“Has it started happening to you?” she asked.

“Has what started happening?”

“The divorce epidemic.”

Kelli and her husband are perfectly matched and have two handsome boys. But she noticed that as she neared her 40s, divorces among her friends were popping up like teenage acne.

Come to think of it, it has started happening. I made a quick calculation in my head and tallied over a dozen of relatively recent divorces among my friends and acquaintances—four in the past year, two in the past week. Not exactly groundbreaking when you consider that you can collect over 500 friends on Facebook in one sitting, but unnerving just the same because divorce seems like a flu virus, attacking marriages suddenly and unexpectedly, causing me to worry that one day I’ll wake up and find that my husband has packed up his comic books and action figures and moved out.

But it doesn’t happen like that. Not really.

I get why couples divorce. Infidelity and abuse are clear deal-breakers, but there’s a truckload of other issues that can pave the road to splitsville. When my daughter was born, my mom asked me, “Can you even imagine how people can get divorced after having a child together?” Um, yeah. I can. Children magnify personal flaws. They turn the proverbial molehill into a mountain—leaving dishes to “soak” in the sink rather then placing them in the dishwasher seems like reasonable grounds for divorce when you’re sleep deprived and covered in day-old spit-up. I remember thinking on several occasions (usually when Ray was playing with our daughter at 3 AM because “she’s not ready to go to sleep just yet”) that raising a child might be easier on my own. But that’s only because I didn’t know any better.

My husband is a phenomenal father. Armageddon could be coming and Ray would insist on first finishing the puzzle with our 4-year-old, Ava. He’s patient, loving and is the only other person besides myself who thinks that everything Ava says is more clever than the dialogue on The West Wing. “I feel bad for the other kids,” he often says, because he’s a proud daddy (and, admittedly, a little bit biased).

He’s also an incredible husband. He works so that I may stay home with Ava and finish grad school. We met when I was 18, dated five years before we married and waited another five before starting our family. In July, we celebrated our 10th anniversary—sort of (we both kind of forgot). Looking back, I was too young to marry—too young to know what I wanted in a partner and in my life. I got lucky. Ray and I have grown up a lot over the years, but we’ve managed to grow together, maintaining similar interests and values. These things are unpredictable.

I’m not so bad as far as moms go, either. I spend a lot of time considering how to raise a child who is polite, happy and well adjusted. I measure my words and temperament. I anguish over the parenting mistakes that I inevitably make and vow to do better next time. Parenting is important to me. Most moms would agree that it’s the most important job they have.

But wait. I’m forgetting something. I’m also a partner. And that requires a bit of attention, too.

I often fall into the trap of thinking that my husband—who is 41—can take care of himself. It’s okay if I nag him to put his dirty shorts into the hamper rather than hang them on the edge, or interrupt as he watches Roger Federer serve for match point. He’s a big boy, I justify; he can take it. But he can only take it for so long. Eventually these little resentments add up, forming a gigantic pile of complaints and nuisances that threaten to topple on him . . . and our marriage.

I’m not suggesting that I should quietly and obediently do my “wifely” duty and never question my husband. Hell. No. But I need to tend to our relationship as much as I do my relationship with our daughter. I need to, because I love him and cannot imagine my life without him. Each day I have to remember that, and act accordingly rather than take advantage of the fact that I have a ring on my finger and a daughter between us. There are no guarantees; we can only do our best.

I haven’t been doing my best, but I can start doing better today. I don’t mean to get all Pollyanna on you, but I want this marriage to always work (and the funny thing is, the nicer I am, the more likely those dishes will make their way into the dishwasher). Some people, after much soul seeking, decide that they need to walk away. And that’s okay, too. I don’t pretend to know what goes on in other people’s lives, but Ava and I need Ray in ours.

So much has changed. So much has stayed the same.

I started working on this degree right before Ava’s first birthday. I wanted to raise my daughter and be a stay-at-home mom, but right away I started craving a little less staying-at-home time. It made me a slave to schedules. I had charts to remind me when Ava (and I) should eat, play and sleep. I had new-mom friends and a Zoloft prescription to help me get through the rough parts, but at 29 I just wasn’t totally fulfilled by the debates that early mommyhood centers around: bottle vs. breast, c-section vs. vaginal, Tylenol vs. Motrin, Pampers vs. Huggies, etc. etc. etc. First-year parenting was all about trying to figure out what that little ball of flesh wanted and needed. At times “I” didn’t even seem to exist. At least not the “I” I remember. This new me wore a ponytail, flip-flops and “cozy pants” because they were comfortable. The horror.

Comes with the territory, yes. But in that territory I had to carve out a little sovereign nation for myself.

