Rose's Cantina

Embed from Getty Images "What is the secret to a successful marriage? Don't get divorced." -- Olivia Harrison I've been thinking about Olivia's wise words, spoken to camera when she was asked how it was that she and George Harrison stayed together when other rock and roll marriages failed. She spoke these words after talking about his well known infidelity. As she said, "Women liked George. And George liked women." Her voice cracked, yet there was strands of love in those words. We move ahead. We persevere. For better, or for worse. Scott and I have been together for 14 years now, and are approaching our dotage together. Both of us were married twice before, he to a childhood sweetheart who cheated on him, and then to a woman who used to make him sleep in his car. I got married the first time when I was 24, and did so simply because everybody else was doing it. Two months after we said our vows, my husband cheated the first tim...

In the end, I've realized, genetics win. Genetics and middle age. I was recently thumbing through the family album looking at my Aunties and saw myself in those wonderful women, those Scottish shortbreads with the pug faces in house dresses. Fashion-wise, there were good reasons women wore house dresses. They were cool when you didn't have air conditioning, they were inexpensive because the only shapes were made by cinching and darts, and you could let them out easily when your body started giving out. In my Aunties' day, there were no expensive gyms to go out, no plastic solutions to be had, only house dresses and sensible shoes. Aunties weren't athletic, but they worked hard, used something they called elbow grease, got on their hands and knees several times a week to scrub unscrubbable floors, hung clothes on the line instead of throwing them into the dryer, and cranked their own windows in cars. Their weight in middle age couldn't be explained by their e...