too depressed.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No.”
“Did something happen, Sophie? Can you pinpoint when things started to turn?”

“Well, for starters, he began texting with Fugly. And he talks a lot with his brother Wayne on the phone.”
“Is Wayne the gay brother?”
“Not according to Wayne.”
“Sophie, he talks like a gay guy, he looks gay, walks gay, lives with gay guys. How is Wayne not gay?”
“Does it matter, Zoe? We love gay guys. Maybe fundamental dishonesty is a family trait–I don’t know. Can I just get to the point here?”
“What was the point?”
“Wayne didn’t approve of the reconciliation. Who knows whether it was because he enjoyed the bragging rights to Marty’s relationship with Fugly. I suspect he told everyone the identities of her husband and her father-in-law.”

Sophia was referring to the fact that Fugly was married to a famous musician.  But her husband was the son of universal legend, Famous Father. It was Famous Father who financed the business project that Fugly proposed to Marty, which brought them together in the first place. But when Famous Father learned of their affair, he pulled out his money and the project collapsed. A couple of months afterwards, Fugly moved out and left three young children in the marital home. Marty was only allowed to stay at Fugly’s on the nights when the children were not with her for visitation. Other nights, he had stayed in a weekly-rental motel near Fugly’s house.

“You know, Sophie, that wouldn’t surprise me. As delightful as Wayne was the few times I met him, he always struck me as a name dropper, the type who basks in the glow of vicarious importance since he lacks the motivation or nerve to do anything extraordinary in his own right.”
“I don’t know, Zo.”
“Anyway, what happened after Marty started talking to Wayne?”
“Well, after their first two-hour conversation, Marty picked a fight with me. Once we calmed down, information started spilling out about how Fugly and her husband were away together for a couple of weeks, out of state, for some intensive counseling. I asked him how he knew this, and he said Wayne was in touch with Fugly. I didn’t think much about it until Marty started being more and more hostile toward me. It was the same behavior he showed during the months leading up to the split. Most conversations became about what a bad, crazy person I was. Then he admitted receiving text messages from Fugly, but he wouldn’t discuss them with me.”

Zoe cleared her throat but said nothing.

“Finally, I put two and two together. I have a feeling I’ve been a player in a chess match between Marty and Fugly. You can’t tell me that Fugly’s two weeks of intensive therapy with her husband, in some distant location, was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Marty must have known about the plan before he came looking for me. Now, I could be totally wrong about this, and I hope I am. But even if he didn’t know beforehand, Marty’s been privy to everything going on with Fugly through his phone calls with Wayne.”
“Sophia, I want you to leave that house immediately and come here. If that’s truly the case, you are not emotionally or psychologically safe there.”
“But, Zo, what if I’m wrong? What if he is sincerely here to reconcile with me and just needs time? I will have blown that chance by not trusting him.”
“Sophie, face facts. One, you are smart; two, you are intuitive; and three, you know Marty very well.”
“Hum. I hear the dogs coming down the stairs. I’ll talk to you later,” said Sophia and hung up.

Just then, the door to the living room burst open. Tolstoy, Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat, led the pack. Sophia’s dogs, Voltaire and Dickens, galloped after him, heading straight toward Sophia. Ever since the dogs returned home, they showered Sophia with excitement. She crouched to get out of their way, but the dogs jumped up and knocked her over. Since she was down, Tolstoy leapt onto her stomach and pinned her to the floor. The dogs joined in the game. Voltaire lay across Sophia’s chest and licked her face. Dickens sat on her knees and took a friendly swipe at Tolstoy, a prelude to boxing. Sophia lay helplessly laughing.

Tolstoy was so happy to have his big brothers back. He pined for them from the day Marty took them away. Since then, Tolstoy had been stuck with Sparky, Zoe’s stroke-impaired yellow lab, as a playmate. The thought of Sparky made Tolstoy roll his eyes.  Sparky got on Tolstoy’s nerves for a host of reasons. Because of his “condition” he had no clue how to wrestle. God almighty, he couldn’t even roll over by himself. And because Sparky ran sideways, chasing him was not fun, just confusing. Sparky was dull as dirt too, since all he did was moon over that bitch Zoe, which sucked the sense of humor right out of him. But the worst part was that Sparky was forever stealing Tolstoy’s food and then following it up with a “nightcap” of cat crap. Tolstoy realized he was obsessing on Sparky, instead of appreciating the sheer delight of Voltaire and Dickens, so he told himself to shut up.

Without a word to Sophia, Marty looked down at her as he walked past and then opened the outside kitchen door. All three animals danced through it. Unaided, Sophia rose to her feet and offered Marty coffee. They sat silently drinking it in front of the fire. And then Marty started with a barrage of criticism and ended with his news. He told Sophia that he was moving back to Fugly’s. At first Sophia cried. And then she began to talk, really talk.

Sophia asked Marty why he returned, disrupted her world, treated her coldly, told her that she was a crazy and awful person, and to top it off, became violent with her. Then she nailed him between the eyes with the most ironic aspect of all. It was he who came back to her, but somehow he twisted it around and now accused her of “imprisoning” him. She asked him whether he put her through all that just so he could assuage his guilt over his betrayal. Finally, she laid her theory on the table. She suspected that because Fugly and her husband went off to thrash out their marital detritus, Marty felt insecure. But from the minute he sensed he was back on good footing with Fugly, his alienation from Sophia escalated. She dismissed the original motive Marty professed—that Sophia and he belonged together—as a fleeting thought that vanished early on. She said she believed Marty truly came back to her partly for closure, partly for safety, and partly as a strategy.

Marty neither denied nor confirmed Sophia’s words. He expressed that for the sake of the family, they should try to be friends. Marty told Sophia he loved her, but could never “love” her as a husband again. He said he was leaving for her own good, that all his negativity would eventually dampen her spirit and extinguish the way Sophia had recreated herself by carving out a new identity. Their voices rose. Their voices fell. But soon, there were no more words.

Marty collected his unpacked luggage, called to the dogs and drove past the doorway where Sophia stood watching, feeling numb and breathless.

Tolstoy sat in front of the house, feeling powerless as he watched Marty’s car pull into the road.

Sophia didn’t call Zoe or her daughter Poppy or her son Colin or anyone else. She reached for the handle of an old basket in the summer kitchen and wandered around the house until she found When Things fall Apart, by Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist writer. She put the book in the basket.  In the kitchen she found a bag of Chex Mix, a jar of Nutella, a soup spoon,  a bottle of white wine and a wine glass.  These too went into the basket. She striped off her clothes until she stood in her bra and panties. On the counter in the kitchen, she opened a bottle of rich, green extra virgin olive oil, poured out a handful and rubbed it on her arms, stomach and legs. She turned on a CD by Yo Yo Ma playing Brazilian music, opened the window and put the speaker in the window sill.

The sun was high in the sky and the air unusually warm for a March day. Sophia walked beyond the barn and gazed out at the shimmering lake she adored. On her way back, she went into the barn for a chaise lounge and dragged it into the courtyard, out of sight of the road. She set the basket on the grass next to her and lay down, drank her wine, listened to the music and read about compassion and the power of positive thought. She alternated handfuls of Chex Mix with spoonfuls of Nutella, but she did not let herself cry. She told herself that she did not want to die, that the pain would pass, much the way it did in childbirth. One day, she would not even be able to remember the way today’s anguish felt. Patience, she told herself. Patience.

A few hours later Zoe found Sophia sound asleep in the sun. She smelled of wine and Nutella chocolate dripped down her chin with bits of Chex Mix stuck to it. Tolstoy lay on Sophia’s stomach, licking olive oil off of her arm. Zoe had no idea why Sophia was like this. She marched up to the chaise lounge and stood over her friend, hands on hips.

“Fuck sake, Sophie, WAKE UP! You look scarier than a Stephen King movie.”

“Hey, Zo,” Sophia said with a start. The metallic feeling from sleeping in the sun invaded her perceptions.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Pretending I already live in Florida.”

“Why?”

“Marty left. He went back to Fugly.”

“Fuck. I’m so sorry, Sophie. You must be hurting.”

“Yes and humiliated. But I also feel like an idiot for letting him come back in the first place. I have no one to blame but myself.”

“Bullshit. Marty came back to you, and you trusted him. You also gave the process a hundred percent in good faith. Now, I just wish you would see him for who he really is.”

“Who is he, Zo?”

“He’s a guy blinded by the ego—the self.”

“What do you mean?”

“Name a self…any self….Marty is self-deluded, self-aggrandized, self-consumed, self-martyred, self-pitying, and self-serving.”

“You forgot selfish.”

“Technically, that’s not a compound adjective with a hyphenated “self.” But, that is his most pronounced characteristic, selfish. He will never be anyone other than who his is today. Accept that, and let go of the guy who was once your wonderful husband. He doesn’t live in that body, mind and spirit anymore.”

“I know that now.”

“Sophie, it is one thing to take care of our own needs. That’s important. It’s another thing to do so with treachery toward another person.”

“He got physical with me again, you know.”
“He hit you?”
“Yes. A few times.”
“God dammit.”
“Yeah. He cornered me in a chair, threatening to kill me if I spoke or moved. After he smacked me in the head, I said I ought to call Fugly and warn her that he was dangerous. Do you know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘Oh, so now you just want to ruin my life?’”

Zoe laughed so hard, she snorted. “So, the truth of his actions was your fault, and if you tell the truth, you would be ruining his life, eh? The audacity is spellbinding and the blindness, breathtaking. The man lacks any accountability or integrity. He’s not a good man, Sophie. Maybe he was once, but no more. And in some reduced measure, he may be again, but weep not for his soul, my love.”
“That was poetic. You’re right, of course.”
“Now get up, go take a shower, and let’s go shopping.”

“Wait. I want to tell you what I told my therapist the other day. When I was eleven, after my brothers were killed, I used to think I saw them everywhere. And always my young heart wanted them to come home to me. When my sister was killed, I was an adult and knew I couldn’t carry those wishes in my heart, but still, I just wanted to see her, talk to her, hold her, and kiss her— just one more time. When Marty and I split, it was without rational explanation, without a goodbye, without comfort. I felt as if my head, my spirit were chopped off by a guillotine. Unlike my siblings, Marty returned from the dead, metaphorically. But it was the worst nightmare realized because it wasn’t Marty. It wasn’t even his ghost.”
Zoe’s eyes misted as she starred at Sophia for a few seconds. Then she said, “Okay, Sophie, let’s go shopping.”
“No. You go. I need to think.”

For the next few days Zoe hovered around Sophia. So did Poppy and her husband Fonzi. Sophia’s son Colin traveled up for a visit too. But no one talked much about what had happened. Sophia stayed busy writing, but she ate very little and slept even less. Sophia only felt deep joy during the hours she devoted to her granddaughter Lily. But whenever she was alone and idle, Sophia’s thoughts were consumed with one word–Why. Why? Why?

Meanwhile, when Zoe wasn’t hovering, she was trying to sort out where her life was leading. She had removed every obstacle, every other man from the landscape, and now she needed to know if the relationship with Jackson was worth sinking roots into. She had hidden nothing of her essential self from him. He could either take her as she was or decide to leave her alone. But she was uncertain of where he stood, whether he was willing to risk love. And without seeing him, spending time with him, reading the meaning of his words in his eyes, he still presented an illusion. So, one afternoon, Zoe booked a flight to Florida.

On her way home from work, Zoe stopped in at Sophia’s. Zoe found Sophia, head bent over her laptop, typing furiously. That she hadn’t showered or dressed all day was obvious to Zoe.
“How’s it going, Sophie?”
Sophia looked up at her with haunted eyes.

“Marty called earlier. He wanted to know if I would change my plans with Lily tomorrow so he could see her.”
“What did you say?”
“I agreed as long as he continued to respect the boundary we set that he not take Lily to Fugly’s for visits until I move away. It’s too painful for me. Fugly sucked up my life like a vacuum cleaner. She admitted to Marty that she deliberately sought to lure him away from me. And now she has my husband again, and after I move, she’ll have this home, on this beautiful lake—a perfect summer house. But for now, I can’t bear to think of Lily spending time with that predatory person. I just can’t watch it. Marty can share Lily after I’m gone.”
“What did he say?”
“What did he scream, you mean? He screamed that I was trying to control his life, right down to not allowing him to visit with Lily in ‘his’ home.”
“What did you say?”
“I said that I wasn’t aware it was ‘his’ home since he wasn’t allowed to stay at Fugly’s when she had her children for visitation.”
“And?”
“He said, that was all taken care of. He’s allowed to live with her full-time now.”
“So, you were right.”
“Yes. But the stakes were higher than I suspected. On some level, conscious or not, I believe I was the leverage in his power move to get what he wanted from Fugly. She must have called his bluff. He has always said that one should never bluff and not be willing to follow through. I’m convinced one big reason he came back to me was to force Fugly’s hand and the hands of whoever is making the decisions for her kids. He wanted her to validate their relationship, to clear the way for him to live with her all the time.”

“Did you say that to Marty?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He gasped. Then nothing…it was the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.”
“What do you feel now, Sophie?”
“Indifference. That moment of his silence was transformative.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s as if I’ve let go, and I’m drifting down a river of indifference. Marty shot the bullet that finally killed my love. There’s nothing left to resist. I’ve released myself from him.”
“Jesus,” cried Zoe. “You can’t write that shit.”
“Shakespeare did. He created lots of diabolical characters. Oh well, I guess Fugly and I share something in common. We were both played.”

Zoe went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of wine. Sophia focused again on her manuscript. When Zoe returned, she handed Sophia the wine and then she built a small fire. The room had grown cold. After awhile, Zoe asked Sophia to stop writing and to sit with her by the fire. Then Zoe told her about the trip to Florida.
“How long will you be gone?” asked Sophia, as panic rose in her throat.
“Just a few days.”
“When do you leave?”
“Day after tomorrow,” said Zoe. “Will you be okay?”
“Of course.”
“Can Sparky stay with you?”
“Of course.”

Tolstoy’s ears perked. Since Zoe arrived, he had been feeling smug that Sparky was cooped up in the chilly car, while he was inside and warm, stretched out by the fire. But when he heard Zoe’s question, he leapt up to the table and landed on Sophia’s open laptop. Random letters sprung up across the screen.

“Dammit, Tolstoy, get off,” said Sophia.
Tolstoy’s big green eyes just stared at Sophia. They pleaded with her not to let Sparky stay over for days on end. Sophia lifted Tolstoy and carried him to the door and put him outside. Pissed off, Tolstoy sprinted to Zoe’s car. Sparky saw Tolstoy and barked. If nothing else, thought Tolstoy, I can get Sparky agitated and jealous. Tolstoy pranced around the car, looking at Sparky the whole time, taunting and teasing, as Sparky jumped from window to window, begging for liberation. This feels powerful, thought Tolstoy. I like it.

Zoe heard Sparky and took pity on him. She hurried to the car and opened the door to let him out. Shit, thought Tolstoy, as he made a dash for the house. Sparky ran after him sideways, involuntarily discharging turds in his wake. Tolstoy shot between Zoe’s legs and Sparky tried to follow. As big as Tolstoy was, Sparky was bigger, and Zoe was lifted and hurled on her back. Sophia, watching from the doorway, ran out to help Zoe, but she tripped over Tolstoy as he plowed into her, trying to make his escape. Sophia fell forwards and skidded to a stop on top of Zoe, but not before skinning her knee.

Under the fading sky, the setting sun cast a glow over the two old friends as they lay on the ground, staring into each other’s stunned eyes. And then something broke. They began to laugh. And for the first time in days, their laughter did not devolve into tears.

Finally, they helped each other to their feet and walked inside.
“Let’s drive to Portsmouth and eat somewhere new, Sophie. We need to flirt with some cute waiters.”
“Okay, Zo.”
“You’re losing your tan, you know.”
“I know. Not once did I go to a tanning bed to meditate while Marty was here. It’s as if I forgot who I was–again.”
“Do you know why?”
“Why?”
Zoe reached for a journal she kept in her purse. “I read this quote by Wayne Dyer and wrote it down. Here it is,” she said and began to read.

“Believing that who we are is defined by what other people think of us cripples the joyful spontaneity of our authentic selves. If others disapprove, and their opinion defines us, then we modify ourselves or shrink from view. Our image of ourselves is located in them, and when they reject us, we no longer “are” at all….We cease to exist except as a reflection of what others think. The fact is that who we are has absolutely nothing to do with any thoughts or opinions that exist in anyone else in this world.”

“Wow. That’s deep, Zo.”
“Well, these notions apply to both of us, for sure. I realize that I allow myself to be defined by the way I’m regarded by the men I’m with. If they distance themselves, I feel rejected and to some extent, I loose a sense of self; my self-image is located in them. I modify or shrink who I am to please them because I don’t want to feel the loneliness that stalks me.”

“I see what you mean, Zoe. Tell me if this tracks. Part of why I lost my sense of self after Marty’s betrayal was that I was defined by his reflection of me, one of rejection, so I ceased to exist on some level. Just as I was beginning to materialize as my authentic self again, he came back into my life and brought with him his disapproval and negative opinions of me, which I allowed to define me again.”
“That makes sense, Sophie.”
“But that idea cuts two ways if you think about it. Who I thought Marty was—the Marty I adored–has nothing to do with who he is, and more importantly for me, who he thought I was—an awful, crazy person–has nothing to do with who I am.”

“Sophie, I say we work harder on embracing the joyful spontaneity of our authentic selves.”
“That sounds like a worthwhile goal. If we change the way we think about ourselves, we can accept who we are and love ourselves more.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Sophie?”
“How would I know, Zo?

After the women showered and lathered their slender torsos and long, lean legs with fragrant lotions, they stood in their panties and bras in front of the bathroom mirror, arguing. They both wanted to wear the same shirt out to dinner in Portsmouth. Zoe gave in and then Sophia said no, Zoe should wear the navy blue top. Then Zoe said no, Sophia should. Finally they decided that neither of them would wear it. As they began to laugh at the sheer stupidity of the discourse, their eyes met in the mirror.
Sophia said quietly, “I think I have Marty’s motivations figured out, Zo, but WHY DID I LET MARTY COME HOME? WHY DID I OPEN MYSELF UP TO BEING REJECTED ALL OVER AGAIN?
Zoe picked up the mascara wand and began blackening her eyelashes. Then she said, “SOPHIE, YOU HAVE A BASIC KINDNESS AND AN AMAZING CAPACITY TO FORGIVE THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE, AND THAT’S WHY YOU TOOK HIM BACK. BUT SEEING MARTY’S ACTIONS AS REJECTION OF YOU, ROBS YOU OF YOURSELF. SO, DON’T THINK OF THEM AS REJECTION. THINK OF THEM AS LESSONS YOU WERE MEANT TO LEARN ABOUT HIM. YOU NOW KNOW WHO MARTY IS TO YOU.”

“Hum. Anyway, Zo, should we go tanning before we eat or afterwards?”
“After. I don’t wanna smell like that tan-enhancing crap we use on our skin.”
“You gotta point. Do you have any ideas where we should eat?”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, do I have to do all the planning around here? You choose for once.”
“Well, there’s this vegan restaurant that just opened up.”
“Never mind. Let’s just go to Ixtapa Cantina. At least we know they have cute Mexican waiters. I don’t wanna take any chances.”
“Okay, Zo.”

