I'm working on it.

Like the day Camelot fell, or the day mankind got high, or the day the music died, I will always remember where I was when it happened. I'm talking about the big East Coast (represent) Quake of '11 (that's Oh-One-One, y'all). Not that wimpy mess out in Colorado. What was that anyway? A two point one?

Anyway, back to my story. This is for posterity.

It was an ordinary day in Savannah, Georgia. The kids were up, lunched, schooled and cleaned. The kitchen was a mess, crumbs from the sixteen different types of food I'd tried to feed my one-year-old for lunch littered the counter and the floor around the stove. The laundry I'd been working on for the last month, week, day, along with a random menagerie of toys, lay in small piles around the old dining room, while even more toys and dirty socks (my one-year-old likes to carry them around in her mouth during the day, but that's another story) found scattered homes throughout the living room. I still needed a shower after the two-diaper-change poop incident, and the kids were sort of sharing a toy with one another in the playroom.

"Finally," I thought as I set my lukewarm water down on the desk. "I can finally get this space organized." I sat down at the worn chair, pulled the trash can closer to me and began sorting through the stack of mail and miscellaneous paper.

And then it happened.

My phone, which was sitting on the desk next to me, began shaking. At first I didn't know what to do. I glanced at the kids and then back at the still shaking phone. It made a surprisingly annoying sound as it knocked against the wood. In that moment, I decided. I grabbed the phone, hit the slider bar and knew immediately exactly what was happening.

It was my breaking news alert from the Washington Post, letting me know that I had just experienced an earthquake.

When I look back on it now, it all makes sense. The crumbs on the kitchen floor, the scattered clothes and toys, the pacing cat, the unhappy sounds coming from the girls as they struggled to hold onto the same toy, their small hands just barely able to keep it supported ... it was the quake. And all I can say is thank God we are all safe.

I mean, "We all almost died."**

This afternoon I learned that our friends, two people we love and have spent many good times with, are ending their marriage.

I don't want to gossip about it, or debate the faults. I'm just sad.

Sad for them. Sad for their children. Sad for their futures without one another. Sad for the memories of the good times that will be hard to remember now. Sad that it's really happening.

Sad that it's at the end.

Things here are hard. It's how life is. And the end of a marriage, no matter the ins and outs or the whys or hows, is a terrible rending of what was made to be one, a whole, together. It matters not if the hearts leave as friends or foes; the leaving is still a leaving, a tearing, a pulling apart of what was once meshed with hopes of forever.

My heart hurts for them.

Press on.