Joined at the hip? Not a chance, and it works just fine.

A couple of months ago, I was getting ready to go to the grocery store, and my husband was getting ready to do something else. My 15-year-old stepson ascended the stairs from his cavernous lair (otherwise known as the Man Cave, where his bed, his X-Box and cases of Mountain Dew live), shielded his eyes from the 1 p.m. "morning" sunshine, and asked, "Why don't you guys ever go to the store together?"

Well, for starters, until the new Hy-Vee came along, going to the grocery store wasn't fun. Neither my husband nor I enjoyed it, so I tended to slog through the big weekly trips while he handled the quick stops for dog food or paper towels. Dividing and conquering works well for us in many areas of life, and that's one of them ... and I had never really thought much about our way of doing things until Logan asked.

But then I started thinking about his question. Did he see his dad and me as not together enough? Did his mom and stepdad or friends' parents hang out together more? It's true: Kevin and I have never been joined at the hip. We married later in life, after we already had children and careers and interests. We're each pretty independent anyway, and our time alone had made us even more so. So by the time we decided to tie the knot, our lives and interests and activities were already in place.

That's not to say we didn't -- or we don't -- enjoy our time with one another. Kevin is probably one of the funniest people I know, and we enjoy some of the same things and have really great talks. But do we need to spend every waking moment together? Heavens, no. I don't want to spend every waking moment with anybody.

One of my best friends is most comfortable being with her husband nearly all the time. They shop for groceries together. They run errands together. They have the same hobbies. Similarly, a guy at work can't seem to function without near-constant time with his wife. More power to them, as their relationships really seem to work.

But then, we go to restaurants and we see this: couples our age or maybe a little older, sitting across from one another with nothing to say, looking bored and irritated. Couples who have run out of things to talk about.

Kevin and I don't run out of conversation. We both have jobs that are at least somewhat interesting to the other person, and our favorite separate pastimes are creative ones: I write. He builds things. We're both devoted to our children, and similarly obsessed with our dog. We agree about politics, morals, ethics -- all the big things. And as I mentioned, he makes me laugh. Hard.

Along with my children, he got me through my dad's illness and death. I like to think I was able to offer him some comfort when he lost his dad. He's been there for quite a few surgeries, and he even, as I've noted, once caught my vomit in a basin in midair and didn't even flinch.

I went to Europe without him; I went to the State Fair without him. I sure as heck go to the grocery store without him. He often goes to see family in Illinois without me. But when I'm the one who's been gone and I walk in the door after time apart, I'm really, really happy to see him. He represents "home" to me.

And I think it's pretty unlikely that anyone will ever catch us at Perkins glaring at each other across the table with nothing to say.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

When I was a college freshman, I met a girl I'll call Julie. She was smart and lovely and, to the chagrin of so many of us in the dorm, rail-thin despite having the appetite of a man six times her size. But you couldn't be jealous of her, not really, because underneath her long blond hair and perfect smile and size-2 body, she was just so genuinely nice.

So one day early in the year, Julie met a guy I'll call Nick, and eventually, they fell in love. Nick was a nice-looking guy, but most importantly, he was kind at a point in time when many guys care little about the way they treat others. Nick was inclusive and funny and sweet, and he walked through those next several months leading up to their wedding as if he had won the lottery. In his mind, he had -- I don't think he ever assumed Julie would love him back.

They married the summer after Julie's and my sophomore year. I transferred schools, made a new life with my new friends, and lost track of Julie and Nick. I would hear tidbits about them here and there; they had settled in the town in which we had gone to school, Julie was teaching kindergarten, and, finally, after many years, they had started a family.

Then one day, unbelievably, I heard this: Julie had died. She had been fighting cancer, with which she had been diagnosed when her children were tiny. But she hadn't won, and at age 40, with two still-small children, Julie died. And Nick, who had loved her so, was alone.