The evening spring air rushed through the open car windows as Zoe cranked up the sound to a vintage M. J. Blige song. From somewhere in the core of their hearts, the two fifty-something BFFs sang loudly to the heavens– words they knew to be true–You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down. They smiled as they sang, and then off they drove, on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…but remember, to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog. The easiest way to find the earlier stories is to use the calendar in the right-hand column. Just click on the dates that are in BOLD. And please, keep sending your wonderful advice. Thank you.

One late afternoon Zoe rushed around her house, cleaning again each spotless room, deflecting thoughts that stalked her like little harpies. She was acrobatic in her ability to dodge these thoughts, but the one sure method she removed from her repertoire of agile moves was her dating websites. She was on lockdown with the laptop until she figured out why she needed connections with the faces and words of so many strangers.

Five miles down the road, Sophia sat with her elbow leaning on the dining room table, her hand cradling her head. She tried to write, but all her mind did was listen to the rain and think what a perfect metaphor it was for her life. Rain, like tears, echoed her pain, but rain was restorative, infusing life into withering plants. She knew she wasn’t a drought-blighted plant, but sometimes she felt like one.

Zoe knew she needed to talk about her thoughts when their whispers escalated to screams. So, she called Sophia.
“Hey, Sophie, what’s up?”
“Nothin. How are you?”
“Not good.”
“Why not?”
“I’m restless. Three days ago I banned myself from the dating sites and resolved not to talk to or see any of the men who keep pursuing me. It just feels so empty.”
“What made you decide to do those things?”
“I realized that whenever I feel lonely, I panic.”
“So, being by yourself scares you?”
“My skin crawls, Sophie. My stomach churns. I feel like an animal, cornered by prey, trapped in my aloneness.”
“Does staying busy help, Zo?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do with your time?”
“When I’m not at work, I drive and stare mostly, and if I’m not driving and staring, I’m trying to figure out how to sleep.”
“Oh, baby. That’s depression at its worst. Has there been anything bright in your day?”
“Jackson in Florida called. He was very kind to me, in a friendship way. He recognizes that what motivates me to fill time seeking male attention is a need to plug holes of loss and abandonment from my past, going all the way back to my father’s death when I was eight. He gets it.”
“Doesn’t Jackson count as one of the men pursuing you?”
“He’s different. I have strong feelings for him. And he’s in Florida. All we can do is talk and write since I disabled the Webcam on my laptop.”
“Is he helpful? I mean, does he offer you good advice?”
“He says I need to change my thinking. Maybe that’s the secret to solving most things we perceive as problems. Just change the way we think about them,” said Zoe.
“Did you say the secret? I haven’t finished reading The Secret, but I think the message is pretty simple, really. Change the ways we think because our thoughts have a powerful influence on what we bring to ourselves.”
“Yes, simplicity itself,” said Zoe, “but it’s not so easy to do, especially when we can’t see the trees for the forest. What’s going on with you?”
“I can’t talk about it on the phone. You wanna come over?”

An hour later Zoe and Sparky, her stroke-impaired yellow lab, dashed into Sophia’s. Rain dripped from them into a puddle that Tolstoy sauntered over to lick. Tolstoy was Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat, the man of the house. He loved Sophia dearly, but he was frustrated with her that morning. She was so preoccupied with troubles that she forgot to put water in his cat bowl. Even worse, she’d put some blue shit in the toilet water, which made Tolstoy want to puke, so he was not only irritated, he was parched. Sparky, who couldn’t walk straight on a good day, and who was incontinent and dumber than dirt (at least Tolstoy thought so), started to lap Tolstoy as an act of friendship and an invitation to play.

Sparky realized he must be pretty bored to want anything to do with Tolstoy, but his beautiful Zoe was so sad that morning that she had ignored him altogether. Sparky shook more raindrops off his coat, which sprayed over Sophia and her laptop. Sparky put his paw over his ears when he saw Sophia lift her head for a second. Those slitted eyes told her story every time. Okay, okay, he thought. I fucked up, but why does she need to be such a bitch to me?

Tolstoy saw Sparky’s nervous reaction. Mounting tension always made Tolstoy hungry. Well, everything made Tolstoy hungry since Sophia’s husband Marty walked out and took Tolstoy’s big brothers with him, the border collies Dickens and Voltaire. Plain and simple, Tolstoy had a serious eating disorder, which is why he scurried out of the dining room, through the kitchen and out the swinging door to the summer kitchen. Perhaps Sophia remembered to leave some kibble in his bowl. Sparky sensed that the tears were about to fly with the two women, and frankly, he was getting a little tired of the morose shit, so he slunk off to follow Tolstoy out to the summer kitchen.

Zoe walked over to Sophia, who hadn’t stirred since she arrived except to glare at Sparky. Sophia’s forehead rested on a book. Gently, Zoe tried to lift Sophia’s head, but Sophia wouldn’t budge. Finally, Zoe gave her hair a tug, not too hard, just enough to pull Sophia out of her weird, depressed trance.
“OUCH,” cried Sophia. “Why did you do that?”

“I wasn’t sure you were alive, just testing. What were you doing anyway?”
“I was visualizing.”
“Huh?”
“Putting pictures in my mind of what I want and believing those things had already come to me.”
“Huh?”
Sophia picked up the book next to her and handed it to Zoe. It was The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Then she said, “Read the book. It’s about changing our thoughts to make the things we want come to us.”
“Fuck sake,” said Zoe. “Can we discuss the book later? Tell me what you wouldn’t talk about on the phone.”
“Something happened this morning. I had my weekly meeting with Marty over division of assets. He seemed really lost and sad and told me he was feeling ambivalent about us.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He said he had drawn away from Fugly lately, and that he was thinking about me all the time.”

Marty was Sophia’s husband who left her after he disclosed his affair with Fugly.  Fugly, who looked like a man-troll, pursued Marty during the course of his relationship with her on a business project. Fugly’s husband was a famous musician, and his father was really, really famous, Famous Father.  It was Famous Father who financed the project proposed by Fugly to Marty, one that would fulfill a dream Marty sought for years. Once Famous Father found out about the affair, he pulled his money out of the project and it collapsed. But Fugly left her husband to be with Marty. That’s not all she left. She walked out on three young children whom she now saw on a visitation schedule.

“What does Marty want from you?”
“I’m not sure, probably just a dialogue. But he did own up to some things that he hasn’t before.”
“Like what?”
“He’s maintained all along that because I was a mean, bitter wife, I drove him away. But this morning he acknowledged those things weren’t true.  He admitted that Fugly gunned for him from the first day they met, and that she put that desire into actions and words that drew him away. I knew all this from the beginning, I sensed it in the way she broke every boundary, openly pursued him, and I railed against all of it. I pleaded, I screamed, I fought to make him see. But, as he said, he finally just ‘fell.’ Who wouldn’t? He had a wife at home intuiting the situation he denied in himself and acting like a harridan. He had the other woman who wanted him, being wonderful and adoring toward him.”

“Okay, Sophie, I know your theory, but let’s face it, it takes two tango.”

“I know, Zo.”

“So, where do things stand?”

“I told him about Jack.”  Jack was Sophia’s new lover.

“What did he say?”
“Not much. But I could see pain spring into his eyes. What I didn’t tell him was that I don’t see a future with Jack. Jack’s good on paper, a writer like me, and we share the same taste in music, food, art, blah, blah, blah. But Jack is so much like Marty. And the fact that he left his wife for another woman and destroyed a marriage, I just don’t think I could love someone who would do that to another person, no matter how cleansed he feels.”
“Why not?” asked Zoe.
“Because it was cowardly, disrespectful, and selfish, and people who do that are forever haunted by their guilt. And if they are not, well, who would want a person without a conscience?”
“You have a point. If you want out of a marriage, just have the balls to leave. Don’t jump into another relationship, before you’ve left the last one,” said Zoe.
“It’s a matter of degrees. It’s one thing to have a slip, screw around a couple of times, and then face up to what you’ve done. It’s another thing to “fall in love” with someone over many months while you’re still married and still telling your wife everyday how much you love her and worse, telling her she’s imagining the affair. That’s what both Marty and Jack did. That takes a lot of deception, self and otherwise.”

“So, have you told Jack what you’re thinking?”
“Not yet. I have a date with him tomorrow night. I thought I’d tell him then. My only reluctance, honestly, is that I like having someone to make love with, someone to sleep next to at night. It’s been so long for me. The problem is that I still fantasize about Marty.”
“Yuck.”
“Hey, you make love with someone for decades, and they learn what you want and need. I have a sense Marty misses the sex with me too.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, for the last few weeks, every time I see him, he has that sort of hungry look in his eyes.”
“What does that mean, Sophie?”
“He can’t help his eyes from looking me up and down.”
“Sophie, would you ever take Marty back if he asked?”
“NO,” cried Sophia. Zoe gave her a look shaped like a vast question mark but said nothing. Tears formed in Sophia’s eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Never mind,” said Zoe.
“It’s okay. I’ve never really thought about whether I would go back with him. But I do know I wish I could make love with him one more time. I’ve never admitted that to anyone.”
“Okay, Sophie. Change is constant; growth is optional. That would not be growth. Anyway, let’s quit talking about sex, okay? I’ve sworn off of it for the time being.”

“Wow, Zo, that’s huge. But what are you gonna do for sex?”
“Well, I haven’t yet tried out the sex toys you bought at the Naughty Party while I was out in L.A. No time like the present, I guess.”
“Humm,” said Sophia, “Come to think of it, neither have I. I finally took the toys off Marty’s side of the bed and put them in his bedside table. In fact, I forgot all about them.”
“Why do you need them now that you have Jack?”
“Have you not been listening to me? I’m breaking it off tomorrow night, Zo.”
“Oh, I thought that was a maybe–not a for sure.”
“It’s over. I can’t lead him on. I just have too much residual shit to be able to accept who he is, and I get him all confused with Marty and blah, blah, blah. I don’t wanna talk about it. But I will miss the sex.”
“Well, once again we’re talking about sex.”

“Hey, does your new regime mean we can’t go out on anymore dinner dates?” asked Sophia.
“Not necessarily. We could go out with guys I wouldn’t want to sleep with if they were the last men on earth.”
“Where would you find them?”
“Just turn on Match.Com. You’ll find millions of them.”
“I say we do it, Zo. I miss our double dates. We haven’t been on one since I met Jack.”
“Okay, but you have to set them up. I’m not even dipping my toe into that stream right now. I don’t want to get washed downriver, if you know what I mean.”

Sophia turned to her laptop, clicked out of her manuscript and into Match.Com. Just then, they heard terrible squealing followed by crashing yowling and moaning. Zoe and Sophia rushed through the kitchen to the swinging door of the summer kitchen. Zoe tried to push it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Sophia pushed too, and finally they were able to shove Sparky’s girth forward enough to step inside. Since Sparky’s stroke, he had trouble rolling over. Sparky was stuck on his back like a bug, baying like a hound dog. Blood dripped from the tip of his ear.

Tolstoy looked up, saw Zoe, and glared. Why the hell was she interfering, he wondered? Then he turned his head and saw Sophia’s concerned glance, which quelled his distress. Tolstoy, tail erect, marched back and forth in front of his upended cat bowl, which lay amidst kibble strewn on the floor. He guarded the area like a sentry, but he kept losing his concentration when he remembered the dead mouse hanging from his teeth. Tolstoy was pretty certain that if he dropped the mouse on the floor to devour, Sparky would once again try to invade his food. The bit of Sparky’s ear that was caught in Tolstoy’s claw was also annoying the hell out of him.

Sophia looked down at Sparky whose nose was covered in kitty litter. Cat crap dribbled from his mouth. Sparky didn’t know he wore flecks of kitty litter on his face, so when he looked up at Sophia, he flashed innocent eyes at her that said, “What? What?” Sophia just shook her head, and Sparky wondered why that bitch always ruined his desert with her dirty looks. She was the one with the antisocial cat; she was the one whom his beautiful Zoe paid attention to instead of him. Why couldn’t she just take her bastard cat into the next room and let Zoe help him roll over and stand up?

Sophia strode to the outside door, jerked it open and ordered the animals outside that instant, including the dead mouse. Then Zoe bent down and locked the animal door, so they couldn’t sneak back inside. Tolstoy sprinted out of sight. He was pissed. He hated rain, but he hated Sparky even more for getting them in trouble. But at least he had some comfort food to make him feel better. Sparky was pissed too. Tolstoy was a prick, he thought, as he staggered sideways to the covered porch and stretched out.  He admitted that he was quite full and a little sleepy from the cat crap.

Zoe and Sophia returned to the dining room and to Match.Com. Zoe refused to show Sophia how to cruise local guys, nor would she dictate what to write in the emails that would entice two men to be game for a date on short notice. As a result Sophia couldn’t line up two live ones for the evening. Finally, she clicked out of Match and Goggled live music playing in the area that evening. The Dolphin Striker in Portsmouth had a Latino band. Sophia adored Latino music.
“Let’s go take showers,” said Sophia.
“Why?”
“We’re going to Portsmouth for dinner and to hear a Latino band.”
“We are? Did you find dates?”
“We don’t need dates to go out and have fun, Zo.”
“We don’t?”
“God almighty. Just go take a shower.”
“ What are we gonna wear?”
“Pick anything you want from my closet.”

After the women showered, they stood in Sophia’s downstairs bathroom applying lotions to their slender torsos and long, lean legs. Zoe loved showering at Sophia’s house because she had an endless array of body creams to choose from, creams of every scent, except fruity ones which Sophia found putrid. Zoe’s favorites were the ones made with Shea butter or olive oil. Other moisturizers sat in rows, waiting to address any and all zones and conditions of the face, neck and chest. Once the women dried their blond hair and applied artful make-up, they dressed in different colored pencil skirts and cute tops from The Loft.

Soon, they were on the road to Portsmouth.
“Now, Sophie, there’s a chance we might meet some guys at the Dolphin Striker.”
“That would be cool–meeting guys the old fashioned way.”
“Well, if we do, you know the drill. No accidently filling your mouth too full, going into hysterics then spitting food all over the guys. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“And no dragging out Pema and reading out loud or meditating while we’re there, okay?” Zoe was referring to Pema Chodron the American Buddhist writer both women loved.
“Yes. I mean, no, I won’t do that. I’m so much better now. I won’t have a meltdown. At least I don’t think so.”
“Good.”
“But, Zo, can I read from Pema right now? Wouldn’t you like to embrace groundlessness and find some open space before we get to Portsmouth?”
“No and no. Give me the book,” said Zoe, holding out her hand. “I know it’s in your purse.”
Sophia drew Pema’s book When Things Fall Apart from her purse and reluctantly handed it over as a child might a coveted toy which she wasn’t allowed to take into school. Sophia remained silent for awhile, holding her purse tightly in case Zoe wanted her to hand over anything else.

Even though she was with Sophia and on her way to spend a festive evening among other people, Zoe was suddenly gripped with a panic that surged in and out like the tide. A grim feeling squeezed her stomach and stuck in her throat. She felt as though a force were lowering her onto shards of erect glass, and internally she sobbed from pain that she could not yet feel. The fear of it caused her suddenly to reach over and grab Sophia’s arm. Sophia turned to face her. Then Zoe said, “I’VE BEEN IN A PATTERN THAT DOESN’T FEEL GOOD. DO YOU THINK I CAN CHANGE THE PATTERN?”
Sophia looked out the window. A full moon was rising. She thought about her answer for a moment. Then she turned to her old friend and said, “YOU HAVE ALREADY BEGUN TO GROW BY YOUR RECENT CHANGES, ZO.  OWN THOSE CHOICES, AND RELAX ENOUGH TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEM.”
“Thank you, Sophie. I GUESS I’VE EMBRACED THAT CHANGE IS CONTANT. NOW, I ALSO SEE THAT GROWTH IS OPTIONAL, MINE TO CHOOSE, MINE TO RECOGNIZE.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“I dunno.”

As Zoe and Sophia walked from their car toward the restaurant, they saw Poppy, Fonzi and Jasmine walking toward them. Poppy was Sophia’s daughter and Fonzi, as they called him, was her husband. Jasmine and Poppy had been best friends since childhood. All five faces lit up.
Poppy called out to her mother and “aunt.” Zoe and Sophia rushed up to the three, showering them with kisses and hugs.

“What are you two lovely ladies doing here?” asked Fonzi.
“We came for dinner and to hear the Latino band. And you?” said Sophia.
“We were trying to decide where to eat.” said Poppy.
“There’s a band here tonight?” asked Jasmine, her face beaming. Jasmine was between men at the moment and loved musicians.

“Where are the kids?” asked Zoe. Zoe was referring to Lily, Sophia’s granddaughter and her best friend Jamile, Jasmine’s daughter.
“Jasmine planned something really fun for Jamile and Lily,” said Poppy. “She rented a suite for the night in a hotel with a swimming pool. The kids are there with the nanny swimming. Fonzi and I are staying in the suite too.”
Jasmine just smiled, revealing delightful dimples and pretty brown eyes. Then she humbly nodded a head of wavy, honey-blond hair, but said nothing.
“That’s very generous of you, Jasmine,” said Sophia then wrapped her arms around her.

Jasmine was the top executive of a computer company. She was one of a rare breed of young woman whose math and science skills were so highly developed that she was plucked right out of college and installed as a software engineer, on a rung higher than any man hired at the same time. It took her very few years to rise to the top, but she didn’t forget her humble upbringing, having been raised by a struggling single mother. Jasmine shared her hard work and good fortune with everyone, except a husband. She wanted to be a mother, but not a wife. So, she eschewed marriage offers from various boyfriends, including Jamile’s father.
“Well, I say we eat here. Let’s go in,” said Fonzi, somewhat baffled to be the man with four lovely dates on his arm.

Inside, the band was just setting up. The group found a table right in front of the band’s platform and ordered food. Sophia sat admiring how attractive Poppy looked with her dark brown, soft curly hair and olive skin, her beautiful eyes set above high cheekbones, and her zaftig figure. Both Poppy and Jasmine turned heads of the young men in the place. The men also eyed Fonzi with envy as he sat between these two curvaceous young women. Zoe and Sophia turned heads too even though they were older than the other three. A great deal of diligence by Zoe and Sophia, aided by dim lighting, disguised just how much older they were.

Poppy’s and Jasmine’s eyes lit up the minute the loud, bright music started. They leapt from the table to dance in the small patch of floor in front of the band. Their grace was mesmerizing and watching them brought back memories to Sophia of when the two were preteens, dancing in front of a mirror in Poppy’s bedroom.

Fonzi leaned into Sophia’s face when she asked him whether he practiced how to dance in his pre-teens. He said he was more interested in sliding down the banisters at his Catholic school, but only when the nuns weren’t looking. He still had the splinter scars to prove that passion. Of course, poor Fonzi had to spend evenings at the mercy of his dear mother’s tweezers as she dug relentlessly around the flesh of his butt, to free the blades of wood. He explained that the smell of rubbing alcohol still made him gag, since this is what his mother used to cleanse the wounds of his naughtiness. Who could not adore Fonzi, Sophia thought to herself?