The first class I took was undergraduate scriptwriting—a provisional requirement. So there I was in a class of 18-year-olds. Yep, I was that lady. In my head, however, I wasn’t. I thought I fit in. I wore my oversized sunglasses, designer jeans and uncomfortable shoes. I slouched in my chair . . . I . . . I . . . okay, that’s where the similarities ended. I arrived on time to every class, diligently scribbled notes and chatted with the professor during breaks. The other students wouldn’t talk to me. I wanted to tell them how cool I was—that I drank boxed wine and shopped at Goodwill. But when you have to tell someone how cool you are, you automatically forfeit your coolness.

When our prof asked us to write about something important to us, I wrote about my daughter. The girl next to me wrote about her Bic lighter. In another class an undergraduate student announced, “If you’re over 35 you shouldn’t be allowed to use Facebook because you aren’t interesting anymore.” I started having second thoughts about school . . . and humanity.

But as my program progressed, I hit my stride. I had some years on most of the other students in my grad classes—few were married, and none had children—but we shared a common ground: we were all writers trying to find our voices and our way.

When graduation finally rolled around three years later, I was again reminded me that I wasn’t that 20-year-old kid anymore. I listened to the nervous banter that comes from being forced to wear a black polyester robe with a pointy, elfish hood that makes you look like something between the Grim Reaper and Harry Potter. Students were complaining about how long the ceremony was going to last and how hung-over they were. They complained about the cost of the robes. That they couldn’t bring food into the ceremony. That they were only walking because their parents made them. That their parents forced them to take out their lip rings.

And then there was me. My family wanted to attend, but plane fare was outrageous. Besides, we had done this before. I assured them it was no big deal, but I felt their absence in a profound way. I liked it when my mom spent 20 minutes trying to locate the perfect rhododendron for me to pose in front of.  I liked it when Dad’s eyes got a little cloudy and red around the edges—his quiet way of saying how proud he was of me. Don’t get me wrong, my family was in attendance, but it was the family I built for myself. The abbreviated family that consisted of my husband and daughter. They sat in the “nosebleed” seats—the price one pays for having a last-minute have-to-go-potty emergency. As I finally walked across the stage an hour after the ceremony began, I spotted them waving to me wildly, my daughter wearing Bose headphones and watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on her dad’s iPod.

After the ceremony, I was looking for Ray and Ava when I ran into an undergrad that I recognized. I smiled and said hello. When he looked at me blankly, I reminded him how we knew one another. “Oh, that’s right!” he said. “I saw you earlier and I was thinking to myself, ‘How do I know that lady?’”

Lady? Lady? Nothing like the “L” word to make you feel like a meat eater at a PETA convention.

Deflated, I walked outside. Then Ava ran up to me squealing like we’d just been reunited after a trip through space and she hugged me tight. She put on my hat and swung my honor cord like a lasso.  Swarms of extended family members rushed around us, trying to get to their graduates. In the middle stood my little family of three. We moved away from the all to snap a couple of pictures. True, this wasn’t like my other graduations. Things had changed—most of all, me. They said that they were proud of me for graduating. I was proud of me for even more than that.

Me and Callie

Every now and again a truly magnificent product makes its way onto the market. Take the Sonicare toothbrush, for instance—it strips teeth of their fuzzy lil’ sweaters in no time. Or those new slim, felted hangers to keep my closet from looking like a refugee camp. Or the PedEgg. Yep, you heard me right. The PedEgg is the best invention since Nutella, though for distinctly different reasons.

My husband surprised me with one this Christmas. It may seem strange—maybe even insensitive—that my husband would give me a callous remover for Christmas, but the truth is, I was curious. It’s kind of like a Snuggie or those pads that you stick to the bottom of your feet that promise to suck out all the bad juju from your innards: it’s possible that these products are as fantastic as their over-enthusiastic commercials portray, but I would rather lick my child’s fingers after an hour at the mall’s softplay than have someone see me purchase one. These are the kinds of items you hope to acquire by “chance” at a White Elephant party. (Sadly, this Christmas, I held a leopard print Snuggie in my hands for all of four minutes before it was snatched away by my friend. Ex-friend.)

So, by chance, my husband thought I’d enjoy a PedEgg. Or maybe he didn’t think all that hard about it since it was Christmas Eve and he was frantically raiding Rite Aid for my gifts. Regardless, I do have a history of, um, foot issues. I grow calluses like starfish regenerate severed limbs. I thought everyone who played sports or worked out suffered from them, but at the beach, I couldn’t figure out what they were doing differently to care for their little doggies. Why didn’t their feet look like a dried out San Andreas Fault? And not just on the bottoms, either. The heels, the side of my Big Daddy toes and my littlest piggies were afflicted. Sure, I could casually walk across a gravel driveway scattered with nails, but I couldn’t tell you what it feels like to rub my cat’s fur with my barefoot. I rubbed her, I just couldn’t feel it.

