I need to live alone

I was sixty years old when my husband dumped me—old story, I know. But wait, as the commercials for fancy French Fry cutters say.

I begin: August 25: my parent’s anniversary. They were married fifty-four years. Can you believe it? This morning An AP report in the New York Times, dateline: Chamonix, France (Isn’t that where Cary meets Audrey in Charade’s first scene? “Can’t he do something constructive like start an avalanche or something?” Reggie/Audrey asks Silvie after young Jean Louis shoots her in the face with his water gun. Jean Louis shoots Cary/Peter as well.) The AP reports on an avalanche that “swept down a major summit in the French Alps before dawn on Sunday, leaving eight climbers missing and presumed dead along a trail often used to reach Mont Blanc … . One survivor, Marco Delfini, an Italian guide, said he saw ‘a wall of ice coming towards us, and then we were carried 200 meters.’ An injured survivor Nicholas Duquesnes, told Agence France-Presse, ‘There was absolutely no noise; it was very disturbing. We only had time to swerve to the right before being mowed down.' ”

I had been married twenty-one years when my husband announced, “I need to live alone.” Oh so Greta Garbo. There was absolutely no noise. I was sixty years old and had been chasing him around the bedroom—to no avail—for ten years.

Bill Maher in a comedy routine on HBO not so long after he had been dumped by ABC only to arise again with Politically Incorrect, said in a joke about older women, “menopause.” Get it? Men A Pause.

Yeah, I got it.