Finally, Zoe and Sophia gave into the spirit of the music, and they too jumped up to dance. Zoe’s moves were smooth and sensuous, contained and workable in the small space. Sophia was incapable of economy of motion, and she swung out in an aggressive interpretation of the Latin sound. Unfortunately, she tripped over a cord from the electric bass and began to fall, face first, into the handsome bass player. Poppy and Jasmine caught her on the way down and propelled her back into motion. Zoe turned her back and danced with an imaginary partner, pretending she didn’t know Sophia. Within seconds a middle-aged African American man materialized to fill the role.

Sophia’s arms lashed out in spastic motion, barely missing Zoe’s new partner. Her arms instead landed squarely across Poppy’s head, which knocked Poppy off balance and sent her banging into Jasmine. Jasmine tripped and bumped into a man dancing next to Sophia, and his foot caught Sophia’s ankle. Sophia stumbled and started to fall. What could have been a domino moment of dancers losing their balance, toppling the musicians in their wake, was averted when two hands grabbed Sophia from behind and held her fast. Slowly, Sophia turned her head to see the face of her rescuer. Her eyes widened; her heart stopped. Marty held her tightly in his arms.

“What are you doing?” Sophia asked.
“I had a feeling you might be here tonight,” said Marty.
“Why was that important?”
“I want to come home. We belong together.”

The music stopped. Zoe looked over at Sophia’s blank eyes. Sophia saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing. At that moment Poppy glanced toward her mother and caught sight of her father. She hurried to Marty, smiling her welcome. She and Jasmine swept Marty away to their table where he shook hands with Fonzi and sat down. Zoe left Sophia standing alone on the dance floor, stark still, staring at nothing. Without a word Zoe went to the table and collected their belongings. She handed Fonzi fifty dollars and walked back to the dance floor. Then she gently guided Sophia out of the room and into the quiet night.

The glow of the full moon lit the faces of the two old friends, who remained silent on the ride home. But each of them knew in the pits of their stomachs that they were off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued, but remember, if you want to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog. And PLEASE, keep sending in your wonderful advice! Thanks.

Sophia awoke in the night, puzzled by the weight across her chest. At first she thought it was Tolstoy, the huge Maine Coon cat who habitually sat on Sophia as she slept, pinning her to the bed. Sophia poked at the object, didn’t feel fur and realized an arm rested on her. Only then did she remember there was a man in her bed, her new lover, Jack. She carefully lifted his arm and slipped from the covers, tiptoed to the door and went downstairs to her laptop in the dining room. She opened her Facebook page, hoping Zoe would pop up in the chat box. Sophia needed badly to chat.

But when Sophia logged in, Zoe was logged off, which sent Sophia stumbling up the rocky path to panic. Sophia asked herself what the hell she was doing. Why was she involved with a man who had cheated on his wife? Was she seeking a man like her ex, Marty, who was horrid to her, hid his affair with his predatory girlfriend Fugly, and then dropped Sophia on her head with no discussion, no kindness, no closure whatsoever?  Was Sophia setting herself up for a repeat performance of the worst emotional wreckage of her life? Just as these thoughts threatened to dispatch Sophia to Planet Nuts, she heard footsteps creak down the staircase of her 1770s home in New Hampshire. The door to the living room opened, and in the frame stood Jack, looking for Sophia. She smiled and waved shyly as he walked toward the dining room.

“Are you okay?” asked Jack.
“Yes, I’m fine. I can’t sleep, so I thought I’d write for awhile.”
“Why do I get the impression you’re not telling me the whole truth?”

Sophia shrugged, uncertain whether she dared risk telling Jack her concerns so soon. Nothing he said or did led to the conclusion that Jack was untrustworthy. She just harbored fear, given his history of infidelity. Of course, Sophia knew fear was the other side of hope, according to Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist writer Zoe and Sophia adored.

If Sophia hoped that Jack was an honest person, then she was hoping her fears that he wasn’t, would not be realized. She figured out then and there to be honest with him, and just allow the present moment to unfold, permit communication to begin, and trust her instincts to guide her about believing in Jack.

“It’s old shit for me,” Sophia said, as she licked a gob of Nutella chocolate spread from a spoon. You had an affair on your wife, which scares me.”
“Fair enough,” said Jack.
“Then I realize that my fear springs from hoping you won’t do that to me. I am fixating on something over which I have no control, you for starters, and the future for finishers.” With this pithy comment, Sophia tossed back a handful of Bold Party Blend Chex Mix and chewed relentlessly, hoping the crunching sound would distract her from the discomfort of the moment.

“That’s an interesting way to put it, but I get your meaning. I guess you’re just gonna have to trust me. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m with you, at this moment, in the middle of the night, freezing my ass off in your lovely dining room. Over time, you must judge for yourself whether you can trust me. All I can say is that I will be trustworthy. It’s your choice to believe me, but without trust, there’s no valid relationship anyway, so what’s the point of worrying? Now, could you either help me build a fire so we can talk without turning blue, or could you get your adorable bottom up to bed, please? I need you to wrap those long, lean legs around me. I want our fingers to rub each other up and down our spines.”

Sophia clung to her chair like tree fungus. Quick blasts of hot air shot from her mouth. Each breath was filled with Chex Mix, glued together with Nutella. She sounded like a choo choo train and looked pretty scary. Jack’s eyes widened as he leapt out of the path of Sophia’s flying blobs of food. Sophia was so unused to being touched by a man, that even the mention of it drove her off her rocker. She flew out of her chair, hoping to shield Jack from the spewed food, but she choked on what was in her mouth, which caused her to trip over a chair, as her fingers clutched her throat. She fell like a chopped tree, right into Jack. He managed to catch her fall and his, but not before chunks of Chex found their way into his face. Sophia didn’t know what to say, of course. So, she ran back to her laptop, looked in the live chat box, and hoped Zoe would be logged on by now. But Zoe was not.

The next morning Sophia lay in blissful splendor, spooning with Jack, who was sound asleep. Dawn had broken, which meant it was time for Sophia to get up and start working at her laptop downstairs. She had lots to do beyond writing, and her strict schedule required a minimum of six hours of daily devotion to her manuscripts. So, to get her work done and make it to her lunch date with her mentor Guinevere by noon, she had no time to lose. Guinevere was the grand dame of writers and literature in New Hampshire. Everyone venerated her. Just the mention of her name in literary circles brought a misty look to the speakers’ eyes, a look mingling profound respect with sheer delight. Guinevere was nearly eighty, an author herself, and she was worshiped by many writers, including Sophia, for her amazing guidance over the years.

Later in the day Sophia and Zoe were meeting their old chums Howard and Tess for a drink. Zoe wanted to introduce the three of them to Jack. Howard and Tess were the only “couple” friends who remained stalwart in their attempts to love and support Sophia through the past several months of her excruciating separation from Marty. Sophia loved Howard like a brother. He was an earnest, tender man with rat radar. He would let Sophia know in the gentlest of ways, whether he neither liked nor found commonality with Jack.

Tess was a dear friend with a razor sharp mind, a woman who never minced words. But Tess also had a vast, kind heart, and she would deliver an unpopular notion with a laugh so disarming that one could never take offense to what she said. But Tess’s eyes always told the story. If either of these people, whom Sophia held in such high regard, indicated in verbal or nonverbal ways that Jack was not the right person for Sophia, Sophia would not ignore their wisdom, notwithstanding the profound physical attraction she felt for Jack. As for Zoe, her closeness to Sophia made an objective assessment impossible, but Sophia still wanted Zoe there for support.

A couple of hours into Sophia’s work, Jack appeared downstairs, dressed and ready to head home to work himself. Jack wrote biographies, mostly of sports figures, and as with Sophia, weekend days varied little from weekdays. He and Sophia shared a cup of coffee then she sent him off with a breakfast bar and a long, lingering kiss. Just as he walked out the door, Zoe called.
“Hey, Zo, what’s up?’
“I’m feeling really numb today.”
“Numb cold or numb stupid or numb sad or….”
“Fuck sake, ENOUGH with the numb,” cried Zoe.
“Okay, okay. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Awhile back, we talked about my yearning to be in a more creative, diverse environment, and to be more creative myself. Part of that desire stems from a feeling of emptiness. I chase away my loneliness by filling up endless hours going out to dinner with various guys. I’m not even sleeping with anyone now, and I see none of these men as real partners, except Jackson in Florida.  But he’s in Florida fuck sake.”

“Well, I’m moving to Florida. You could come too.”
“Not if I want to earn a living, I can’t. And that’s another thing. Every time I think about you moving away, a pit mushrooms in my stomach. I feel like bloated rust.”
“Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry. I know you only want me to listen and not try to solve anything, so just keep talking.” But as she said this, Sophia could hear Zoe crying on the other end of the line. “Talk to me, girl. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I should have bought a better brand of tissue. I’m starting to get crusty nose.”
“It’s early. And I don’t have anything until my lunch date with Guinevere; do you want me to come over?”
“Guinevere,” Zoe sobbed. “She’s so wonderful. Yes, Sophie, come over. I need you.”

A few minutes later Sophia drove up to Zoe’s charming 1790s home. It was eerily silent. Usually Sparky, Zoe’s incontinent, stroke-impaired yellow Lab would be barking crazily at the sound of the car. Sophia went inside but didn’t see Zoe. She walked through the downstairs then headed upstairs. Soon she heard the Natalie Cole song This Will be an Everlasting Love blaring from Zoe’s bedroom. Sparky’s bark sounded faintly beneath the blast of music. As Sophia cracked open the door, Sparky burst out and nearly ran her over, dropping turds in his wake. Sophia kept her balance and walked gingerly over the stinking mess. Oddly, Sparky wore a bikini top. A straw hat, held on by a pink ribbon, bounced up and down on his head.

The curtains were drawn and the room was dim. Zoe lay on her back on the bed, arms and legs moving in and out rhythmically, like a sunbathing snow angel as she bellowed, “EVERLASTING LOVE” over and over. She wore the bikini bottom that matched Sparky’s top. Otherwise, Zoe was naked except for a pair of red spiked heels. Her hair was a mass of neglected bed-head snarls, and mascara dripped down her face. Strewn around the bed were a collection of seashells spilling out of beach buckets. Littered across the floor were several suitcases with clothes thrown into them.

“Fuck sake, Zoe. What are you doing,” asked Sophia as she walked to the old CD boom box and lowered the volume.
“I’ve been packing all night. I’m going to Florida. If Jackson won’t call me back, I’m gonna fly down and make him talk to me. He loves me. I know he does. And I love him. I don’t want see other men at all, even for dinner. I just want him.”
“Were you packing Sparky too? Why is he dressed?”
“I was pretending he was you.”
“Why?’
“Because now that you have Jack, I’m afraid you’re gonna abandon me.”

“Zoe, get the fuck up and stop acting like a crazed monkey. I love you.” With this Sophia reached down and rubbed Zoe’s head. Then she pulled a bathrobe out from under a pile of clothes in one of the suitcases and laid it over Zoe. “Listen to me. I am NOT your father. I am not one of your emotionally unavailable guys. We’ve been best friends for thirty years, and I’ve only known Jack for eleven days. No one can replace you. I need you, Zo, just as much as you need me. We give to each other what no one else can give us. Think about the joy we’ve shared over probably the worst year in our lives.”

“Okay, Sophie,” said Zoe as she rolled over and lumbered to her feet.
“When’s the last time you talked to Jackson?”
“It’s been four days although he did text and asked if I were seeing other men. I can’t lie. I won’t lie. But seeing other men doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with them. Still, he said the thought of other men in my life tore out his heart.”
“Well, what does he want from you?”
“He never really says.”
“What do you want from him?”
“I’m not sure,” said Zoe as she walked toward the shower. “I think I want a relationship, but I don’t see how to pull it off.”
“Well, if you don’t mind my saying, having dinner with other guys isn’t the best path to that objective.”
“I know. I just keep hedging my bets, I guess. Until I get a sense that he’s ready to commit, at least long distance at first, I can’t live with the dread of being alone.”
“You know what Nietzsche said? ‘In order to grow strong, you must first sink your roots into nothingness and learn to face your loneliest loneliness.’ Maybe that’s what you should be working on instead of trying to forge relationships.
“How the fuck do you know what Nietzsche says?  Anyway, you sound like my therapist.”
“You’re free to pay me a hundred bucks an hour.”
“Don’t you have someplace you need to be, Sophie?”
“In fact, I do. Is your spell over? Can I get on with my day without worrying that you’re gonna hang upside down from the shower rod?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“I’ll see you at five o’clock at Ixtapa Cantina.”

At noon Sophia walked into the Pine Gardens Chinese restaurant in Exeter. Guinevere stood waiting, her plump body leaning on a unique black cane, inlaid with a mother-of-pearl design. She was one of those rare older women whose eyes sparkled with mischief when she smiled. Her white hair, cropped in a bob, framed a pretty face. She gave Sophia a warm, burly hug, one long enough to transmit strong affirmative energy.
“What’s going on with you, these days?” asked Sophia.
“I’m making an effort to live my life deliberately,” said Guinevere in her robust, lively voice.
Sophia laughed.
“I work at the bookstore three days a week, on the other days I meet for meals with family, friends and other writers, I run a reading group, and the rest of the time I write and read. For an old lady that’s pretty deliberate, I’d say.”
“Yes indeed,” said Sophia, laughing again.

Over won ton soup and moo goo gai pan with brown rice, the women talked about Sophia’s current manuscript, which Guinevere was reading in snippets which Sophia sent her. They also talked about Marty’s recent compassionate treatment of Sophia and her objective to let go of negativity, of the pain and anger brought on by Marty’s departure from the marriage. Guinevere was like a school girl, taking in the story frame-by-frame, the way writers do. She giggled at Sophia’s satirical observations about where Sophia landed now that  Marty and she had called a cease fire. Sophia also described Jack.

Then Guinevere shared details about her young married life, working for a publishing house in New York City and living hand-to-mouth as a struggling writer. She talked about her parents and grandparents, and Sophia listened as Guinevere’s words painted vivid pictures of lives spanning well over a hundred years. Guinevere’s ability to articulate and describe was still so keen and quick that Sophia’s only hope was by the time she was eighty, that she would have half of the woman’s clarity.

Throughout the meal the theme kept circling back to Guinevere’s original statement about living life deliberately. The women laughed every time one of them said something to underscore an example of living deliberately, living in an awareness of the present moment, living as if it were the last day one had to live. Sophia looked back down the corridor of the past year-and-a-half of trauma and hurt brought on by the dying and death of her marriage. She reflected that through it all, she managed to live deliberately. She was in touch with her pain, she wrote a book that helped her to heal, and she was well on the way to finishing a second one. Sorrow was not the only emotion that defined those hours for Sophia. She deliberately sought joy in her family and Zoe. And now, at least for today, she found joy in discovering Jack.

At the end of lunch, Guinevere sat crunching her fortune cookie. She glanced down at the white strip of paper and decided to read it, no sense in wasting thoughts or words. She chortled as she handed the fortune to Sophia.
“I almost didn’t read this,” said Guinevere, her eyes dancing, “but I think it’s relevant.”
Sophia looked at it and laughed. It said, “Killing time murders opportunities.”
Both women were attuned to synchronicity and neither could resist the best humor of all, irony.

Zoe meanwhile regrouped, upended the clothes from the suitcases into a pile on the floor, undressed poor Sparky and cleaned up his heaps of crap. Next, she cleaned her house and began thinking about how she could create a blueprint for her life that was different from the construct in which she now lived. Baby steps, she kept telling herself. Change was frightening, but healthy, like burning a field. The grass would grow in greener, fuller.

Zoe decided that living in New Hampshire would be unbearable when and if Sophia moved away, so she made a plan as to how she could work remotely from Boston or Florida. Where didn’t matter, just anywhere else. Afterwards, Zoe decided to drive to Portsmouth before she was due for the drinks date with Sophia and the others. Shopping was always a balm. Just as she reached the highway, Jackson called. She wondered whether her positive energy toward a new direction somehow flowed to him. Unlike her last several conversations with him, this one was loving and thoughtful. For the entire drive to Portsmouth, they gently discussed Zoe’s need for male attention. Just before they hung up, he said that if she were willing to let go of dating other men, he would be willing to provide her with all the attention she could handle, sexual and otherwise. Jackson’s proclamation was like corn popping in Zoe’s head as she reeled between awe and ecstasy. As soon as he hung up, Zoe called Sophia.

“Hey, Zo. What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the River Run Bookstore looking for a book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.
“Meet me at Ixtapa.”

A few minutes later Zoe and Sophia drove up to Ixtapa Cantina at the exact same moment. They hugged each other then walked into the lobby, arm and arm, smiling into each other’s faces, like an old couple who’d been together for a very long time. Juan, their favorite cute Mexican waiter, waved at them, and before Zoe or Sophia could tell him not to, he placed, with a flourish of gallantry, two margaritas on the table in front of them.

“I guess we should nurse these slowly,” said Sophia, “Howard and Tess won’t be here for awhile, and I want a clear head when they meet Jack.”
“I’ve made progress today,” said Zoe. I’ve started putting a positive life plan into action, and Jackson professed that he could be in a committed relationship with me if I were receptive to letting go of the other men in my life.”
“Wow. That’s huge. So all your desperation from this morning just vanished?”
“In a sense, yes. I realize I’ve been so entangled in negative and obsessive thinking that I was lost.”
“You must have figured out ”The Secret,’ Zo.”
“What are you talking about?”

Sophia handed her the book. Together they read through a few pages. The gist was that the law of attraction is a fundamental law of nature. We attract to ourselves those things our thoughts send out into the universe. If we formulate positive thoughts in our mind and then send those out, positive things are attracted back to us, like a magnet. The inverse is true of negative thoughts. Our feelings are merely guides to let us know whether our thoughts are “good” ones or “bad” ones, attracting those things we want or do not want in our lives.

Just then, Jack walked into Ixtapa, wearing a big smile. The sight of him robbed Sophia of her breath and all she could do was nudge Zoe and point. Zoe beamed her approval, at least as far as appearance was concerned. He was tall, with thick, salt and pepper hair, a handsome face and a fit body. Zoe jumped up from the L-shaped booth to introduce herself. Sophia tried to jump up too, but her sweater caught on the corner of the table and sprung her back down like a rubber band. Unfortunately, she bumped the table on the way, and the two full margaritas tipped over and splashed onto Sophia’s hair, down her shirt, and into the lap of her skinny jeans. Juan raced over with bar towels to clean up the mess on the seat. Jack and Zoe stood watching, glancing with amusement into each other’s eyes. Just as Sophia hurried toward the restroom to clean herself off, Howard and Tess breezed through the door.

Sophia was so embarrassed that she stayed a long time in the restroom. Still looking a mess, she finally returned to the table and saw five new margaritas had been delivered, along with a basket of warm tortillas and salsa. The introductions were over and everyone was engaged in lively, if skeptic, conversation about The Secret, which by some miracle of positive thought, had escaped being drenched in tequila.

