After forty years of marriage and three highly accomplished, now close to middle-aged children, Miriam sat down with her husband and explained her situation. " I was young once. I still love you but I need to be young again. So I'm moving to Israel". Stan stood up from the new glass and chrome table that had recently replaced the beloved brown walnut one. The one they'd received from his Aunt in Cleveland. He paced across a living room that he no longer recognized. Miriam had tossed away the furniture and even their heavy wedding silver in pursuit of what she had told him a "fresh start".
Looking out of the bay window towards West End Avenue, he said: "Mimi, I'm at my lab all day, as I have been for fifty years. It looks like the remodeling was not enough for you. So if you need to go, you must. Otherwise, you'll make me crazy." "I’ve got a real estate agent", she said. " And the money from Harriet."