But not really alone -- he had the kids. His kids. Julie's kids. And by all accounts, he made up his mind early on that he would raise them on his own. But in one of the cruelest twists of fate I had ever heard, Nick also became ill. For a long while, his illness was managed, and he made things work.

But two nights ago, Nick died. His kids, Julie's kids, are 15 and 14. Fifteen and 14, and now they have no parents.

Crappy things happen to good people every day. We all know people who have died young. Died painfully. Died alone. But this is almost too much -- it's as if Fate said, "Get your happiness early, kids, because there's not going to be time for a lot of it." I imagine they did. I hope they did.

I don't know Julie and Nick's kids, and I doubt they'll ever read this. But if they happened to, I'd want them to know about the day I walked to class about a hundred feet behind the people who would become their parents.

It was a cold day, and Julie was putting on her parka on the way to class. She was walking and trying to get her arms in the sleeves and her hair got stuck in the back of the coat. And with a gesture so gentle that I'll never forget it, Nick reached in, untangled the hair, and laid it ever-so-gently on the outside of the coat. And then he leaned down and kissed the top of Julie's head, and they kept walking.

I envied Julie and Nick that day. I assumed they would have a golden life. It's my hope that they did. And as I read the words of Robert Frost, I almost think he must have time-traveled and known Nick and Julie.

Rest in peace, both of you. And to your children: Just know that your mom and dad, during that moment in time some some 29 years ago, were the people we all wanted to be.

Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Gabby Douglas, Michael Phelps ... and me

I’ve never been an athlete. Suffice it to say I’ve never even really tried to become an athlete. Some truths, as they say, are self-evident, and for me, that was one of them. Good speller? Yes. Good kick-ball teammate or tetherball partner? Nope. Not if you don’t want to lose.

But I’ve always loved the Olympics – to the point that if I had two weeks’ PTO to blow, I’d take time off and watch the coverage all day long. Bob Costas’ bad plastic surgery, be damned; I’m not looking at you anyway, Bob. I’m looking at the tears and the falls, the parents in the stands. The high-fives, the hugs. The drama.

When I was growing up, we were an Olympics family. The first Games I remember watching were in ’72, the year the terror unfolded in Munich. I still remember seeing the grainy pictures of the gunmen in the woolen ski masks. But equally vivid are the memories of Olga Korbut doing that backflip thing from the higher of the uneven bars and Mark Spitz with his seven gold medals fanned out across his chest.

Then came 1976 and Nadia with her perfect 10. From there, the years, and the athletes, run together, but when I think of family vacations, I flash back to the five of us spending our evenings huddled around some little hotel TV if the Olympics happened to be on while we were away from home.

Globally shared experiences are a little difficult to come by these days, but the Olympics do tend to facilitate a few every two years. No matter if we happened to be watching “Dance Moms” or “Breaking Bad” for a little while, we all turned back to NBC to watch Gabby clinch the all-around and Phelps accept his final gold medal. And we all talked about those experiences the next day.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to possess the grace of a world-class athlete. I’ll never know, but for a scant two weeks every other year, I can imagine, and I can choke up at the sight of a runner with blades where his feet should be or a 16-year-old girl who spent two years with people who weren’t her family so she could see if she had what it took.

She did, and I’m in awe of her for refusing to be scared away by the voices that tell us all, “Don’t bother. Most people will never be that good.”

Even when they’re not that good -- 1,000 times more talented than I’ll ever be, but still, in Olympic frame of reference, not good enough -- I’ll watch them, and like many people, I’ll wonder “What if?” What if I had tried to become a pathologist in spite of my dad’s warnings that “people who aren’t good at math can’t be doctors”? What if I had, as a young person, stopped making mix tapes and laced up a pair of Nikes?

I wouldn’t have made it to the Olympics, but maybe I would have gotten a taste of what it’s like to push yourself harder than you ever thought possible. It’s on my bucket list to do that -- someday, in some way.

No, I’ll never know the feeling of gold around my neck. The upside, though? I'm equally certain I'll never be asked to stare into the face of Bob Costas.