Howard and Jack talked about the power of positive thought to accumulate wealth. Tess and Zoe talked about the powerful thought that went into Tess’s recent hairdo. Tess’s hair was naturally curly, but just that afternoon, she asked her hairdresser to blow dry her hair straight, just to see what it looked like. Howard gave mixed reviews about the transformation, but Zoe and Sophia loved it.
“Tess, let me see your phone,” said Zoe. “Let’s take a picture of you and send it to your sister in Connecticut to see what she thinks.”
“Okay,” said Tess.

Soon, Juan came to take the order for appetizers. Sophia only half listened to the banter about Tess’s hair. Instead, she struggled to get a read from Howard’s demeanor about his reaction to Jack. The forecast was murky. Howard’s body language was guarded; his arms remained folded against his chest. His laughter sounded a little forced, or perhaps that was Sophia’ imagination. Jack’s charm and good looks dazzled the women, so they were no help as a gauge. Just as the appetizers arrived and they ordered a second round of drinks, Tess’s phone blinged, signaling the arrival of a text message.

Tess looked down at her phone. The message was from her sister telling her the straightened hair looked chic. But before Tess could eat a bite, another text message came in. It was from her mother and father who were wintering in Florida. The text clearly expressed that Tess should bring back the curls.
“How many people did you send that picture to, Tess,” asked Sophia.
“I just sent the one–to my sister.” Zoe and Sophia laughed at the speed of thought that came back to Tess about her hair.

Neither Howard nor Jack paid any attention to the hair-talk. They were still discussing the dubious possibility of accumulating wealth through brain waves. As Tess took the first sip of her drink, another text came in from a second sister in New York. She liked the straight look. Tess was growing irritated and hungry and thirsty. The next two texts were from her teenage son and daughter. The son thought her hair was fabulous, but the daughter said she looked like an old woman. Finally, just as Tess and the others were downing the last drop of their drinks, another text blinged on Tess’s phone. It was from her brother in China. He was thumbs up on the curls.
“Well, we have to get going,” said Tess to Howard.
“Why? Do we have plans for tonight?”
“Yes. I have to go home and wash my hair.”

After kisses and hugs of farewell, Howard and Tess gave Sophia neither smiles nor frowns before they hurried out the door. Jack asked whether Zoe and Sophia wanted to stay and join him for dinner, but they both said they had plans for the evening. Sophia gave Jack a kiss and said she’d call him later.

Sophia grabbed Zoe’s arm as they walked quickly away from the restaurant toward some of their favorite nearby stores.
“What did you think of him, Zo?”
“The jury’s still out.”
“Meaning?”
“He’s gorgeous, charming, smart, funny and interesting. Everything Marty was. I’m not sure whether you can trust him.”
“In what way–how?”
“I don’t mean things like cheating on you. I’m talking about emotional engagement.”
“How the hell did you read that from him?”
“It’s hard to say. I think he might be ambivalent, you know, a push-pull kind of guy.”

Sophia was silent for a minute while the two friends walked through The Gap, fingering piles of clothing. Finally, she said, “Well, if anyone would know about that sort of man, it would be you.”
Zoe turned to her, wincing. “I know you said that because you’re hurt by my observation. You’re right, of course. But let’s just say it’s easier to see when other people are walking into the jaws of a lion than it is to see when we are doing it ourselves.”

“True enough,” said Sophia, whose face puckered as tears sprung from her eyes. “It all goes back to the law of attraction. I’m attracted to someone like Marty, however negative the outcome might be, because it’s familiar. I understand his instincts. It’s safe because I know what to expect, but it’s unsafe because the real issue is about who Jack might be, intrinsically. Perhaps you see in Jack certain attributes I overlooked in Marty because I loved him.”
“Exactly,” said Zoe. “Which raises the question of whether you want to get into the same cycle with a new person who is similar to Marty in so many ways?”

“I think the bigger question is about where I am, Zo. “AM I EMOTIONALLY BALANCED ENOUGH TO LOVE A MAN RIGHT NOW?”
Zoe held up a green tank top in front of herself as she faced a mirror. Sophia faced the mirror too. Their eyes met in the reflection, and Zoe took a deep breath before answering. “I QUESTION WHETHER YOU ARE IN A PLACE THAT ALLOWS YOU TO SEE A MAN CLEARLY ENOUGH TO LOVE HIM WITHOUT BLINDERS ON. YOU WANT A CONNECTION WITH A MAN, BUT YOU ARE STILL IN SO MUCH PAIN.”
“You might be right, Zo. I’ll have to take this one really slowly, if at all.”
“Hey, Sophie, let’s go to my house and watch old DVDs of Sex and the City. Those should get you thinking straight.”

“Okay,” said Sophia. “Can we first stop at the bakery near my house? I hear they have Nutella cheesecake.”
“Be still my heart.”
“Hey, Zoe, do you think either of us is really ready to fall in love yet?”
“I can fall in love with anything that has Nutella in it.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”

And so, in separate cars the two fifty-something BFFs drove toward home, consumed by thoughts of love gained and love lost and love that might not be. But they never questioned their love for Nutella as they roared through night on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued, but remember, if you want to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog. And keep your wonderful advice flowing. Thanks.

March 9th
PLEASE send your advice to two single women, whose lives are suddenly crashing in chaos! Zoe and Sophia, BFFs for thirty years, find themselves unexpectedly cast into the world of re-creation and redefinition after decades of being faithful wives to George and Marty. They need advice from anyone willing to offer it. For instance, what advice would you give your BFF were she to ask, “I WANT TO SPEND TIME BEING MORE CREATIVE. WHAT SHOULD I DO?”Any advice you can give to Zoe would be helpful, but this is what Sophia said.

Before Zoe opened her eyes, she tried to remember where she was. The smell was familiar. Sparky, her stroke-impaired yellow Lab had involuntarily purged enough hard turds into the dog bed to fill the air with a distinct olfactory unpleasantness. Zoe could feel the weight of her laptop on her stomach where she’d left it when she fell asleep after Webcam “dating” late into the night with Jackson in Florida.  But the angle of her head was unfamiliar because she wasn’t sleeping on her own pillows. Finally, she remembered she was in Cambridge, at the home of some old friends, who invited her to dinner and to stay over. The windstorm a few nights earlier stole the power from hundreds of thousands of people in New Hampshire, and Zoe still didn’t have hers back. Because the branch of Zoe’s company didn’t have power either, Zoe had to work out of its Boston office for a couple of days.

Zoe finally opened her eyes and smiled as she remembered the night before. Her friends were an interesting couple. He was an artist and poet originally from (Rasta) Jamaica. She was a painter and dance instructor, a New York Jew fortunate enough to have a comfortable trust fund. The couple found each other at an arts festival in the late 1970s and had been happily married ever since.

The evening before was filled with music, dance, poetry, painting, rum punch and good vegan food. Zoe inhaled the fun. Before dinner the friends showed Zoe pictures of their home on the beach in Jamaica, where they spent two months every year. They captured Zoe’s delight with their vision to turn the place into a year-round artists’ retreat. During dinner, the husband read some of his poetry. Between dinner and washing dishes, Zoe posed for the couple so they could sketch her. After they sketched, the wife put a box of crystal beads in front of Zoe, and she made herself a lovely necklace and earrings. Later a few neighbors dropped by and everyone danced to Reggae with wild abandon.  Then a hard knot formed in Zoe’s stomach. She thought about what her life would be like in New Hampshire if Sophia moved to Florida. Aside from work and endless dates with ill-suited men, all she could see was a barren patch of cold nothing.

Sophia stuck a toe out the door, just to feel the air. She closed her eyes and listened for a couple of minutes to birdsong she hadn’t heard in many months. Something internal stirred her. Was it the sense of spring? This was her anniversary, and she wondered if her husband Marty remembered as he awoke in the arms of his girlfriend, Fugly. With her eyes still closed, Sophia allowed herself to recall when she first met Marty. Sophia had gone home that night, unable to sleep as colors and sound swirled through the air of her dark, silent bedroom. Marty went home and left a note on the kitchen counter that said, “I’ve met the woman I’m going to marry. They both knew it was love at first sight, and the love endured for many wonderful years. But Sophia could only take a few seconds of these memories before her eyes snapped open, and she begged herself not to cry. Too many tears already had been shed for the loss that robbed her of her breath, her joy, her desire to live some days. She needed to talk to Zoe.
“Hi, Sophie.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Cambridge. Wow, I’m surprised you got out of bed.”
“I made myself get up, but I wish it were tomorrow.”
“It will be soon enough—never wish time away. Time is all we have.”
“Huh?”
“Wanna do something fun tonight, Soph? It’ll take your mind off, you know….”
“Like what, Zo?”
“What would you like to do?”
“Be in a coma,” said Sophia flatly.

Zoe changed the subject. “I really hope my power’s restored today. But if it isn’t, I’ll stay with you tonight. Anyway, let me see if I can line up dates for us,”
“Maybe. I gotta go.”
“Where?”
“Back to bed.”
“I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Try not to live on Planet Nuts until then.”
“Okay, Zo.”

It wasn’t the best day for Sophia to stroll down memory lane, but she couldn’t help herself. She thought if she remembered some of the better years with Marty, it might help her honor what they had and let it go. Sophia started pulling dozens of photo albums from shelves where they’d lived collecting dust for too long. She piled them around her on the dining room floor. Sophia sat amidst the piled albums and took in decades of love, loss, laughter, pain, peace and turbulence. Every picture jabbed her until one found her most tender spot, and that portrayal plunged a sword into the middle of her heart.

The picture was of Marty and Sophia in bathing suits and straw hats watching the U.S. Tennis Open under the tree in their yard. For years they brought the TV outside and spent every spare moment of two weeks watching and pretending they were in New York. Even when Lily was only five days old, the infant lay in a drawer, outside in a shaded area, and her grandparents cuddled her as they sat rapt, adoring the baby, the tennis and each other. It was during the U.S. Open the summer before, that Marty admitted his affair with Fugly, and Sophia’s world came crashing down. Tennis brought Marty and Fugly together, ripping Sophia out of all future frames. The stab wound now bled. Stunned and numb, Sophia curled into a fetal position and lay for a long time amidst the strewn photo albums. She was pretty sure Marty forgot it was their anniversary.

A while later Zoe breezed through the kitchen door. Her head bent down as she looked at a spectacular photo Bucky in Tennessee texted to her. It was his full-frontal-nude body. Bucky was the twenty-five year old who pursued Zoe relentlessly. He did everything from fly to Vermont tracking Zoe down, to propose marriage a week later. AND at each turn, Bucky met with Zoe’s indifference, but he remained undaunted.
Unfortunately, because Zoe was so absorbed in the photo, she didn’t notice Sophia lying in a fetal position, nor did she see the stacks of photo albums strewn everywhere. As a result she tripped over Sophia and fell headlong on top of her. Sophia didn’t stir.

Sparky was right behind Zoe, and he became so distressed that his sweet Zoe might be hurt, that he barked anxiously then let out a steady stream into the fire place. Soon the whole house smelled like burnt pee. Tolstoy, Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat, became instantly offended by the odor. He hissed and yowled at Sparky then took a running leap and landed on Sparky’s back, where he clung, by his claws for dear life. Tolstoy’s girth was so great that the impact of Tolstoy’s body sent Sparky slamming into the wall, where he lay whimpering.

Tolstoy released his grip on Sparky and leapt over to Sophia, wondering why that bitch Zoe had to bring that lame-ass dog to his house every day. Tolstoy licked Sophia’s face, thinking she needed reviving or cleaning, he wasn’t sure which. Sparky wondered why that bitch Sophia had to have such an evil cat. But soon his thoughts turned back to sweet Zoe’s well being. He tried to find his legs to get up and go comfort her, but he was stuck on his back, like a bug.

“Fuck sake, Sophie, say something. Ouch or shit, anything.”
“Ouch…shit,” murmured Sophia.
“Why today of all days did you drag out these pictures?”
“I need him, Zoe, if only the memory of his face and smile.”
“He’s been such a creep to you.”
“In the end I’m not sure it matters. I know who he is deep down. I still love him.”
“Yes, but could you forgive him?”
“To err is human, to forgive is divine.”
“Who said that?”
“Alexander Pope.”
“Sophie, if anybody could forgive, you could. I believe all people have divinity somewhere inside of themselves, and your divinity is an ability to forgive.”
“Thank you.”
“But what about forget? Could you forget the brutal way he shunned you and his meanness toward you, and the fact that he left you for another woman?”
“I guess I’d have to, Zoe. Hey, I don’t know why we’re lying on the floor talking about this dumb shit anyway. Marty’s got Fugly, and I don’t see him making his way back to me. So, could you get the fuck up off of me and figure out a way to fumigate this house. Sparky outdid himself this time.”
“Power down, sister,” said Zoe as she rolled over, straddling Sophia in order to have room to stand without knocking over furniture or falling in the fire. But before she stood, she looked down into Sophia’s eyes. “Sophie, you look scarier than a Stephen King movie. When is the last time you showered and put on makeup?”
“Can’t remember.”
“That long. GO TAKE A SHOWER. Your depression is starting to smell as bad as Sparky’s rear end.”
“Okay, Zo.”

With that, Sophia stood up and walked to the bathroom while Zoe put away the photo albums and cleaned up after Sparky. Unfortunately, she managed to get soot and urine all over herself, so she headed upstairs to grab some of Sophia’s clean clothes and to take a shower in the other bathroom.

A few minutes later the women stood in their panties and bras lathering their slender torsos and long, lean legs with olive oil lotion. Next, they took turns drying their blond hair, and then applied subtle make-up, as their eyes met in the mirror.
“Why did we shower?” asked Sophia.
“Ahh, because it’s the hygienic thing to do, bag lady.”
“You know, that’s really insensitive toward bag ladies. They are people too.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Sophia pulled back and squinted at Zoe.
“Why didn’t you come back with some pithy comment, Zo?”
“You’re way too vulnerable and depressed to have a sense of humor today. In fact, you’re down right dreary.”
“How should I be?”
“Try to think about everyone and everything you have to be thankful for.”
“Good idea.”

Just then Zoe’s phone rang. It was one of Zoe’s men who wanted to meet for lunch in Portsmouth. Zoe looked over at Sophia.
“Will you be okay if I go out to lunch?”
“No problem,” said Sophia, but her heart raced in a panic. She didn’t want to be alone. As Zoe readied herself to leave, Sophia decided to text Marty on a pretext about a bill that needed paying. He didn’t respond.

Sophia saw Zoe off and then sat down to write. But the words wouldn’t come. She checked her Facebook page and her email, and just as alarm rose in her throat, signaling the kickoff of at least a couple of hours of staring and crying, Marty called her. He asked if she’d meet him at Popovers, a wireless café in Portsmouth, to go over some information about their taxes. Sophia trembled, as she always did when she anticipated being in Marty’s presence. Sometimes her physical reaction was the fear of fighting, something she tried not to do with him anymore. At other times, it was sexual and emotional yearning just to be near him.

Although Sophia had two hours to kill before her meeting with Marty, she packed up her laptop and left the house immediately. She had to flee the memories about the day, so she decided to drive straight to Popovers, where she could read and do some writing.

The date Zoe met at the Mexican restaurant in Portsmouth was Walter, her guy who liked to travel.  Zoe still struggled to accept Walter’s, but her bigger problem was with his self-consumption. His most profound demonstration of this was wrapped in his inability to communicate with her consistently. He would declare that he really wanted to fashion a relationship, but then he wouldn’t call for days. When he did meet her for a meal like today, he tended to dominate the conversation, talking about his job, about a recent trip to Amsterdam, about his witchy ex-wife and his beautiful daughters.

Never once did he ask Zoe anything about herself. A couple of times she tried to talk about her newborn grandson and about her high-powered job in the entertainment industry, but the conversation invariably veered back to Walter until she brought up Sophia’s name. That seemed to perk his interest. He asked to see a picture of Sophia, so Zoe opened her laptop and went to Sophia’s photo section of Facebook. He nodded approvingly as a small smile crept across his face. He quietly alluded to the closeness of Zoe’s relationship with Sophia and raised a wondering eyebrow as if he were picturing something in his mind, to which he did not want to give voice. Finally, Zoe figured out where all his obtuse questions were headed, where Walter’s interest usually led, to matters below the waist.
“No,” Zoe said bluntly, “Sophia and I do not have sex with each other. We’re like sisters, so if you have some idea about a threesome, change the channel.”
After their meal arrived, Zoe decided to cut in on Walter’s blathering, and she talked nonstop about whatever crossed her mind.

Meanwhile, Sophia set up her laptop at a marble table at Popovers. The window she sat next to gave her a view of Market Square and the lovely old brick buildings that bordered the hub of downtown. She ordered decalf Earl Gray tea and looked around her as she sipped it. Lots of writers set up digs at that particular café. Sitting at the table behind her and at the one to her left, were two, lone interesting looking men who wrote furiously, impervious to their surroundings.

Her nervous tension about meeting Marty didn’t subside, but she was able to concentrate for a few minutes until the battery in her laptop gave her a two minute warning. She stood up and searched for an outlet, but the one she found was too far away for her cord. The writing man nearest to the plug stood up, discerning her need and offered her to sit at his table and work.

Sophia froze. She looked up four inches, into a set of magnificent hazel eyes. The man’s face broke into a smile so captivating that it took her breath away. Then she studied his striking, salt and pepper, thick hair. Next, her eyes trailed down to his broad shoulders and slim hips. The only thing he lacked was the potbelly so many fifty-something men carried around like a trophy. Sophia’s eyes widened, but words lay trapped in her brain. A nod sufficed to convey her agreement to the man’s idea.

Unfortunately, the move to his table was not a smooth one. He asked for her cord, which she tried to hand him, but she bumped against the table, and the cord toppled her teacup and propelled her phone half way across the room. She put her laptop opposite his, but didn’t see his glass of iced coffee. The contents of the glass spilled to the floor in the exact spot where the man’s feet were planted. Sophia ran up to the counter to snatch a hunk of napkins to clean his shoes, but in her hurry back, she tripped headlong into the handsome stranger, who graciously caught Sophia in his arms and held her for several seconds too long to be merely a “good save.”

Sophia and and the stranger talked for an hour. Their commonalities astounded her. She discovered his name was Jack, and that he wrote biographies, mostly of sports figures. Sophia and Jack shared their love of music, art, birds, gardening and sunshine. He told her he had two grown children and a grandson, and that he was a devoted husband for decades. But just as Jack turned fifty, a younger woman joined his support staff, and she made a play for him. Incapable of resisting her allure, he walked out on his wife.  The relationship with the other woman, although intense, was short lived, and he went home to his wife. She tried to take him back. They availed themselves of every resource, but in the end, she fell in love with someone else and left him.

Sophia just listened and watched the pain play across his face. Sophia gazed into the eyes of a humbled man, somewhat broken, but a good man, a kind and intelligent man, a man of character. She didn’t tell him much of her story, only that she was also a writer and that she suffered as his wife had suffered. Jack nodded, looking tenderly into her eyes. Reluctantly, he pulled his eyes away and glanced at his watch. Then he reached into his wallet and handed her his card and asked her please, please to be in touch. As he walked away, Sophia was so smitten she forgot all about Marty and Fugly and everything else on earth at that moment.

