The other night, my husband and I were watching television together. He was flipping through channels and paused on a public television station to watch John Denver sing. For a second, I forgot that John Denver had died and I thought to myself, I can never get over him divorcing Annie after he wrote that song about her.

And then my husband said out loud, “You know, I can never really forgive him for divorcing Annie. I mean, how do you write a song like that and then divorce her?”

Annie’s Song
by John Denver

You fill up my senses
Like a night in a forest
Like the mountains in springtime
Like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert
Like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses
Come fill me again

Come let me love you
Let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter
Let me die in your arms
Let me lay down beside you
Let me always be with you
Come let me love you
Come love me again

You fill up my senses
Like a night in a forest
Like the mountains in springtime
Like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert
Like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses
Come fill me again
(The title track from “Back Home Again” (1974).

John Denver was married to Anne in 1967. They had two children, Zachary and Anna Kate, before their divorce in 1983. Sixteen years of marriage. That’s practically a lifetime in high-profile marriages, it seems.

For us, it’s just the beginning. And I don’t care that my husband can’t write songs for me, as long as he keeps reading my mind.

You know you are old if . . .

. . . you have ever looked at a movie star and thought, “Boy, I thought he was older than that. He looks old.” And then you realize you are the same age.

. . . you have ever peered at yourself in the mirror and propped up your eyelids with your fingertips and wondered if you’d look permanently surprised if you had plastic surgery to remove the sag.

. . . you can remember where you were when Ronald Reagan was shot, when the Challenger space craft exploded and Mt. St. Helen’s blew her top.

. . . you consider what it will be like at your own funeral.

. . . you used to watch Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.

. . . you pumped gasoline into your car that cost less than a dollar a gallon.

A few years back, I painted my dingy kitchen bright–excruciatingly bright–white. Since then, I painted my family room with red stripes and most recently, I painted the living room bold orange-yellow. My poor husband. He’s more of a beige kind of guy, but he humors me.

Well. I thought the kitchen wall that I see from the family room–the wall with the doorway to the dining/living room–ought to be red. And the wall opposite, just a small half-wall, really, which borders the family room also needed to be red. That wall was covered with baskets, but they all came down.

Guess how many coats of paint a shockingly white wall needs? One coat of primer. Three coats of red paint.

I am so sick of paint. But the walls look . . . vivid. No, really, they look great. If I were a good, industrious wife, I would spray all those baskets off and let them dry overnight. I just might do that. You never can tell, really.

It’s December 1 and I don’t have my Advent calendar hung. I’m late, late for a very important date!

I had a break. A break with reality, that is. The phone rang. A friend asked if I am in the mood to bake cookies. “Sure,” I said, cautiously.

Then I agreed to bake 2 or 3 dozen cookies for a bake-sale Friday night.