When I was a kid, Time crept by. I saw myself as a blur, flashing through a static landscape, like the Road Runner zipping past rocks that never moved.  Summer games of kick-the-can lasted forever as the sun rose high in the sky and then slowly dipped down behind my Grandmother’s house. From the second my last Cocoa Puff was finished, I ran and ran until, eons later, it was time for dinner. I was a hummingbird, and my Gran’s kitchen was the ever-present flower I’d land on briefly for sustenance.

As I got older, the world around me started to speed up, slowly at first.  The school term, from September to June, felt like a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon, cool, dark and impossible to navigate. Yet, the pressure of deadlines started to push time along faster then it naturally wanted to go.  Each test felt like a knot in the rope, beckoning me to grab ahold and pull myself across, even when I just wanted to sit and enjoy the view.

When I got my first job after college, Time was suddenly regulated for me.  For two years I chafed against the proscribed adult schedule…up at 7:30am, out by 8:30, lunch at noon, home by 7.  Day after day, my god. My 20-year-old self screamed, “this can’t be the way the rest of my life will go.” I quit the office job.  “I’m too young for this,” I yelled, “I’ve got my whole life to sit at a desk.” Time stretched lazily ahead of me as I bartended nights and slept days.

By 25, I started to hear a faint ticking. I knew it was time to begin becoming what I was going to be.  I moved to California and got a real job.  The daily schedule didn’t rankle so much any more…I was doing something meaningful at a company I loved.  Every day, I put the top down, and smiled as I drove through ribbons of streets festooned with palm trees. Time rode companionably in the seat next to me, the wind blowing in our hair.

Throughout my thirties, Time felt normal.  I was moving up, moving out, starting a business, buying a house…I was right on track.  I still felt like I had time to do whatever I dreamt of doing.  I felt confidant in my newly-honed abilities and excited about all that was still to come.  Time and I were in lock-step, marching down the road, arm-in-arm.

Then, as I entered my forties, things started to change. I became Lucy, standing at the conveyor belt, grabbing at the chocolates as they began to speed by, faster and faster.  I couldn’t make it stop.  I was suddenly the static one, and everything around me was moving at an ever-increasing rate of speed.  I no longer had control of time…it had taken over.

Mid-way through my forties, I realize the time to accomplish my goals is growing shorter and I no longer have the leisure to sit and dream.  If I want to do…be…attain…now is the time.  As we hurtle headlong into 2010, I have decided to make only one resolution and stick to it all year long, with all the energy I can muster at my advanced age.  My resolution for 2010 is to “Carpe Diem.”

I plan to throw a big old net over Time’s head and wrestle it to the ground.  It will not escape me any more.  I will wake each day and accomplish everything I have always dreamed of.  I will finish my book, I will travel and I will find love.  I will cherish my mother…kiss my dog…and treat my body better.  And I will enjoy life, not just dream about what’s to come.  That, my friends, is my New Year’s resolution for 2010.  Check with me in about 12 months and see how I did…that Time is one crafty bastard…

Mrs. Keaton is a lesbian.   62-year-old Meredith Baxter told Meredith all about it on the “Today” show last week.   Later executive producer of “The View,” Bill Getty, made the comment on “The View” that the reason so many women in their golden years become lesbians is because there are no men for them to date.  I found that very offensive, but I wasn’t sure for whom.  Was that offensive to lesbians?  Hasn’t there been enough studies done to know that no one “becomes” a lesbian.  Was it offensive to heterosexuals?  Are women really so hard up for men that they would “choose” becoming a lesbian.  Then, as I am often apt to do, I started thinking.  Maybe Mr. Getty isn’t too far off the mark.

I am a woman in the middle of my life.  I have followed the yellow brick road traveled by many.  Married young, jumped right into parenthood, devoted my life to the career of someone else only to find out that the Emerald City is really divorce.  I have read the statistics that state that a woman of my age has a 2.6% chance of remarrying.  I have heard the complaints of women in my demographic about how men of our age are only seeking the twenty-something, or how the good ones are married or gay.  I have also heard the studies about how women live a good five years longer than men. So, in that way Mr. Getty is right, when a gal reaches her 40’s, the watering hole of eligible, age-appropriate single men is pretty shallow. *

With my own personal research of women in my life, I have found that by this stage in life women are a bit jaded.  After twenty some-odd years of crappy dates, crappy marriages, crappy divorces we would really rather just not have a man.  So does this, “I’m sick of it all and giving up on men” attitude make otherwise smart, sexy, accomplished heterosexual women become lesbians?  Of course not, Mr. Getty.  Just like a shallow watering hole of potential partners does not make smart, sexy accomplished lesbians into heterosexuals.

My woman friend Mim* has become my plus one, and I have become hers.  Despite all this liberated “I don’t need a man” mantra, we do seem to live in a society of couples, and as women we don’t like to wade through life and social situations alone.  I have accompanied her to weddings, we have helped each other with home improvement projects around each other’s homes, we have hosted dinner parties together, and recently she tagged along with me to Napa to deposit my daughter at school.  We were sitting in a romantic restaurant, sipping a lovely cabernet and complaining about men and the lack there of, of them when Mim said, “look at all these couples here, they probably think we are lesbians.”

“You know,” I said, “we are like a couple in so many ways, too bad we don’t want to have sex with each other.  It would make things so much easier.  We are like lesbian non-lesbians.”  It got a laugh.

Turns out we are not alone.  According to the Urban dictionary what we are is, “fresbians.”

fresbian

That chick friend that you (as a girl) turn to after a bad breakup, general boy frustrations, or lack of a date for a public function. This specific friend is great for dancing with, making the male population jealous of what they can’t have, and helping you out in times of need. Mostly, fresbians do not actually engage in sexual acts together, and usually neither one of them is an actual lesbian- though this term is not meant to offend actual lesbians, who have most fresbians’ utmost respect.

After my grandfather died, my grandmother turned to her fresbian, Melen*.  They did each other’s hair, they dined together, and they traveled together.  When I asked her if she would ever remarry, she smirked, “eek, three husbands were enough.  I have my friend Melen.”

My mother has a whole group of fresbians.  They call themselves the “pink pals” (after their vaginas).  Last year when my mother suffered a heart attack it was her fresbian pals that came to her side.

Doing a little research I found that this is not a new phenomenon at all.  Back in the nineteenth century there was something called the “Boston Marriage.”  Even then women knew that sometimes sex is overrated, men can be a pain in the ass, and everyone need a good woman.

Boston marriage, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was an arrangement in which two women lived together, independent of any man’s support. These relationships were not necessarily sexual; the existence of platonic Boston marriages was used to quell fears of lesbianism after the loss of men in World War I.  Today, the term sometimes describes two women living together without a sexual relationship. Such a relationship may involve intimacy and commitment without sexuality.

So beware you middle-aged men out there.  Eventually you are going to figure out that the twenty-something girl that has been making you feel so young is actually making you look old and ridiculous.  However, when you return to the watering hole to find yourself a good woman, we will have replaced you with our fresbians, because behind every good person is a woman.

*  Now, I did meet a nice guy, and we do share a living space, but mostly we are committed to not being committed.