Instead of writing, Sophia drew Pema’s Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart from her purse and began to read. Pema was the American Buddhist writer whom Zoe and Sophia adored. Sophia reminded herself to live in the present, not to have expectations about what might or might not happen in the future.

Sophia’s mind bounced back and forth like a recoiling wire between what she knew and what she felt. She knew she should release thoughts that fixated and grasped for things beyond her reach, past or future. In that instant Sophia felt an intense draw to Jack, yet she paused because he had demolished his wife’s trust, the same way Marty had destroyed hers. She was afraid because she wanted Jack, plain and simple. But she had to be careful to protect her heart. Sophia was certain that living in fear of the future was a useless waste of living. And she yearned to embrace all the possibilities. But could she do that without a safety net? Then she remembered a quote Pema herself used as a guide. “Only to the extent we expose ourselves to annihilation over and over again can that which is indestructible be found in us.” In life, Sophia told herself, there is only groundlessness. Everything falls apart, and everything comes back together another way.

When Marty walked in a few minutes later, Sophia looked up and smiled at him. He handed her a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse, the type of wine he brought her on their first date many years before.
“Happy Anniversary,” said Marty.
“Thank you,” said Sophia. “I forgive you.”

And just like that, she let go of the Marty in front of her. He was someone else now. Love of the old Marty, her Marty, welled up inside of her, and she knew that was the love to honor and cherish, the love that would remain in her heart forever. But today, she celebrated a different anniversary. It was the first hour of the first day of knowing Jack. Her intuition told her that perhaps she could love this man and he her. Jack was flawed, yes, but he was also humbled, a man who’d learned his lesson.

Meanwhile, Zoe’s lunch wound down with Walter, and she was relieved it was over. She gave him a peck on his cheek as they parted, but her head was bent and fingers busy texting even as she walked away from him. First, she texted Jackson to say she missed him. He did not respond. She called him, but he didn’t answer the phone, which was always attached to his belt. She left a message, telling him again that she missed him. He did not call back.  God, did she ever yearn for Jackson.  She decided to call Sophia.
“Hi, Sophie, where are you?”
“I’m at Popovers. I met my new man today.”
“Huh?”
“His name is Jack.”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, make sense.”
“I met a guy in Popovers today, and I have a feeling we could fall in love.”
“Are you delusional? What’s he like?”
“I’m not delusional. I just know it when I see it.”
“Know what?”
“Never mind. We’ll talk. Are you in Portsmouth?”
“Yes. Wanna meet somewhere?”
“Let’s go shopping, Zo.”
“I’ll come to you.”

The afternoon air was filled with a hint of spring. Zoe and Sophia ambled along on the sunny side of the street, stopping occasionally to sit and talk on the benches in Market Square. Sophia described Jack and the magical hour she’d spent with him. The women walked further and popped into various boutiques to look at clothing and jewelry. Inside Cool Jewels, Zoe turned to Sophia.

“Does meeting Jack make you think twice about moving to Florida?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you tell him about Florida?”
“Briefly. No details though.”
“If you move, that means I’m still in a quandary.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to stay in New Hampshire. There’s nothing here for me except my job. I need to live in a more diverse place, where I see people of all colors and nationalities.”
“No question you’ll have to move away to do that. New Hampshire is homogenized. Why can’t you just move back to Boston; that’s where you’re from? Could you convince your company to let you work there?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did the idea of my moving to Florida bring on this craving, Zo?”
“To some extent. But I’ve missed living in a city for a long time. By the way, I had the best time in Cambridge last night. It made me realize how much I need to be part of an artistic community.”
“Tell me about it.”

Zoe told her about the night before with her old friends. Her face was radiant as she recalled the sketching, poetry and dancing. A yearning sprung from her eyes when she said to Sophia, “I WANT TO SPEND TIME BEING MORE CREATIVE. WHAT SHOULD I DO?”
“What are your artistic interests, Zo?”
“I can string beads. You should see the earrings and a necklace I made.”
“Okay,” said Sophia tentatively. “Is that considered art?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You don’t paint or play an instrument, but you dance well for the Webcam.”
“Hum.”
“Wait, Zo–you are incredibly artful in your gardening. Your esthetic is unique.”
“That’s true!”
“And you pitch me fabulous ideas for my stories?”
“Yeah, but that’s really your art.”
“True. You know, Zo, if dating were an art form, you could FILL a museum.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Sophie?”

When Sophia stopped laughing at her own joke she said, “Besides gardening, your greatest strengths are organization and communication. You have strong professional tact, and you articulate ideas really well.  Your other great talent is sex.”
“Nice of you to say, but how do these skill sets become artistic?”
“ZO, YOU COULD TEACH GARDEN DESIGN AND KARMA SUTRA MOVES TO ARTISTS!”

Zoe nodded her head happily. “Hey, Soph, we need to celebrate with margaritas”
“What are we celebrating, Zo?”
“I have Art. And you just might have a new man.”
“Yeah. Let’s celebrate!”
“Let’s do Mexican so we can flirt with the cute waiters.”
“On the way home, can we stop at the tanning salon?” asked Sophia. “Pema’s talking in my ear right now, and I do my best meditation in the tanning bed.”
“Okay.”

As the two friends swept into the restaurant, the smarmy host welcomed Zoe back. Zoe nodded then remembered her dismal date earlier.
“You know, Sophie, I’ve tried, but I just don’t think I can get around Walter’s nose.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”

Zoe and Sophia sat at their usual table and didn’t have to wait even a minute before Jose, their favorite Mexican waiter, placed Margaritas in front of the shimmering BFFs. But before they took a sip, in unison they drew their cell phones from their purses, and off they went, on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued.  Read about major changes is the Bff’s lives. But remember, if you want to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the Blog.

Zoe pinched her cheeks in the pre-dawn as she drove north over the Tobin Bridge in Boston. The night before she’d slept at her daughter Sara’s house, after first attending a bi-monthly group-therapy session in Cambridge.  Zoe strove hard to fill in the space left by another silent spell from Jackson in Florida. Group therapy wasn’t working too well, and dating other men wasn’t working at all.  Zoe was also chasing away her mounting alarm about Sophia’s plan to move to Florida. The only way she knew how to quash her feelings was to drive and connect, drive and connect. Spending so much time in her car, Zoe became skilled at snapping pictures,talking on her Blackberry, checking her Facebook page, and chatting live—all at the same time as she drove. She took multi-tasking seriously.

Sophia meanwhile paced the bedroom floor of her 1770s house on a lake in New Hampshire. She counted the knot holes on the pumpkin pine floor boards, the ones laid before George Washington was president. Somehow, Sophia had it in her mind that her own life was a patchwork of knotholes, like those from the old boards. Trees grew around knotholes, the ones created when limbs were ripped from their trunks. Sophia felt like an old tree, whose trunk had been ravaged by wind. But unlike a tree, which “knew” it had to grow around a knot hole to reach skyward, Sophia was stuck in the hole of her failed marriage to Marty, a man she had adored with all her heart. He broke that heart when he left her for his girlfriend Fugly, as Sophia called her.  And Sophia simply could not figure out how to grow around the hole left by his departure. The hole gaped open and dripped with pain because at the base of it, she had to admit she still loved and missed Marty, notwithstanding the profound choices he made to cut her from his life.  The ‘hole’ was also literal when it came to their financial affairs.

Fugly and Marty first met when Fugly approached Marty to become involved in a project to be financed by Fugly’s legendary father-in-law, Famous Father. Famous Father pulled out of the deal when he discovered Fugly and Marty were involved. Fugly moved out of her home, leaving behind a husband (Famous Father’s son), and their three young children. When the project crashed, Marty’s and Sophia’s financial situation plunged into a downward spiral. Sophia guessed that Fugly would be financially set for life and would ultimately take care of Marty if their relationship lasted. As it was, he lived at Fugly’s new place on the days she didn’t have child visitation, and she paid for Marty to live in a motel near her house on the days he wasn’t allowed to stay with her. (Only Sophia’s dogs were allowed to live full-time at Fugly’s). Sophia, on the other hand, couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage on the marital home. So, she had decided to move to Florida, not only to get away from Marty, but because she found a place to rent that would cost a quarter of her current mortgage payment.

Just as Sophia decided to go downstairs to count the knotholes on the living room floor, her phone rang.
“Hi, Sophie.”
“Hey, Zo. How was your date with Walter?”
“Predictable. Although he said he wanted to show me how much he loved me, the only thing he wanted to talk about was how much he loved me below the waist.”
“You ate paste?”
“Huh?”
“Why did you eat paste? You know, come to think of it, I need to figure out how to get the paste off my wall?”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, why are you talking about paste?”
“You know the pictures of Fugly that I pasted to the wall, over the hole Marty punched in it last summer when he screamed, “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST FUCKING TRUST ME?”
“Yes. I’ve heard about the hole many times.”
“Well, I took down the pictures. But the paste is still on the wall, and I don’t know how to clean it off.”
“Why did you take down the pictures of Fugly?”
“I need to start moving beyond my anger, Zo. Pain is one thing. We can’t will it away. But the anger–is just eating me alive. I know when I move to Florida, I will just take my life with me. I don’t want my anger moving down too. It’s time to let go of it.”
“How will you do that, Sophie?”
Before Sophia could answer, Zoe saw that a text had come in from some guy, and she said,  ”Gotta run, Sophie.”

Zoe purred into the phone, trying to sound alluring. Thank goodness the guy couldn’t see the bags under her eyes. As they talked he alluded to the idea that Zoe and Sophia came as a pleasure package. Zoe assured him nothing could be further from the truth. She tried to explain that pictures of women “doing it” in magazines were conjured up in men’s imaginations for the edification of men, rarely women. She also told the guy that she and Sophia were one hundred percent hetero, notwithstanding the fantasy several men wove around their friendship. Didn’t he have a mother or sisters? She asked. Didn’t his mother or sisters have girlfriends? Why did some men think that all women were as dog-like as some men were? Finally, Zoe grew irritated by the stupid conversation, so she found an excuse to hang up on the man.

On Sophia’s tenth circle around the living room floor, during which she contemplated paste removal and lost count of the knotholes, she roused herself by remembering she had a noon deadline to send her literary agent the changes in the manuscript he was trying to sell for her. Even though her agent assured her that he never liked to pressure “his authors,” Sophia was a person who took deadlines seriously. And she was a little nervous about effective use of time. Soon she would have to devote most of her days to packing up her things, so it was best to meet his “soft” deadline, to make time for all the other stuff in her life.

Not that Sophia’s life was crammed like Zoe’s, with dates and social events. But on this day, she looked forward to picking up her granddaughter, Lily, to go to a matinee of a movie Lily wanted to see. After that, her only engagement was to go to a birthday party in the evening being held at The Gaslight, a Portsmouth night club. Sophia was excited about hanging out with her daughter Poppy’s twenty-and-thirty something friends, dancing until it hurt. But she also knew the only reason she agreed to go to the sultry nightclub was to banish thoughts of Marty from her mind, if only for a little while.

Just then, Marty sent Sophia a text, asking her to get together that afternoon, at a coffee shop in Dover. He wanted to discuss the division of assets and bills. She texted back that she was taking Lily to the movies, but she could meet with him after that. When Sophia pushed “send,” her body trembled as it always did when she anticipated seeing Marty. She was mystified that after living with him for decades, the thought of seeing Marty still had such power over her. She was uncertain whether her physical reaction was brought on by the stress of such meetings or by Marty’s gravitational pull, which had remained intact all those years and beyond. But instead of sitting at her laptop to write, she called Zoe to remind her about their plans for the evening.

“Hey, Zo, don’t forget we’re going out with Poppy and her friends tonight.”
“Sophie, I wouldn’t forget. Do you think I’ve lost my mind?”
“What do you mean you don’t have time?”
“Huh?”
“It’s Friday, why wouldn’t you have time to go out tonight?
“I do. Why are you talking about time?”
“No. I don’t have any limes. What do you need them for?”
“Fuck sake, Sophie, what’s wrong with your ears?”
“No, I don’t have any beers either.”
“ENOUGH,” shouted Zoe. “TAKE OFF YOUR HAT!”

Sophia reached her fingers to her head and realized she had forgotten to take off the hat from the night before when she went out to the barn for firewood.
“Zoe, how did you know I had my hat on?”
“Never mind that. Have you showered and dressed yet?”
“Not exactly.”
“Fuck sake, Sophie. You either have or you haven’t.”
“Well, no then.”
Sophia showered and dressed then drove to pick up her beloved Lily, a smart, sweet and splendid looking little girl with dark, curly locks and deep, entrancing eyes. They drove to Portsmouth to catch the noon showing of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. On the way, Lily asked questions about her grandfather Marty. She was an insightful little girl and hoped to pump information from her grandmother. No one else would talk very openly about the vast shift in Lily’s life. And Sophia also tried to wiggle out of answering Lily’s questions.
“Why did Papa leave you alone, Nana?
“Papa wanted something different in his life, sweetie.”
“What did he want?”
“Something else, dear.”
“Do you get scared alone in that big house?”
“No, honey. I’m very brave.”
“Why do you cry so much, Nana?”
“Sometimes, I just miss Papa.”
“We all miss Papa,” whispered Lily. Then her face began to pucker in tears.
“Okay now, Lily, you have to choose between candy and popcorn at the movie, not both. So, don’t start begging when we get there. I recommend the popcorn.”
“Okay, popcorn. When will I get to see Voltaire and Dickens again, Nana?” Voltaire and Dickens were Sophia’s and Marty’s border collies. Marty hadn’t allowed them to visit with Sophia for months.
“Soon, dear.”

Sophia consumed her weight in unbuttered popcorn during the film, a case of nervous eating. She dreaded, yet craved, her meeting with Marty so much that it was distracting. But every time her mind drifted in Marty’s direction, away from the exciting plot of the movie, she  gently pulled herself back to the present moment, to stop fixating on things beyond her control. This was the practice suggested by Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist writer whom Zoe and Sophia adored.

Sophia often glanced over at Lily’s profile, absorbing the child’s undiluted pleasure and fascination with the adventure playing out on the screen. Twice, Sophia couldn’t resist leaning into Lily and kissing her cheek, while Sophia wondered why she couldn’t just hold on to the sheer bliss of that moment forever. Of course, fundamental to Sophia’s healing process, was her acceptance that we can’t hold on to anything, good or bad, forever. Everything is in a state of flux. The minutes fall away, never to be reclaimed. We don’t know what the future holds, so we need to relax into the present, to embrace the wonder of existence right now. Perhaps that is why Sophia gazed more at Lily than at the screen.

The main character in the film is a teenager, Percy, a demi-god whose father is the Greek god Poseidon and whose mother is a mortal. Although the story takes place in modern times, Poseidon is bound by a law which prohibits Gods from having tangible relationships with any child they sire with a mortal. Percy becomes aware of his status as a demi-god during the course of the story, but in the end, he still has issues about being abandoned by his father. In the last scene, Poseidon gets permission from his brother Zeus (the boss God) to speak with his son Percy, just this once. Poseidon looks lovingly into Percy’s eyes and tells him, that although he cannot be part of Percy’s life in a physical way, he will always be there in his mind and heart and that he will protect Percy with his love.

At that moment Sophia felt like she was looking into Marty’s eyes and wishing he would say the same thing to her. All Sophia really wanted was reassurance that Marty would try to blanket her in the safety and love he had provided so well over the years. Then it occurred to Sophia, that she was not a child, and to expect that Marty could do that for her was so far beyond realistic that it bordered on madness. Feelings of helplessness overwhelmed Sophia momentarily, and tears slithered quietly from her eyes as the credits rolled down the screen.

Soon, the house lights came up, and the grandmother and her stunning granddaughter walked hand-in-hand from the theater, laughing and recounting thrilling scenes from the movie. Sophia was thinking that as a little girl, Lily should seek and expect that protection of love from others. But as an adult, Sophia knew with equal certainty that she should not. Sophia was responsible for developing a spirituality which involved providing loving kindness and protection toward herself.

Sophia and Lily walked to Barnes & Noble to buy Lily some books. Sophia loved that Lily was an avid reader. After that, they shared dozens of kisses and hugs, until Sophia dropped Lily at Poppy’s workplace in Portsmouth and drove north to meet up with Marty in Dover.

Meanwhile, Zoe sat at her desk where she worked as a contracts negotiator in the entertainment industry. Zoe worked her tail off, which earned her a fabulous salary. Her day was so busy that she hadn’t taken time to eat since her pre-dawn drive. Suddenly, she felt woozy, so she made herself a salad and took it back to her desk. While she ate, she checked her text messages. The most recent one was from Bucky in Tennessee, the twenty-five-year-old who claimed he loved Zoe, notwithstanding their age difference. He demonstrated his “love” the weekend before when he traveled from Tennessee to Woodstock, Vermont and tracked down Zoe, while she and Sophia were enjoying a ski weekend with Poppy and Sophia’s niece Lulu. Zoe kicked the young man to the curb and left Vermont thinking Bucky was finally convinced that Zoe was clearly an unsuitable match for him.

When she opened Bucky’s text, the impact jolted her out of the chair. He sent a picture of himself buck naked, except for the top hat he held over his crouch.
The text read: “Will you marry me?”
Zoe roared with laughter then wrote “No, my dear. I’m a grandmother, and you are barely an adult.” Zoe was certain this allusion would suffice to douse his fire.
He wrote: “No, I mean it. Marry me. You are beautiful and sexy. Tonight, when you go to bed, could you turn on your Webcam and let me watch you sleep?”
Zoe was confused by the bizarre request. So, she decided to call his bluff. “Ok, I just decided I’ll marry you. I’ll quit my job and move to Tennessee. You can support me. How does that sound?”

Bucky signed off, saying he had to go because he was late for his job at the car wash. Zoe forwarded the text exchange to Sophia. In her text, she wrote how interesting it was that the word “Cougar” was given to older women seeking younger men, but she wondered why an equally unflattering animal name, one reflecting the predatory nature of younger men seeking older women, wasn’t in the lexicon yet.

Zoe’s text came in while Sophia sat across from Marty in the trendy coffee shop. Marty had tears in his eyes because Sophia was showing him compassion. She apologized for her angry outbursts and acknowledged that the marital split had taken its toll on Marty too, even though it was his choice to have the affair with Fugly. During their meeting, Sophia’s heart softened to Marty. For the first time in a long time, they spoke to each other with ease and without rancor. She also realized how much of their practical lives she’d been responsible for handling, and that Marty was quite helpless when it came to sorting out the financial wreckage. Marty didn’t even know that the date on a bill, which designated when a bill was due to the creditor, was NOT the date he should send out the check. That was just one example of his incompetence. Their meeting ended with a hug, the first in months, and Marty thanked Sophia for her efforts.

Later, when Sophia was home getting ready for an evening of dancing, she almost felt sorry for Marty. She sent him a sweet, funny text to which he did not respond. She sent him a second text thanking him for their meeting. He did not respond. She sent him a third text telling him not to be down on himself and assuring him that he was a good man. He still did not respond. And then Sophia remembered who Marty was.

