When I was a young girl I wanted to be as beautiful as my mother and wear my hair in a ballerina bun, and have long, long legs and perfect grace. I imagined myself a June Taylor dancer, a trapeze artist, a barefoot modern dancer like Martha Graham.

When liking boys kicked in hard at ten and eleven, I wanted to marry Robbie on My Three Sons and steal him from Tina Cole who I also had a crush on.

When I was in high school I wanted to go away to college and start another life away from my parents? fighting and that small Mississippi town, but my father wouldn?t pay out-of-state tuition and I didn't work hard enough to get a scholarship.

In college, I wanted to write a letter to Julian Bond and offer to march in protests, or join the Peace Corps and work abroad. There I would fall crazy in love like a Van Morrison song.

Well, I never took dance lessons. I played the flute but was frightened of performing and hated people looking at just me. I had a string of boyfriends but staved off sex, kept myself to myself, storing the amazingness of me in some silo while I waited. I didn't change one bit of the world. I dreamed big from the safety of my bedroom, wrote in my journal, listened to the zillion relationship songs on the radio, checked the mirror, ready and impatient for the best part of my life to happen.

When I was married to my first husband and it was falling apart I imagined my next marriage would be to a wealthy older man.

When I was unhappily married to Malcolm I imagined I would steal Sting from his wife, and if not, then I certainly could fall in love with a writer or a painter. Because of this him, my life would finally bloom like a monster peony, and I would be able to show my lover ? an embarrassingly purple word, even now - the journals I?d kept private, dump my whole secret load on him, this safe haven, because, well, artists understand artists.

When I left Malcolm I stayed in the house, wrote in my journal, listened to jazz without words, looked in the mirror and pretended my face was thirty-one. Dreaming wasn?t as pleasurable now that I could do whatever I wanted. I noticed the forty years of life behind me, along with ten new beginnings in there that had never shifted out of second gear. I went back to Malcolm and asked him if we could start over, not sweat the marriage but be friends first, friends who have sex.

I finally figured out the stuff of self-help books without ever reading one: you can?t smell the coffee unless you make the coffee.

I?m growing my hair out so I can wear it in a bun. While Malcolm's at the office I write short stories, and I e-mail him early drafts, shoot him my heart so I can know right then what he thinks and he shoots back and tells me the truth. When I feel like dancing I take a break, strap on my iPod and flail around in front of the hall mirror.