My quiet beach community

I often think of how someday the Lad and I will marry and live in a quiet beach community and have a couple of rowdy kids. One day, I will be cooking spaghetti and singing to August and Everything After when the Lad will walk in with Adam Duritz, whom he has befriended through his glamorous, unspecified-in-this-fantasy job. I will be so embarrassed to be caught singing along to Adam’s music like this, but relieved that this is at least a legitimately purchased album, unlike all the other Counting Crows albums I own. He is very gracious about it though. He and the Lad play with the kids. I make sauce and then join them. We make an enormous structure out of tinker toys. We have dinner. We go watch the fireworks and I don’t wear shoes and we have to carry the kids home and then after we put the kids to bed we get kind of drunk, to prove we are still cool, but on good wine, to prove we are grownups. Actually, the Lad still drinks beer. But I am a grownup, and so is Adam.

This delightful evening cements our friendship with Adam Duritz, which opens the door to friendships with other famous people. Initially, the solid relationship and just-folks charm that the Lad and I share is a breath of fresh air to the glittering swathe of Hollywood that streams through our front door, but eventually we fall prey to the seductive charms of their morality-free lifestyle. The Lad enters an extensive flirtation with Jane Fonda’s great-niece, recently famous from her role in Star Wars Episode VIII: Fire In Space. Adam and I share an ill-advised kiss in the kitchen and are nearly caught by my seven year old daughter.

Our marriage is becoming a shambles. We are in danger of losing our beach community house to a double mortgage. One night in early August, the Lad and I have a pivotal conversation. We are brutally honest. Tears are shed. In the end, however, we agree to start over. We pack up the kids, sell the house, move to Canada and live happily ever after running an exquisitely independent bar and brewery that offers a truly dynamite pale ale.