Marty was a narcissist, who at that very moment, was “at home” with Fugly and couldn’t be bothered to return her text messages. Sophia’s compassion for Marty flowed away, like the tide. She knew the tide would flow back in again and again, and that she would feel compassion again and again, only to be disappointed. In her heart, she knew Marty felt guilty for his actions, for hurting Sophia and so many others. Marty didn’t want to feel guilt because it invoked a sense of responsibility. Marty didn’t want to be responsible. It was finally dawning on her, that reaching out to Marty was a no-win situation for Sophia.

When Zoe drove in an hour later, she found Sophia weeping, with her head resting on the dining room table.
“Fuck sake, Sophie, what now? You’re still in a bra and panties, and you have no make-up on. We’re gonna be late. GET GOING.”
“Fuckin’ Marty—I hate him,” cried Sophia as she staggered toward the bathroom to get ready.

Zoe looked down at the table where Sophia’s head had been. A book sat open and its pages were damp with tears. It was not the usual book Sophia always kept next to her laptop, Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart. Instead, it was a fictional story about a mystery involving Sigmund Freud called The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld. The first two paragraphs read:

There is NO mystery to happiness.
Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn—or worse, indifference—cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn’t look ahead. He lives in the present.
But there’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning—the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life—a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.

Zoe figured Sophia was crying because her belief system was suddenly gouged, after being heaved onto the horns of a dilemma. The ideas in Buddhism, to which Sophia clung for dear life, focused on living in the present. But Sophia was a writer who lived in her mind, a mind that required reinhabiting her past endlessly, to give meaning to her life and to her stories.

Zoe was about to go into the bathroom to talk to Sophia, when she heard wild yelping, growling, hissing and yowling. She ran toward the summer kitchen and pushed open the door. There lay poor Sparky, Zoe’s incontinent, stroke-impaired yellow Lab. He was pinned to the floor by Tolstoy, Sophia’s enormous Maine Coon cat, who sat on Sparky’s stomach and glared menacingly into his eyes. Since Sparky’s stroke, rolling over was tough for him, so sometimes he ended up like a beetle stranded on its back.

Sparky looked up at Zoe, thinking how lucky he was to have such a sweet, gentle mistress who would rescue him. Following Sparky’s eyes, Tolstoy turned his glare slowly upward. Tolstoy was pissed. That bitch Zoe was about to jump in on something that was none of her damn business.
Tolstoy thought Sparky was a bastard for dragging his lame ass into the summer kitchen and inhaling the dinner Tolstoy had craved all day long. Tolstoy was especially touchy since Sophia put him on a diet to help him with his compulsive eating disorder.

Sparky just thought Tolstoy was being selfish, and now he couldn’t even roll over and run away because Tolstoy was so heavy. Sparky decided to meditate through his distress. He closed his eyes and waited for Zoe to handle Tolstoy.
“Knock it off—both of you,” Zoe said quietly, then she hurried away to console Sophia.

Tolstoy and Sparky were so surprised by Zoe’s apathy, that Tolstoy forgot he was mad and began licking something he hoped was edible, a clump clinging to the fur around Sparky’s ear. Sparky lay still, thinking that Tolstoy acted really hungry, which meant Tolstoy would soon prance through the cat door, run into the yard, and hunt down some pitiful mouse to eat. Then Sparky’s only obstacle was Sophia. But as long as that bitch Sophia was in the bathroom being pathetic, Sparky would have plenty of time to skulk across the summer kitchen and dig into a mouthful of cat crap as a nightcap.

Meanwhile, Zoe sat on the toilet seat watching Sophia pull skinny jeans over her long, lean thighs and then apply her make-up. Outside the wind tore limbs from young trees, flung chairs across the yard, and ripped a banging shutter loose from a window.  Neither woman noticed the clatter. Then Sophia’s phone rang. It was Poppy.
“Mom, are you okay?”
“I’m fine dear. Zoe’s here and we’re just about to leave for our big night out with you guys. What’s up?”
“Have you looked outside, Ma?”
“No, why?”
“There’s a raging storm with seventy-mile-an-hour winds. Most of Portsmouth and Dover are without power. I have no power.”
“I guess we’ll be postponing the birthday party,” said Sophia, as her mind ticked off all that needed to be done in case she lost power too.
“Ya think? Mom, make Zoe stay there with you. The radio is warning people not to drive, and the governor called a state of emergency.”

After Poppy hung up, Sophia told Zoe the news, and the two women ran around filling buckets and pans with water, loading up the wood box, assembling candles, searching for the oil lamps and flashlights, and putting batteries in the radio boom box. Finally, just after they dragged a mattress downstairs next to the fire, everything went black. Sophia lit the candles, and Zoe lit the oil lamps. They changed out of their party clothes and into yoga pants and sweatshirts. They poured themselves glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon, and hunkered down on the mattress in front of the fire. Only then did Zoe go into a full-blown panic with the realization that she had no internet—the server was down too.

“Fuck sake. What am I gonna do?’
“I guess you’ll just have to talk to me, Zo.”
“My phone’s fully charged. I could call Jackson in Florida.”
“Well, my phone’s not, so we might want to save the batteries for something important.”
“Shit,” said Zoe, a doleful look spreading across her face. “What do you wanna talk about, Sophie?”
“I have a question I’ve wanted to ask you all day. It’s about Marty.”
“That’s a surprise.”

Sophia let Zoe’s sarcasm roll off of her as she watched the shadows from the candles and fire dance on Zoe’s face. Finally Sophia asked, “IN ORDER TO GROW BEYOND MY PAIN, I NEED TO FIND COMPASSION IN MY BROKEN HEART FOR THE MAN WHO BROKE IT. HOW DO I DO THAT?”
Zoe studied Sophia’s face for a moment, thinking about her answer. Then she said, “IT’S A GOOD THING FOR YOU TO FEEL COMPASSION FOR MARTY, BUT TO REACH OUT TO HIM WITH KINDNESS AND THINK HE’LL RETURN IT, IS DELUSIONAL. YOU WANT A CONNECTION, BUT INDIFFERENCE IS THE ONLY THING MARTY WILL EVER GIVE BACK TO YOU. TO DO THE SAME THING DAY AFTER DAY AND EXPECT A DIFFERENT RESULT IS LUNACY. YOU NEED TO WALK AWAY, TO BREAK THE CYCLE, SOPHIE, AND TO PROTECT YOUR HEART.”

“I’m hungry,” said Sophia. “All I’ve eaten today is popcorn.”
“Do you have Chex Mix and Nutella?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Hey, do you still have that Sex and the City trivia game?”
“I do indeed,” said Sophia, jumping up. She reached for a candle from the table and disappeared into the living room.

When she returned to the dining room, Zoe lay propped up on pillows, licking Nutella from a spoon. Sophia ripped open a new bag of Chex Mix, but before reaching in for a handful, she held up the first question in the trivia game.

“Here goes. ‘The last line in the final episode of “Sex in the City” talks about the most important relationship we have in our lives. Who is it with?’”
Zoe’s eyes flashed around the room. They zapped across her silent laptop, with its dark Webcam. Her eyes flitted over her mute phone, and then came to rest on her dear friend’s face. Finally, she took a deep breath and gave the answer.

“The most important relationship we have in our lives is the one we have with ourselves.”

Sophia flipped over the card and looked at the answer. She smiled and nodded at Zoe then said, “You win the first point. Hey, was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”

As the storm raged outside and the room grew chilly, the two phenomenal, BFFs fiercely competed for first place in the trivia game to beat all trivia games, off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued, and remember, if you want the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog and read up. Please keep sending in your wonderful advice. Thanks.

Late one afternoon Sophia sat at the dining room table in her large 1770s home on a lake in New Hampshire. She leaned into her laptop, working on the manuscript of a mystery that was in the last stages of editing before she could send it out to publishers and agents. In the eleven months since she was laid off as a reporter, from a newspaper where she worked for twenty years, she wrote two books and was well on her way to a third. Unfortunately, her ability to work effectively was interrupted five months before when her husband Marty left her for his girlfriend, Fugly, as Sophia called her. Writing kept Sophia from living on Planet Nuts permanently because when she wrote, she was able to manage the grief. But the minute she stopped, even for a few hours, she crashed. And it didn’t help that she was beginning to feel discouraged about selling her work. So far, she had received only rejections except by one literary agent who, at least, agreed to read her first completed manuscript.

Agents and publishers were not Sophia’s problem that afternoon though. It was her huge Maine Coon cat Tolstoy who wanted attention. He sat on the table next to her, giving her the evil eye because he thought he was hungry. Tolstoy had an eating disorder. He captured and ate all small living creatures, from mice to crickets to birds, and devoured everything else even remotely edible in the house. Sophia wasn’t the only one suffering from her marital split. Tolstoy started his compulsive eating shortly after Marty left and took the dogs with him. Marty still refused to let the border collies, Voltaire and Dickens, visit with Sophia and Tolstoy. Voltaire and Dickens raised Tolstoy from the time he was a poor abandoned kitten, whose mother was unable to nurse him. Sophia fed Tolstoy with an eye dropper back then, just to keep him alive, but it was the dogs who were his big brothers, and Tolstoy missed them something wicked.

Tolstoy butted his head against Sophia’s arm a couple of times, thinking Sophia was being awfully insensitive to his needs. He figured he’d show her a thing or two and leapt on to her keyboard, deleting an entire paragraph.
“Dammit, Tolstoy,” groaned Sophia. Tolstoy was so heavy that Sophia had to stand up to leverage his weight off of the laptop. Just then, a brisk wind blasted into the dining room, followed by the clatter of Zoe and Sparky, her incontinent, stroke-impaired yellow Lab. The two ran inside away from the icy air and blankets of falling snow. Sophia held Tolstoy in her arms, but he was so heavy that her feet were planted to the floor. So, she couldn’t get out of the way when Sparky ran sideways toward her, catching her behind the knees. Tolstoy sprang from Sophia’s arms, but not in time for Sophia to catch her fall.

As Sophia lay pinned on the floor, Sparky and Tolstoy vied for supremacy on her stomach, fighting with each other, like two spoiled children.
“Hey, Zo” Sophia said from the floor. “Could you get these animals off of me so I can stand up?”
“Hey, Sophie, what’s up?” said Zoe, ignoring Sophia. Zoe set up her laptop across from Sophia’s on the dining room table. It was only when the cacophony of growling and hissing became blaringly loud that Zoe even looked up.
“ZOE,” yelled Sophia.
“Fuck sake, Sophie, get off the damn floor.”
Sophia just glared at Zoe until she got the message and shooed away the animals.

“My furnace is on the blink,” said Zoe, “The repair guy said he can’t fix it until tomorrow. So, I came over here to stay warm. Sophie, why aren’t you dressed?”
“I’ve been working. Why do I need to dress? I’m the only one here, and I’m not going out.”
“When’s the last time you showered and did get dressed?”
“I can’t remember, a couple days probably.”
“Fuck sake, Sophie. You’re like a bag lady without the bags and living in a beautiful home. What’s wrong with you?”

“The usual. If I stop writing, my sanity leaves me. I start to think about Marty and Fugly and my dogs and that I’m flat broke. Then I see myself living on the streets, carrying Tolstoy around in a cat crate, trying to find something to eat, until Tolstoy gets so hungry that he decides to eat me. Then I can’t think anymore, and I just start crying until I remember to meditate and live in the present moment. But the moment seems so bleak, that I don’t wanna live in it. Then I picture Marty and Fugly laughing and having sex and living high on the hog, with my dogs. And then….”

“ENOUGH,” shouted Zoe. “You’re obsessing again, and frankly, you look and smell like someone rehearsing to be a bag lady. Fuck sake, go take a shower and get dressed.”
“No.”
“I’ll let you dance for Jackson in Florida on the Webcam,” Zoe bribed.
“Why do I need to shower and dress for that?”
“He can see you on the Webcam. Take a look in the mirror, Sophie; you’re scarier than a Stephen King novel.”
“No.”

Just then Tolstoy jumped up on the table again and hissed. He wanted that bitch Zoe to quit badgering Sophia and take Sparky home. Tolstoy liked Sophia’s odor. Sparky threw Tolstoy a smug look and started to slink toward the summer kitchen where the cat bowl and kitty litter lived. Tolstoy was smart and knew Sparky’s game. Tolstoy yowled at Sparky, sensing Sparky was getting ready to steal the tiny bit of food in the cat dish, just before he pranced sideways over to the kitty litter to tuck into a “desert” of cat crap. Tolstoy wondered what he’d ever done to deserve losing his big brothers and be left with Sparky as a “pal.”

Sophia followed Tolstoy’s angry gaze, and just as Sparky’s nose pushed open the swinging door to the summer kitchen, Sophia cried, “No, Sparky. Go lie down.”
Sophia’s sharp tone scared Sparky, and he involuntarily plopped out a couple of “presents” before he walked slowly back into the dining room and curled up by the fire. He wondered why Zoe needed to have such a bitch for a BFF.

“You got any food, Sophie?”
“Not much. Hey, Zoe, could you go clean up Sparky’s mess out there. It stinks.”
“Only if you go take a shower.”
“You win,” Sophia said and walked to the bathroom.

As the blades of hot water streamed over Sophia’s naked body, a sense of peace began to envelop her, but then harsh thoughts intruded on her Zen. She pushed out the anger and pain that always stabbed her when she thought about Marty’s lies and their bitter arguments leading up to the split. But these thoughts were promptly replaced by memories of years of showers she and Marty took in that bathroom. Then all her mind’s eye could picture was Marty showering with Fugly. Of course, she found some comfort in that picture because Fugly looked like a troll and had deformed thighs with purple pimples on them, and those gross thighs were attached to a fat ass. But Fugly was younger than Sophia and much richer, so she assumed Marty’s love had become blind.

As she rinsed out the shampoo, Sophia reminded herself that she couldn’t have prevented what happened because nothing mattered to Marty or Fugly. Marty walked out of a loving, devoted decades-long marriage, even though he now refused to remember it that way. He preferred to demonize Sophia. Fugly walked out of her marriage to a famous musician, who was the son of an international icon, Famous Father. She left three young children there too.

The affair evolved within the framework of a business project Marty and Fugly concocted, which was being financed by Famous Father, and Fugly told Marty that the millions Famous Father was handing over didn’t need to be paid back because Fugly was Famous Father’s “special daughter-in-law.” Marty had gone all-in with the project, generating very little income, with the expectation that the new project was worth the risk.

During those months Marty and Sophia ran through their savings. And just as Marty was about to start getting paid, Famous Father learned of the affair and pulled out his money. So, apart from losing her husband and her dogs, Sophia lost all her savings and was about to lose her home. It occurred to her that Fugly was like a vacuum cleaner that had sucked up Sophia’s life. But sadly, in sucking up Sophia’s life, Fugly had discarded her own, and her relationship with her children would never be free of the pain of Fugly’s selfish choices. The kids saw their mother on a visitation schedule, but it wasn’t the same as having their mother with them all the time. Sophia felt truly sorry for those three young kids.

Zoe heard the sobs coming from the bathroom and ran in to check, thinking Sophia must have fallen down.
“Are you okay?” Zoe called as steam billowed around her.
“THIS is why I don’t take showers all the time. When I’m in the shower, I think. When I think, I lose my mind,” yelled Sophia.
“You need a dose of Pema, Sophie. Get out of the shower and meditate.” Zoe was referring to Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist writer to whom Zoe and Sophia were devoted.
“Okay, Zo. I’ll read Pema to get me to stop “thinking.”
“Good, because I’ve got Jackson live, and since we’ve been on the outs for awhile, I really need to talk to him. I love that guy.”

Zoe had spent a couple of weeks tossing and turning over her relationship with Jackson.  When she left Florida after visiting him a month before, she was walking on clouds after spending a loving, thrilling time with him, notwithstanding Sophia’s presence. Sophia was her BFF, but she tended to oddness, especially now while she was consumed with grief. Jackson was gracious and accepting of both women and a marvelous host. But soon after Zoe and Sophia left, he started distancing Zoe, and if there was one thing Zoe caved in to, it was feeling abandoned. Like a broken record, it always circled back to when she was eight years old, when her father died, abandoning her in the most fundamental way.

When Jackson started pulling away, Zoe became a little obsessive in trying to reconnect with him. Then she figured out that he had the same types of issues she did. He didn’t want to be hurt either. So, it was easier to distance Zoe and not risk what could happen if Zoe didn’t love him back the way he needed to be loved. Once Zoe figured this out, she worked very hard to reassure Jackson that she was worth the risk.
Through it all, Sophia maintained a good relationship with Jackson, and as a result, an idea began to percolate in Sophia’s head. All the pieces fell into place a few nights before, when Zoe suggested that a strategy to detach from Marty would be for Sophia to move far away. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Zoe about her idea yet.

As Sophia stepped out of the shower, she said, “Zoe, I need to talk to you about an email I wrote.”
“Can it wait? I need to get back to the Webcam.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll tell you when you’re free.”

Zoe ran back into the dining room while Sophia dried herself. But to Zoe’s dismay, Jackson had signed off of his Webcam, so she walked back into the bathroom and sat on the toilet to talk to Sophia.
“What was the email, Sophie?”
Sophia was upside down lathering her feet and legs with olive oil lotion. As she drew on her panties she said, “I wrote to Jackson yesterday.”
“Why?” asked Zoe, her eyes widening in surprise.
“You remember when he pointed out some of the rental properties he owned?” Sophia asked as she slipped on her bra and started applying lotion to her arms, stomach and back.
“Yes.”
Sophia opened three jars of facial moisturizer and started rubbing them on her face, neck and chest. “Do you remember the sweet house with the lovely yard he showed us, the one right around the corner from his house?”
“Yes.”
“In the email I asked Jackson whether the house might be available to rent soon,” said Sophia as she rubbed together hemp conditioner and a straitening gel in her palms then ran her hands through her wet hair.
“Why, Sophie?
“Because, I think I want to move to Florida. And the house will be available soon.”

With this, Sophia closed her eyes, turned upside down again and began drying her hair. The roar of the dryer drowned out Zoe’s words. All of a sudden the dryer stopped. Sophia looked at it, confused, until she saw Zoe standing next to her holding the plug that she’d pulled from the socket.

“YOU WHAT?”
“Zoe, I’m dying here.”
“Can’t you just get a prescription for anti-depressants?”
“It’s not that simple. I see no light here.”
“It’s wintertime. You’ll see light in the spring.”
“That’s not the light I mean. All I see is blackness every day. I count the hours until night time, wishing away my life. But all night long, I awake, and I’m haunted by the past, by Marty, by tiny moments, a sentence here, and a gesture there. I’m dying in this place, Zoe, and that’s no way to live.”

“How will you afford to live down in Florida?”
“The rent on that house is a quarter of the mortgage on this one. Financially, I can’t afford to live here anymore. And emotionally, I’ll perish if I do. The first sense of ease I’ve felt in months began when you suggested the other night, that to detach from Marty, maybe I needed to move far away.”
“I said that?”
“Yes, Zoe. When we were in Vermont.”
“I say stupid shit sometimes,” said Zoe, then her face began to pucker.
Sophia walked over to Zoe and rubbed her head. “Don’t cry, Zo, you can come visit me.”

