The bed is already crowded when I crawl into it.  The cats have arranged themselves neatly around my mother and they are not happy when I climb aboard and upset their cozy set-up. 
 
I fit easily into my father's mattress indentation, he's begun his day but the covers have kept his spot warm.  My mother is just awake, still soft from sleep.  And that is perhaps what I like best about this infrequent ritual, the intimacy of lying close to the yawns and stretches of a fresh day. 

I live out of town and cannot visit as often as I would like.  Time skitters by far too quickly on these trips.  Days become filled with friends, family squeezed here and there in between.  So although I am certainly far too old to be crawling into my parents' bed I relish the private time with my mother.  Not to mention the youthful implication of climbing into one's parents' king size bed.

Our talk can be about our sleep the night before ("I had the strangest dream"), our meal the night before ("I love the atmosphere but the salmon was overcooked"), plans for the day ahead ("Is that store still here?  The one on the corner behind the bank? Let's go there for sure").  Then we meander to meatier topics: ("is [insert family friend's name] happy?  It seemed like they were strained when we ran into them yesterday").  Meatier still are the questions about my life, my marriage, my choices. 

Truth is, my life is nothing like what I thought it would be.  Pretty much every friend I have says the same thing.  My friend Kathy is fond of saying "if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans."  God must be laughing big time right about now.

I'd always imagined a storybook marriage, kids, home, friends.  I thought the big dilemma would be how many children to have . . . four, to make it even?  Two, to make it affordable?  Of course this was back when I thought forty was ancient, and eating an entire bag of Doritos wouldn't show up on my fit body which would, by the way, always stay effortlessly fit.

At thirty-five I visit, we lie in bed looking up at the ceiling and I ask my mother if everything's turned out the way she thought it would.  She seems surprised at the question and answers "It's better than I thought it would be.  Different but better.  Why, honey?  Are you okay?"

And so, there in my mother's bed, I tell her.  I tell her I cannot have children of my own. We talk about the fertility clinics, the failed procedures and the soul-crushing reality that it is not in the cards for us.  For me, that is.  My husband has two daughters and if it weren't for them I think I might have withered up and floated away.  They are my girls, pure and simple. 

At forty I visit, we lie in bed looking up at the ceiling and I ask my mother how she and my father have stayed married for four decades and counting.  And I tell her.  I describe the heartbreaking realization that my marriage will not continue.  Wait did I fail to mention that it was my second divorce?  Yeah, no, it was.  Though the circumstances were far different each time.  That's something, right?  It should mean something, really mean something, that I've managed to stay close to my second ex-husband, shouldn't it?  At least I pulled that off.  I may have failed miserably at marriage but post-marriage, well, I've nailed that.  My friends say we're the coolest divorced couple they know.

Go to the next page to read more...

Elizabeth Flock, author of Sleepwalking in Daylight, is a former journalist who reported for Time and People magazines and worked as an on-air correspondent for CBS before becoming a full-time writer. The New York Times bestselling author of But Inside I'm Screaming, Everything Must Go and Me & Emma -- a Book Sense Notable title and Highlight Pick of the Year -- Elizabeth hails from Connecticut and currently lives in New York City. For more information, please visit http://www.elizabethflock.com/.