Partially stripped of my 5th sense, I was only half alive. Enter the PedEgg.

She’s pink. I named her Callie. She’s a not-too-distant relative of the cheese grater. The first time I used her and cracked her open to see the damage, I cried out, “Two tablespoons!” Yep, Callie pulverized my calluses, transforming them into what can only be described as—and I apologize for this—parmesan cheese (the finely grated variety, of course).

Two uses (and four tablespoons) later, I was reborn. Upon entering the bedroom, I felt the carpet beneath me for the first time. It was like seeing my first rainbow, or hearing my first symphony, or pounding a gallon of Gatorade the morning after a night of heavy imbibing…

The PedEgg isn’t perfect. Unless held perfectly upside down, Callie does leak a little foot dust. She also needs her graters replaced from time to time. But it’s such a small price to pay to be able to actually feel when my husband’s playing footsie with me.

We were all a little more tolerant when we were young.

My grandparents had separate bedrooms on opposite ends of the hallway. When my sister and I visited, we slept in the extra bedroom between theirs–a creepy little room furnished with twin beds draped with nubby white coverlets that we couldn’t sit on. A furry white throw rug that could pass as a flattened Pomeranian lay between us, though we were not allowed to step on it. At night we’d lay still, staring up at the popcorn ceiling, not daring to speak since Grandma wouldn’t tolerate such foolishness after the lights went out. And you didn’t want to upset her because she’d come into the bedroom, eyes flashing, ready to pounce. But that wasn’t the worst of it. She wouldn’t bother to put in her dentures, so her toothless mummy mouth would hiss and flap threats at us.

So we would hold our breath in dangerous silence until our grandparents were fast asleep. From the West end of the ranch-style home, Grandpa snored walrus-like, all thick and satisfying. But from the East came Grandma’s torrential thunder. She even snored angry.

For the longest time I wondered why they didn’t share a bedroom—deaf to their own snoring, I can’t imagine they’d be bothered by each other. Lying there in the museum-quality guest room in reach of my sister if I just outstretched my arm, I imagined how lonely my grandparents must be.

Twenty-some years later, I get it. They weren’t lonely. They were brilliant.

Because here’s the thing about snoring: I may snore on occasion, but it’s like dementia—I don’t notice. Yours, however, is intolerable. I know; you’re sick. Your nose is stuffy. And I get that you don’t know you’re doing it­­, but I’m ticked off just the same.

I jab Ray in the back and hiss, “Ray. You’re snoring.”

“No I’m not. I’m breathing,” he says without opening his eyes.

“You’re snoring. And it’s keeping me awake.”

“Well, now we’re both awake.”

“It’s your fault.”

Because this is going nowhere quickly, I offer the surefire snore solution: “Just turn over, okay?”

Sometimes I try to stop his snoring without waking him. I whisper breathily in his ear: “Tuuuuuurrrrrnnnn ovvvvvvvvvveeeeeerrrr.” But Ray’s never been one to respond to subtleties. So I try to turn him myself. I figure if I can just get enough leverage by inserting my knee under his right glute, he’ll gently roll into a non-snoring side position. Instead, he misinterprets my nudging and turns toward me. Um, no.

Luckily for our marriage, seasonal allergies only strike a few times a year, and the rest of the time Ray is mostly snore-free. Because in my book, snoring is a deal breaker. It’s also why I firmly believe in cohabitating before entering into wedlock. I need full-disclosure, baby. And eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. 

I love my husband, but I also love a bed to myself. I stretch my five appendages out like a starfish (yes, my husband counts my freakishly long neck as a limb). Facedown, I drift into a blissful sleep, only to be impolitely awoken a couple hours later when Ray decides to join me. The lights go on, the toilet flushes with the force of Niagara, and the Sonicare fires up like a swarm of killer bees.

I wonder how this tradition began, this insistence that couples sleep together. When I am asleep, I am not appreciating my husband’s presence. In fact, I’m resenting it. I resent the claw he calls a toenail that unknowingly nicks my ankle. I resent how he lays on top of the covers, while I am egg-rolled tightly into the sheets, shivering. I resent that he wakes up all sunshiny even after five hours of sleep, whereas I wake like the mummified grandma, but with teeth.

OK, my house doesn’t have enough bedrooms to warrant my husband and I sleeping in separate rooms. Yet. But I have tasted the sweetness of solo sleeping. This past year, while we stayed at a hotel in Paris, we put our luggage on the floor, and our tired, travel-weary bodies in our own, separate, queen-sized beds. In the middle of the night I woke to the noise of some kids partying late. I looked over at my husband lying horizontal on his bed, happily coverless. I blissfully stretched my fingers and toes to each corner of my own piece of paradise and thought how much I love and appreciate him—even from across the room.