The infirm of purpose in Sophia’s voice rocked Zoe to her core. She stood up, blinded by tears, and strode quickly from the bathroom. Unfortunately, she didn’t see Sparky lying in the doorway to the dining room. Nor did she realize Sparky had delivered a couple of loose ones in her path. Zoe stepped in the pile, slid a couple of feet, tried to right herself, but her unsullied foot found Sparky’s hindquarters and she lost her balance. On her way down she saw only the terrified eyes of Tolstoy, frozen in fear. Tolstoy was quick though and narrowly escaped being crushed. Zoe lay in a heap weeping. She wasn’t hurt, but inside, she was afraid.

“Fuck sake, Zoe. Get up.”
“No.”
“Zoe, you got dog crap all over your foot and my floor. Go take a shower.”
“NO.”
Tolstoy sat nearby hyperventilating from his near escape, thinking Zoe might be more dangerous than he suspected. Sparky limped over to Zoe and licked her face, thinking that bitch Sophia must have done something really awful to make Zoe cry so hard. Tolstoy watched with contempt, thinking Sparky was a suck up.

Sophia bent over and pulled on Zoe, coaxing her to stand up. Finally, Zoe stood and walked like a zombie to the bathroom to take a shower. Sophia cleaned up the crap on the floor then went in search of Pema’s book When Things Fall Apart.

She started to read about Maitri, which is developing loving kindness and absolute friendship with ourselves. The process is one of letting go and realizing that everything is always falling apart and that we have no control. There is no real beginning or end to anything. The human experience has been the same since the beginning of humanity. All thoughts, feelings, memories and moods simply come and go continually, and that the only thing we can hold on to is the present moment. Life is like sitting backwards on the bed of a hay wagon. We watch the moments fall away, never to be reclaimed. And since we’re sitting backwards, we can’t see what is ahead of us. All we have is what is right now. If we try to live in this moment, we can let go of the fear of what we neither know nor can control. A way to do this is to let go of the hope that things will be different than we fear they might or might not be. Things are what they are.

Sophie often practiced Pema’s idea called labeling, by using the word “thinking.” During meditation, whenever a thought or feeling arose, good or bad, Pema taught to dismiss gently what comes into our minds by saying silently the word “thinking,” allowing ourselves to return to the open space of the present moment. Sophia used this approach during meditation and was fairly successful, but she was rarely successful during the rest of her hours when she wasn’t meditating. Thinking often crippled her.

Just then, it occurred to her that Zoe had been gone a long time.
“ZOE,” she yelled.
“I’M UPSTAIRS,” Zoe yelled back.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
“GETTING DRESSED FOR A DATE.”

Sophia looked confused. She didn’t know about any date. Before going upstairs to find Zoe, she decided to check her Facebook. Jackson was chatting live, so she clicked in and sent him an instant message. He wrote back, and before long, Sophia and Jackson were engaged in a lively repartee about if and when and how Sophia would move to Florida. He told her the details didn’t really matter because he “had her back.” Sofia’s heart softened. She was unaccustomed to men, even other people’s men, having her back unless they were family. Sophia started to enjoy the chat. While she waited for his responses, she put on some music and poured herself a glass of white wine. She was toasty warm in front of the blazing fire even though she wore only her panties and bra. She could be half-naked because she didn’t have a Webcam, so Jackson couldn’t see her. Pretty soon she was up grooving spastically to George Benson playing On Broadway. Periodically she’d do a leap over to her laptop and type a pithy response into the chat box.

Zoe suddenly burst into the room flickering on a hyper high. Sophia looked at her and stopped dancing. There stood Zoe, dressed in a string bikini she found in a swim suit drawer Sophia hadn’t opened in twenty years. Zoe’s head donned a big straw hat, and her eyes were covered by sunglasses. Her cheeks were blotched with pink circles of blush, and she towered over Sophia in four inch spiked heels, which were the same vintage as Sophia’s bikini. Snot dripped down Zoe’s chin.

“PAR-TAY…PAR-TAY,” sang Zoe, drowning out the words about “Broadway.” Zoe switched out to an old chestnut as she bellowed, “LET’S GET DOWN TONIGHT.” Then she wobbled over to her laptop, turned on her Webcam, and Jackson’s face jumped up. Zoe flung off her sunglasses and yelled a wild-eyed “HELLO” to the man, before she half-ran and half-fell into the kitchen to pour herself another glass of wine.

Sophia raced over to the Webcam and told Jackson that she was afraid Zoe might be coming unhinged. He nodded in agreement. Sophia decided not to interject herself into Zoe’s momentary madness. She was pretty sure her announcement about moving had pushed Zoe over the edge. Just as Sophia was practicing to be a bag lady, Zoe was practicing how to bring Florida to New Hampshire.
Zoe tottered back into the dining room with her glass of wine. She sat down in a rocking chair, shivering. She looked up a Sophia with a child-like, helpless expression in her eyes.

“I feel cold all over, Sophie.”
Sophia looked at the fireplace and realized the fire was nearly out.
“Let me get the fire going again, Zo.”
“A fire won’t warm me up,” said Zoe. She then put her head in hands, as much as the straw hat would permit, and stared at the floor listlessly. “I’m cold because I feel lost.”

“Well, a fire won’t hurt,” said Sophia as she walked into the summer kitchen , tore up paper, and grabbed a bundle of kindling. While she stuffed the paper into the low embers, Zoe came up for air. She studied the ignited paper.
“What are you burning, Sophie? That’s not newspaper.”
“I’m too broke to buy a newspaper, so I’m burning the architectural plans to Marty’s “Project” that never will be.”
“That’s weirdly ironic, isn’t it? If Fugly had never come along and suggested the project, you’d still be married.”
“That’s not what Marty says. He now tells me I was a horrible wife for a long time.”
“Do you buy that?”
“Not really. But when I’m feeling low, I give him the power to hurt me and to question my value as a human being. Do other people who get dumped feel like failures?”
“Probably,” said Zoe, wiping tears from her mascara-smeared face.
“Each time I burn another big, white sheet of this paper, covered with architectural plans of his nonexistent “dream” athletic center, I feel as if I’m burning the past and present, and we certainly have no future, so that goes up in flames too.”
“Where’d you get the paper?”
“Marty left the plans on the floor of our bedroom when he moved his stuff out, so I guess he didn’t want to be reminded either. Hey, Zo, is it too late to line up some dinner dates? I think you need cheering up?”

The mention of dinner dates triggered a shift back to lunacy for Zoe, and she screamed, “IS JACKSON STILL ON LINE?”
“I believe he is,” said Sophia as she threw a log on the fire.
“Fuck sake, Sophie, why didn’t you tell me?”
“If he loves you, Zoe, he’ll love you just as you are, deranged and all.”

Zoe staggered over to her Webcam. Jackson waved to her and smiled. Just then Mary J. Blige’s song You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down began to play. Zoe threw her straw hat in the air and began shouting the words at Jackson and dancing wildly for him. Sophia joined in the fun. She forgot to be self-conscious in her panties and bra. Jackson thought both women were swinging from Bonkersville, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to log off. Instead, he turned down the sound on his Webcam and sat back, enjoying the view of their half-naked bodies gyrating with abandon.

When the song ended, Zoe collapsed in tears on the floor. And only then did Jackson sign off.
“What’s gotten into you, Zo,” asked Sophia.
“When I was upstairs, I started thinking about what life would be like for me if you moved away.”
“Why are you raking over the future?”
“What do mean?”
“Why are you thinking about something that hasn’t happened yet?”
“Because I’m scared you will abandoned me.”
“I’m not one of your men, Zoe. I’ve loved you for thirty years. I’m not going anywhere in my heart.”

Just then, an incoming email blinged on Sophia’s laptop. She decided to put on a bathrobe before sitting down to check it. Zoe’s misery was making Sophia cold too. Suddenly, she felt torn about her decision to move to Florida. In the bathroom she put on one bathrobe and grabbed a second one for Zoe, which she lovingly wrapped around Zoe’s shoulders before sitting down to check the email.

Sophia’s eyes widened when she saw the name of the sender. Her fingers began to tremble so hard that she had trouble clicking the mouse just to open the email. Finally, she began to read the message. Involuntary tears leapt from Sophia’s eyes. Inside a joy washed over her that was so foreign, she almost needed a translator to understand it. Sophia turned around and looked at Zoe. Zoe saw something in Sophia’s eyes she had not seen in a long, long time.

“What?” asked Zoe.
“I have a literary agent. Thank God. He loves my manuscript. The contract is attached to the email.”
Zoe leapt up and encircled Sophia in her arms.
“Tell me what this means, Sophie,” she said smiling into Sophia’s eyes.
“It means he’s taken me on as a client. It means my chance of a publisher buying my book just increased by about ninety-eight percent.”
“It’s your time, Sophie. I just know it is. What did he say?”
“He said he had just finished reading my ‘wonderful story’ and it was ‘beautifully and sorrowfully and excitingly told.’”

“Let’s CELEBRATE,” cried Zoe. “Do you have champagne?”
“I think there’s a bottle in the summer kitchen.”
“Do you have any food?”
“Chex Mix and Nutella.”
“We’ll order Chinese delivered.”

Sophia hopped up and walked toward the summer kitchen while Zoe called in an order to the local Chinese restaurant. Sophia drew two dusty champagne glasses from a shelf then struggled with the cork while Zoe cleared away the laptops from the dining room table and laid down a white table cloth. Sophia brought out plates and silverware and Zoe lit some candles. Zoe looked at Sophia and smiled. Sophia looked back at Zoe and winced.

“What the matter?” asked Zoe.

“Your face looks scarier than a Steven King movie, Zo.”

Zoe ran to the bathroom, looked in the mirror and shrieked. By the time the delivery man knocked on the door with their food, Zoe’s clown face had vanished, and the two friends sat at the dining room table toasting, laughing, singing and chair dancing to Earth Wind and Fire.

As Sophia wrapped the moo shoo chicken into a pancake, she said, “I feel bad about being this happy when you are so sad. Why were you crying earlier?”
Zoe dropped her eyes before answering. Then she took a deep breath and asked, “IF YOU MOVE AWAY, WHAT WILL I DO?”
Sophia took a bite of shrimp lo mien and chewed slowly while she thought about Zoe’s question. Finally she said, “YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES. YOU CAN EITHER VISIT ME OFTEN OR YOU CAN FIGURE OUT A WAY TO MOVE TOO. BUT THE ONE THING YOU MUST DO IS LET GO OF YOUR FEAR OF THE FUTURE. WE AREN’T THERE YET.”

At that moment Tolstoy took a flying leap and landed on the table. He had a fierce look in his eye as he lorded over the women’s plates. He thought it was pretty rude of them to be eating when he was so hungry. That damn Sparky had sucked up every morsel of kibble from the cat bowl. Sparky, fearing that Tolstoy might get some of the people food through sheer force, loped over to Zoe, put his paw on her lap and threw her the sweetest look known to woman. Neither Sophia nor Zoe noticed the power politics going on between the “pals.” They were simply too busy planning.

By the time the animals were on the floor licking remains from the plates, the two friends had decided who would help them move their furniture to Florida, which paintings would hang on certain walls of the new home, how they would create more storage space, and when they would plant certain herbs and flowers in the garden. After every room in the house (they didn’t live in) was fully decorated, and after every piece of lawn furniture was arranged in the yard (that wasn’t theirs), Zoe and Sophia grew silent.

“Sophie, we both know that it isn’t practical for me to move to Florida anytime soon. I have a great job, but unless my boss will let me work remotely, I can’t give up my career.”
“I know, Zo. But if we’re gonna rake over the future, it’s better to do it about something that makes us feel good rather than how dreary we will feel being apart.”
“But you have an agent now. Do you still need to move?”
“Yes, I do. I can’t let the past keep torturing me. I need a new beginning. Do you want to know what Pema has to say about beginnings and endings?”
“NO.”
“Do you wanna start working on our tans at the all-night tanning salon?”
“No, Sophie. I want to crawl into bed and watch old DVDs of Sex and the City.

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”
“

Okay. I’m with you. Let’s go hang with our girls.”

And so, the two fantastic fifty-something best friends climbed the stairs to the second floor and tucked themselves into Sophia’s bed. They fell asleep with the Florida sun on their faces and sex in New York City dancing like sugar plums in their heads, off on another adventure as the Sublime Consumers of the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…and remember, if you want to read the whole story, go to the bottom of the Blog and read up!  Keep sending your wonderful advice, and stay tuned to find out whether Zoe & Sophia move to Florida.

Zoe and Sophia had been up since dawn, running around like loons, packing clothes and cleaning up after Sparky’s messes. Sparky, Zoe’s stroke-impaired yellow Lab, was always incontinent, but his bladder and bowels worked overtime when he was stressed out. Sparky was anxious because he feared Zoe was taking another trip without him. He wished that bitch Sophia would just go away alone, maybe take a long walk off a short pier somewhere.

Just then, Sophia’s daughter, Poppy, crashed through the door in a panic. She’d been pounding on the door for a couple of minutes, but her mother and “aunt” were too busy getting ready for their trip to pay attention to the odd noise. The door wasn’t locked, but piled in front of it was luggage and the girth of Sparky, lying on the luggage, thinking he could stop Zoe from leaving. All that weight created a barrier that was hard to push out of the way. Sparky finally stood up and stepped back. Poppy was pushing so hard that the door swung open with great force, and Poppy fell into the house on top of the luggage. Of course, this scared Sparky and he let loose a yellow stream.
“Dammit, Sparky. Git,” yelled Poppy, who lay on the floor damp and gross.
“Hi, sweetie darling,” Sophia called from the bathroom. “We’re almost ready to leave for Vermont.”
“Ma, I gotta go home and change. Sparky just peed all over me.”
“That’s a shame dear. By the time you get back, we’ll be ready.”

Poppy lived in New Hampshire, just minutes from Zoe’s and Sophia’s homes. She wasn’t happy about going back to her house since she’d already said goodbye to her husband “Fonzi” and her daughter Lilly. They were being good sports about Poppy going off without them for a weekend, to see her cousin Lulu, who was up from Texas on a ski trip. But Poppy knew a momentary reentry at home to shower and change clothes would be disruptive.

Zoe and Sophia stood side-by-side in their panties and bras in front of the bathroom mirror blowing out their blond hair. Next, they expertly applied understated make-up to enhance their pretty eyes.
“Whose gonna take care of Tolstoy while we’re gone, Sophie?” Tolstoy was Sophia’s huge Maine Coon cat.
“Marty said he’d stay at the house while we’re away.”
“Fugly must have visitation with the kids this weekend,” said Zoe.
“Marty wouldn’t stay at the house for any other reason.”

Marty was Sophia’s husband who left Sophia after she forced him to tell her the truth about his affair with Fugly, as Sophia called her. Fugly was married to a famous musician, and he was the son of someone really famous, Famous Father. Originally, Fugly approached Marty to become involved in a business project that was being financed by Famous Father. Early on, Fugly stopped even trying to be subtle about wanting a more intimate relationship with Marty, and for a host of reasons, Marty took the bait. When the affair was exposed, just two days before groundbreaking on the project’s building, Famous Father cut off the funds. Soon afterwards, Fugly moved out of her house without her three kids. Now, Marty lived with Fugly, but he wasn’t allowed to stay with her on the nights she had visitation with the children.

The other nights Marty stayed in a “residential motel” called the Sleepy Manor Inn. Marty refused to tell Sophia the name of the place. He claimed he was afraid she would come there and attack him. Oddly enough, Marty had attacked Sophia a few times since the split, not the other way around. What Marty failed to grasp was that Sophia didn’t want to see him unless she had to. Sophia couldn’t deny she still loved the “old” Marty, the man who was a wonderful husband for many years, but she viewed the “new” Marty as a jackass who was puffed up by his self-aggrandized sense of importance.

Even though Marty hid his whereabouts under a false premise, Sophia found out by accident one day when she was driving down Rte. 1. She was on the way to her favorite TJ Maxx, and she happened to look to her left. His car was parked right in front of the crappy motel. But Sophia didn’t even bother to tell Marty she knew where he stayed.

What absolutely tore Sophia’s heart out though, was that Marty took their dogs when he left, and he wouldn’t let Sophia have them, ever. He lied and told Sophia the dogs were allowed to stay at his motel with him, but they weren’t. They stayed at Fugly’s house all the time. And the most pathetic aspect of all was the dogs could stay at Fugly’s even though Marty wasn’t allowed to. Sophia’s lack of respect for Marty was growing in direct proportion to the lack of respect he showed for himself.

“Boy, Marty’s life has gone to shit since all this happened,” said Zoe.
“Yeah it has.”
“He put you though hell during the months leading up to the split, but I wonder if he even thought about how bleak your financial situation would be if his affair was exposed.”

“I don’t think he was “thinking” with his brain, Zoe. Lower. But in all fairness, it wasn’t just about fucking that troll Fugly. Marty also worked his ass off for over a year on that project and never got paid a dime. He was promised that as of ground breaking, he’d start getting paid. Meanwhile, during that period, he gave up income to work on the project, and we ate up what little savings we had after I was laid off. It’s ironic how he and Fugly “found” each other a mere two months after I was told the newspaper was in trouble and would probably go belly up within a year.”

“I’m not sure how much was irony or calculation concerning Marty, but I do know how much you loved writing for that paper, Sophie. Twenty years was a long time. And dammit, that was a good paper. I miss it.” Zoe looked at Sophia in the mirror, watched her face begin to pucker. “Please don’t cry. We don’t have time for you to start over with the mascara.”
“Okay, Zo, but let’s not talk about the newspaper.”

“Okay, Sophie. Do you think Famous Father was aware of your situation?”
“Even if he were, why would he care? His son was just screwed over. I’d probably feel the same way if someone hurt my kid like that. Funny thing is though, everyone else got paid—the architects, engineers, lawyers. Even the construction crew was paid for the first day of groundbreaking. The entire project was Marty’s creation, but when he asked for compensation, Famous Father’s handlers in New York flatly refused to pay Marty a red cent.  And they were fully aware of Marty’s efforts and what he gave up on the expectation of being paid.”

“Sophie, that seems so unfair.”
“Zoe, life isn’t fair. Interestingly, Famous Father, his son and even Fugly are all set for life. And I’m guessing Fugly will take care of her “pet” Marty in the long run.  I’m the only one who’s looking at eating toothpaste for breakfast.  But I don’t see myself as a victim. To some extent, I’m just one of the unintended consequences of a lot of thoughtless choices made by other people.  I know I’m the author of my own story, and I need to go dream another dream. It just has to be a cheap dream at this point because I am tapped out.”
“That really sucks, Sophie.”

“I have to give Marty credit though. He’s doing his best to resurrect the old business. He gives me money for a few bills, and he paid the mortgage this month. I just wish I could find a job. Better yet, I wish I could find an agent and sell one of my manuscripts. You know how hard I’ve tried on both counts, but again, I have very little control. Fifty-something professional women are not the hottest game in town. I haven’t wanted to say this out loud, but we’ll probably lose the house.”

