About Mary

I was a Stay At Home Mom, in between the acting gigs in Hollywood, chauefeurring the kid to and from karate, the orthodontist, after school activities, picking up stiff white shirts from the dry cleaner, Trader Joe's, Ralph's, Costco, and the nail salon, hair salon, bank, gas station, post office, Staples, the occasional hell-like trip to Home Depot and anywhere else my husband might throw in - since I was, after all, the one without a real job.

Then he died. Just that quick. A bicycling accident right near the Gene Autry Museum. What nerve. We had been together 20 years, only had one or two hellacious (is that even a word?) fights with each other and always, always made up, laughing about it later. In that same year I also had to take my dad off life-support and my sister. The hits kept coming and I lost my godchild in an accident, lost two friends in 9/11, the cat got cancer, the dog ran away (we got him back), my mom moved across country and so on. I was left alone to raise Sunny Teresa, the only child we adopted from our herd of 16 foster daughters.

"Alone" doesn't really sum up the feeling one has in the night, when finally allowed to grieve after the laundry is done, the pool swept, the remainder of his clothes donated to charity, the bills paid, the school lunch packed, the dog poop picked up and the trash cans brought in from the curb. "Alone" connotes a certain stand-offish quality. I was left so alone that I felt shunned by girlfriends who fear you might actually want the husband they have spent the last two years pissing and moaning about. As if. Alone meant no one to share an adult laugh with, a hug, a tear, a question about the home owner's policy that needs renewing, the computer slowing down, or someone to ask if this dress makes your ass look fat. I was simply, alone - with a daughter to raise, alone to "stand guard like a good soldier," and wonder if that noise you just heard was an intruder or the wind. I knew I needed human contact with another male when I thought about paying a guy to just lay down and hold me so I could get one good, decent cry out of my system.

In lieu of actually giving away some cash dough which I really would rather have "invested" in a quart of Ben and Jerry's Dark Cherry and Chocolate Grief - a flavor I designed over and over in my mind - I opted to go online to one of the newer dating sites. Let's just call it Senior Hook-Ups.
I had to choose a moniker, an alias, a user name. What to call myself? My mind reeled at the possibilities; "inneedofabreakdown," "inneedofalay," or my personal fave "mamaneedssomelovin." I opted instead for "twilightime," a phrase from my wedding song, Stardust.

It's there where I met Jerry, aka "malibunewsman." I read his profile and was relieved to find that there was indeed such a thing as a man who could utilize upper and lower case appropriately and wouldn't dream of dangling his participle. And so the introductions began...