Malignant Marriage

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I've got strong feelings about marriage and cancer these days.  Note: I said strong feelings, not clear or rational feelings.  The cancer is on my mind because I've got some routine-ish doctor appointments coming up.  Scans, and blood work and follow-up types of things.  That, and the recent death of Elizabeth Edwards have put cancer, once again, in the front of my mind instead of in that dark, quiet place which I don't often visit.  My thoughts about cancer are musings about why people develop cancer in certain parts of their bodies.  Like me, for instance.  What are the odds of having cancer removed twice from an area as small as the neck?  Isn't it likely that the cancer is in my neck because my head and my heart are in in conflict - and apparently have been for for more than a few years? 

Which leads directly to my current thoughts on marriage... Did you see this article in last week's Sunday New York Times? As I read it, maybe my second time through, I felt as if I might have written it myself - a response which a number of my friends attested to feeling themselves.  My husband even asked me if I was using a pen name because he so clearly recognized what the female author was saying from our own conversations.   While chatting about the article with my writer friend, Rachel, I told her I thought this "little divorced" thing could very well develop into a social phenomena that future anthropologists would be studying for years.  The only question is: is it a revolution or a plague?