“Fuck sake, Sophie, that house was your inheritance.”
“I know, but we refinanced it once the Marty-Fugly project was underway, to tide us over until he started getting paid. I’m just trying to find a positive spin on the fact that Fugly gets my husband and my dogs, and I lose my home. Please tell me every cloud have a silver lining, Zo.” At this, tears unleashed streams of mascara down Sophia’s cheeks.

“You’ll find the silver lining, Sophie. But for now, could you redo your make-up. You’re a mess.”
Sophia blew her nose and threw water on her face. As she started reapplying her make-up she said, “Well, you know Pema’s favorite quote: “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves to annihilation over and over, can that which is indestructible be found in us.”
Sophia was quoting Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist writer whom Zoe and Sophia adored and respected.
“Well, Pema’s right. This isn’t the first time you’ve survived appalling loss then re-created yourself, Sophie. That’s why you’re a strong person.”

Just then, Zoe and Sophia heard that odd noise again followed by a crash and Poppy’s high-pitched wail. This time Poppy had fallen through the door in such a way that she managed to avoid Sparky’s steady stream of urine.
“Are you two ready yet?” Poppy yelled.
“Yes, we are. No need to shout,” said Sophia as she rushed into the living room to give Poppy a big hug.
“Okay then,” said Poppy. “I’ll load up the car. Is this everything?”
“Not quite, honey,” said Zoe, who was bent over cleaning up Sparky’s mess. “There’s a suitcase in the bathroom filled with our lotions, make-up and hair stuff.”

Poppy just rolled her eyes and began lugging the bags outside, while Zoe and Sophia argued about who would wear which coat. They each owned an Ibex coats, one gray and one brown. Normally, they agreed to take turns wearing them so they wouldn’t show up somewhere in the same coat. But today they both wanted to wear an Ibex.
“I believe it’s my turn to wear the grey Ibex,” said Zoe.
“No, no, no, no, Zoe. You wore it last. I get to wear the gray one, and you have to wear the brown one.”
“Whatever. Let’s just go.”

On the two-and-a-half hour drive to Woodstock, Vermont, Zoe and Sophia knew they couldn’t talk negatively about Marty or George in front of Poppy. Poppy loved her father, of course, and she’d also known her “Uncle George,” her whole life, so any discussion that put her in the middle was way too painful. Poppy wasn’t overly thrilled about listening to details of Zoe’s and Sophia’s social life either, but since it was the preferred topic, Poppy just sat in the back seat trying to block out the chatter.

“The guy from Tennessee called yesterday, and when I told him we were doing a ski weekend, he said he wanted to fly up to Vermont to meet me.”
“Zoe, he’s only twenty-five years old. What’s he thinking?”
“He claims he’s in love with me.”
“WHAT,” cried Poppy from the back seat?
“Calm down, Poppy, I told him he absolutely should not come to Vermont, and that he’s barking up the wrong tree if he thinks I’m a cougar.”
“What’s a cougar?” asked Poppy.
“It’s an older woman who pursues younger men,” said Sophia.
“Yuck,” said Poppy.
“Anyway, he’s very grateful to me for helping him get out of a terrible situation with this young Russian woman who has ties to the Russian Mafia. The girl tricked thousands of dollars out of the poor kid.”
“Aunt Zoe, how do you even know this guy.  Does he have a name?”
“I know him from an on-line dating site, my love. That’s where I talk to zillions of men.  And his name is Bucky.”

Reluctantly, Poppy asked, “What about you, Mom. Are you dating anyone?”
“No one special, dear,” said Sophia vaguely.
Zoe laughed so hard she snorted. “By that, your mother means she is dating absolutely no one.”
“That’s not true, Zoe. You and I have been out with plenty of guys together.”
“Okay, but let’s just say, we can count the second dates for you on zero fingers.”
Sophia couldn’t argue the point.

“Anyway, Poppy, I’m always on the lookout for suitable guys for your mom and your cousin Lulu.”
“Why Lulu? She’s gorgeous and smart and can find her own guys. And I know for a fact, she’s found someone she really loves,” said Poppy.
“Oh yes, we’ve heard all about that guy, but one never knows.  Bucky is just so cute and sweet.”
“He sounds a little dumb to me,” said Sophia. “Why did he hand over all that money to a Russian girl, who’s still in Russia, by the way?”
“She was needy, and the money was to help her get to the U.S. It just shows Bucky has a kind heart,” said Zoe.
“Let’s talk about something else, Aunt Zo.”

“Do you want to hear about your aunt’s special crush, Jackson from Florida?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Do you want to hear about all the great restaurants we’ve eaten in lately?” asked Zoe.
“Not especially. Let’s talk about skiing.”

“I don’t actually ski, honey,” said Sophia. “Long ago I decided of all the ways to imperil myself, skiing in the cold was my last choice. I grew up in California, and for me, snow is nice to look at through a window.”
“What are you gonna do while we ski all day, Mom?”
“Well, I’ll try the bunny trail maybe, but I brought one of my manuscripts to work on, and I can shop and cook. If I can find a tanning salon, I’ll meditate each day, and if there’s time left over, I’ll see if I can meet some nice man at the ski lodge.”
“How far is the place we’re staying from the mountain?” asked Poppy.
“I’m not sure,” said Sophia. “Lulu only said the house is in Woodstock. I guess it’s been in her friend’s family for generations, but it’s rarely used.”

“Yes, I actually talked to Lulu on the phone the other night,” said Poppy. “By the way, she knows about your matchmaking with Bucky, and she told me she’d rather date an armchair cushion. She also said that her friend from college, whose house we’re staying in, is a lesbian, and she’s bringing her lesbian lover.”
“For joy,” cried Zoe. “I love lesbians. Your mother and I used to have lots of lesbian and gay men friends when we were young, living in Boston. I miss them, don’t you, Sophie?”
“Yes,” said Sophia wistfully. “I’m sure lesbians and gay men actually do live in New Hampshire, but we just haven’t run into them. Let’s face it, New Hampshire’s lovely, but it doesn’t embrace its gay community. Although, it doesn’t really matter where you live; gay people in this country are treated shamefully if you ask me.”
“Before you get on your soapbox, Mom, could you please hand me the directions?”

A few minutes later, the women pulled up in front of a huge old house that sat on a slight hill, overlooking a river. Lulu and her friends heard the Land Rover drive up, and Lulu threw open the front door and dashed across the veranda to the steps. Cries of excitement sang in the air. Unfortunately, the steps had ice patches, and Lulu’s foot caught one of them. She ended up flying out over the steps and skidding the distance to the car on her stomach. Poppy, meanwhile, opened the car door and leapt out to greet Lulu, just as Lulu slid to a stop. Poppy’s momentum prevented her from stepping anywhere except on Lulu’s shapely bottom. From there, Poppy lost her balance and fell length wise on top of Lulu, providing a ramp for Sparky to run sideways across. Of course, Sparky had been holding it for longer than usual, and amidst the four women’s cries of agony and ecstasy, he lost control.

Zoe and Sophia demurely climbed out of the Land Rover and stepped over the girls. They smiled widely and extended their hands in greeting to Lulu’s friends, trying to make the best first impression. Sparky raced ahead of everyone into the house then involuntarily crapped on the floor of the immense vestibule. Poppy and Lulu brought up the rear as they limped inside and headed for the shower.

That afternoon, the whole gang went to the mountain to ski. Lulu’s friend, Brandy, and her lover Sherry graciously supplied Zoe and Sophia with a number of important things they’d forgotten to bring, like skis and ski boots and gloves. In return, Zoe and Sophia offered Brandy and Sherry the use of their lotions, make-up and hair products. Brandy and Sherry thanked them and said they’d think about it.

Everyone except Sophia took the chair lift to the top of the mountain and made several runs down. Sophia slowly walked to the children’s bunny slope, where she frightened most of the young ones with her grimaces and cries every time she fell. Sophia could balance okay when she went down the slope, but she couldn’t master snowplowing. So, the only way she knew how to stop herself was to fall over when she reached level ground. She narrowly missed colliding with a group of four-year-olds, whose mothers glowered at Sophia and hurried their children away to safety.

As dusk began to close the curtain over the vista of amazing mountains and forest, Zoe and the others found Sophia sitting at the foot of the deserted bunny slope; even the instructor had fled by that time. Sophia was encrusted with snow and crying quietly to herself. For once, she wasn’t crying about Marty. Instead, she cried because she was so tangled in her skis that she couldn’t stand up. Poppy and Lulu freed Sophia’s imprisoned feet, and they all drove back to Brandy’s house, for some brandy.

Because Sophia was so traumatized from the bunny slope, the others decided she shouldn’t cook that night, and instead they ordered pizza and salad delivered. Candlelight caught the glow and animation in the women’s faces as they visited around a long table that sat near leaping flames in the fireplace of the elegant dining room. Conversation included updating Lulu’s status with boyfriend,  Poppy’s status with her beloved Fonzi, and hearing the tale of Brandy’s first romantic meeting with Sherry in a country-western girl bar in Austin, Texas.

Zoe and Sophia shared their news too, so the topic of conversation naturally veered around to their social life. Soon Poppy and Lulu, saturated with too much information, seeped from the room, but the lesbian lovers howled with laughter at the sardonic and vivid descriptions of some of Zoe’s and Sophia’s dates.

The next day was much like the first only Sophia did not reappear at the mountain. When the others returned late afternoon, they found Sophia in the kitchen preparing a Greek meal of braised lamb, tomatoes and feta cheese to be served over couscous. Zoe lost no time setting up her Mac laptop on the kitchen island, as she sipped a glass of Zinfandel and watched Sophia cook. Soon the younger ones joined the elders, and each carried in her hand a cell phone, on which they checked their emails, texts, Facebook, and twitter messages.

As Poppy pulled back her dark, soft curly hair into a pony tail, she gestured for Lulu to sit next to her. Lulu flipped back her thick chestnut hair and nestled her shapely bottom on the stool. While Sophia poured everyone a glass of wine, she studied Poppy and Lulu, smiling at the family resemblance in their lovely brown eyes and high cheek bones.

“Hey, Zoe,” Lulu said, “What’s all this stuff about a guy in Tennessee? You know I’m madly in love with my boyfriend.  Why are you trying to fix me up?”
“I’m not really, Lulu. It’s just he’s pursuing me, and I thought I could foist him off on you. Plus, he’s adorable. Come look at his picture.” The four younger women crowed around Zoe.
“Yummy,” said Poppy, “But he doesn’t hold a candle to Fonzi.”
“He’s drop-dead gorgeous,” said Lulu, “But I like my guy better.”

Brandy looked confused. She was a tall, slender woman, with short hair, and she had that woodsy-preppy look, dressed entirely in Ibex clothing. She glanced at Sherry who was short, very plump, and pretty, and she had that artsy look, in a torn t-shirt over sweat pants. Sherry returned Brandy’s glance, raised an eyebrow and shrugged. For the life of them, they couldn’t figure out the fuss over Bucky.

Soon, the women took their places at the dinner table and began eating.
“Brandy and Sherry, do you girls have to contend with bigotry because you’re lesbians?” asked Sophia.
Brandy smiled at Sophia’s bluntness then said, “Living in a place like Texas, we don’t advertise, especially outside of Austin. We’re too afraid of the lynch mobs.”
“She’s exaggerating,” said Sherry. “But we stick with our own. It is hard to be the constant object of so much contempt.”
“What do you mean exaggerating, Sher?” said Brandy. Then she turned to the others as the color rose in her cheeks. “Sherry can’t even be “out” at work because she’s terrified of being fired. I’m lucky. I’m an attorney for the ACLU. They are the good guys. But Sherry teaches art in an elementary school. If the parents found out she was gay, the school would invent some reason to fire her. ”
The other women shook their heads and murmured their disgust.

“When did you first become lesbians?” asked Poppy.
Brandy and Sherry laughed. “We didn’t “become” lesbians,” said Brandy. “From the time we were girls and became aware of our sexuality, we knew we were attracted to other girls and not to boys.”
“Then why do they call homosexuality a ‘sexual preference?’” asked Lulu.
“That’s a social myth,” said Brandy. “Why would anyone choose to be a member of one of the most despised groups of people on earth? Why would I choose to be a soldier willing to fight and die and be governed by the farcical rule of ‘Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell?’ Why would I choose not to be able to marry the person I love because the law says my love is somehow invalid based on my human condition?”

Sophia looked compassionately at the two young women and asked, “How did your families respond when you told them?”
“Mine were fine with it,” said Brandy. “Previous generations in my family were filled with “maiden aunts” and “confirmed bachelor uncles,” so homosexuality was accepted, but not discussed, until I forced the issue.  And my parents are politically correct to a fault, despite what they might feel inwardly.”

“Not mine,” said Sherry. “All through high school I was so ashamed of my secret that I just wanted to die. I didn’t want to be the way nature made me, and I thought if I wished hard enough, I could change and be like everyone else. I waited until after college to come out. Since I was the first person in my family to go to college, I thought my family’s pride in my accomplishments would balance out my sexual identity. I was wrong. They’ve shunned me entirely. Brandy is my only family now, except for a handful of loyal friends like Lulu.”

At this point the women all felt like crying, so they ate in silence for a minute until Brandy said cheerfully, “Hey, let’s go dancing after dinner. I know a bar that has a live band playing tonight.”
The young women were all over the idea of dancing, but Zoe and Sophia were a little tired and tried to beg off. After some coaxing, the older women agreed to go along. Things would have turned out differently, had the young ones just let Zoe and Sophia go to bed.

The six gorgeous women dazzled as they walked into the dimly lit bar where music bounced off the walls so loudly that conversation was out of the question. After ordering a round of red wines, Poppy and Lulu jumped up and hurried onto the dance floor. Both of them were wonderful dancers, and men stood on the sidelines watching, with their tongues hanging out. Pretty soon Zoe and Sophia joined in. Zoe tried to keep Sophia from spastically spinning into other dancers, as her arms and legs flailed without restraint, in her “free form” interpretation of the Golden Oldies the band played. But before long, Sophia was really unpopular on the dance floor.  Finally, Brandy and Sherry danced over to Sophia, creating a buffer around her and made it their job to haul Sophia to her feet every time she tripped and fell.

Just as the band started a lively rendition of Ride Around Sally, a stunningly handsome, young, tall African American man walked into the bar, his eyes wildly searching the crowd. The women didn’t see him at first, but since he was the only African American there, he drew the attention of several customers.

Lulu saw him before the others did. She danced over to Zoe and shouted in her ear, “Aunt Zoe, I think you have a problem here.” Zoe kept on grooving sensuously to the music, nodding her head, pretending she could hear Lulu over the clamor. Lulu grabbed Zoe’s shoulders and turned her body toward the door. Zoe’s eyes widened in alarm.
“Holy shit,” Zoe cried, “That’s Bucky from Tennessee.  What the hell is he doing here?”
Sophia, seeing the horror on Zoe’s face, yelled, “You look like you’ve just seen a Stephen King movie. WHAT’S WRONG?” Zoe pointed to Bucky.

“We gotta HIDE,” said Sophia, pulling Zoe toward the table and gesturing for the others to follow. But it was too late. Bucky spotted Zoe and ran over.  Zoe tried to smile, but the look she gave the man was more shocked than friendly. She grabbed his arm then dragged him off to a quieter place near the restrooms. She learned that he flew to Vermont the night before, checked into a motel and spent the day looking for Zoe. She told him she was flattered by his attention but spat out her dismay at his folly. Then she reminded him of the “rules.” Virtual dates should only actually meet face-to-face upon mutual agreement. With this, Zoe turned on her heal and rushed back to the table. He followed, begging her to stay and dance with him.

“Let’s get OUT of here,” said Zoe to the other women, who at this point were bent over laughing at Zoe’s predicament. The six of them hurried from the bar and into Zoe’s Land Rover. Zoe drove at break neck speed, afraid that Bucky might be tailing her. The women piled out of the car and into the house, and only when the door shut behind Zoe, did she start to see the humor the others saw. And that’s when the banging began.

Bucky stood outside pounding on the door screaming one word over and over, “ZOE, ZOE, ZOE.” Even Sparky’s barks could not drown him out. Just as Zoe started for the door to let the man in, Sophia stopped her.
“Zoe, no good can come from you talking to Bucky.  You’ve tried. Let’s let the others handle it.”
“Okay,” said Zoe, and followed Sophia upstairs to their bedroom.

After debating whether to call the police, the young women decided they had sufficient safety in numbers and invited the deluded, broken-hearted guy inside. They offered him a beer, and sat around the fireplace in the living room, while Bucky spilled the story of his utter devotion to Zoe, the woman of his dreams. When Poppy pointed out that Zoe was over twice his age, he dismissed the fact as irrelevant. Once the women figured out that they were sitting with a sweet, harmless hick from the sticks, who was just “looking for Mommy in all the wrong places,” they relaxed and tried to convince him to look elsewhere for the object of his desire.

After half an hour, Bucky cheered up. If truth be told, he grew downright jazzed by the lavish attention from four, sexy twenty-somethings, and he agreed to a game of Monopoly, which they played until 2:00 a.m. Then they sent him on his way.

Meanwhile, Zoe lay in bed next to Sophia. Although the house had ten bedrooms, they wanted to share a room so they could talk themselves to sleep as they did so many nights at home.
“Sophie, I left my lap top in the kitchen.”
“You don’t need your lap top tonight, Zo. In fact, you might want to take a break from virtual “dating” for awhile.”
“You might be right,” said Zoe.

“You know what’s amazing? For two days I’ve barely thought about Marty. If I were at home tonight, I would be sobbing and obsessing on him. “ZOE, I WANT TO SUSTAIN THIS DETACHMENT. WHAT SHOULD I DO?”

Zoe thought for a moment about the wider implications of her friend’s question. Then she said, “SOPHIA, MAYBE YOU NEED TO MOVE FAR AWAY FROM MARTY. DISTANCE WILL BRING YOU DETACHMENT. OTHER THAN THAT, YOU AND I NEED TO STOP GRASPING AND FIXATING IN OUR HEADS.”

Then Zoe added, “I sure wish we had some Chex Mix up here.”

Hearing this, Sophia jumped out of bed, opened her purse and drew out a jar of Nutella, the hazelnut chocolate spread. As she opened the jar she asked, “Do you think tonight taught you a lesson, Zoe?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I learned I should become an activist for gay rights. I want to help bring awareness to the plight of these people whom our society treats so badly. Hey, did you bring spoons?”

“Hello? Of course I did. Zo, did you learn anything else tonight?”
“Yes,” said Zoe, as she spooned a gob of Nutella from the jar and licked it slowly, relishing the texture and rich flavor on her tongue. “I learned that my BFF always comes prepared, just like when she was a Girl Scout.”

“Was that a Buddhist thing, Zo?”
“Sounds like.”

While Zoe and Sophia lay nestled in a warm bed in Vermont, eating their Nutella, they talked far into the night about how to start letting go of the obsessions that ruled them. Then the BFFs slipped into splendid slumber, off on another Adventure as the Sublime Consumers or the Lightness of Being.

To be continued…remember if you want to read the whole story, start at the bottom of the blog and read up!  And keep sending in that wonderful advice.  Thanks!