Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed

4 a.m. Preface Part 1: Midnight to 5 a.m. Front Door on the Driveway Jimmy and June On Being a Mom Sewing Lesson Closet Fantasies Meat Loaf in the Freezer Negotiating Monogamy That's What You Get for Being Faithful Sultan and the Red Honda Two Steps to One Weighing In between Rubens and Modigliani The Power of the Cap How We Mourn the Powerful Towpath Therapy Part 2: Morning Legacies A Night for Haroset Dreaming of Lace Stress Test Cappuccino at Rosa's Changing Lanes Doorknob Conviction Tomboyhood Revisited Anonymous Translation Improvisation on "I Do" The New Kitchen If and When Game Plan In Glorietta Canyon Part 3: Life after Breakfast A Map to Cape Cod There's Always the Afternoon Alan Should Have Rented a Car The Other Redhead and Me Under the Sunblock Gradually Grandma In a House by a Lake Acknowledgments

Mimi Schwartz is a professor emerita of writing at Richard Stockton College. She is the author of "Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village" and "Writing True, the Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction" (co-authored with Sondra Perl).

"A queen-size bed may sound roomy, but when it is shared by a couple married for 40 years, the fit can be tight. Such a bed becomes a place where thoughts--on love, negotiating a long partnership, motherhood, staying faithful--and memories flow powerfully... Subjects range from Ms. Schwartz's cooking for her husband... before she leaves for a conference, to dealing with a mastectomy. This being New Jersey, there are stories about driving, most notably one describing a long drive to Cape Cod, replete with arguments over who forgot the map, and other tension. As couples surely know, a car is roughly the same size as a queen-sized bed." The New York Times "A gentle, moving celebration of the quotidian." Kirkus Reviews "[A] light and sure touch." Booklist "This is aimed at anyone interested in a thoughtful, humorous, poignant and honest look at love and marriage and family. Since not one of us can lay claim truly to being a specialist in this field-we are all amateurs when it comes to matters of the heart-this book is, then, for us all." Bret Lott, author of Jewel, an Oprah Book Club selection. "It was a cathartic delight to read Mimi Schwartz's clear-eyed, unflinching Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed. Rarely has middle-class dailiness in all its vagaries been so well rendered without agenda or cynicism. This is a survivor's book, lovingly mediated and written." Stephen Dunn, author of Different Hours, 2001 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry "Now that we know all about what makes couples break up, how about what makes marriages (and the women in them) survive? In Mimi Schwartz's funny and poignant memoir, one woman tells all--well, almost all--about sickness and health, work and kids and family, growing up and growing older, dreams of escape and the comforts of staying put. Thoughts From A Queen-Sized Bed is full of wisdom and true--loyal--to life." Alicia Ostriker, author of The Crack in Everything "Marriage and monogamy are merely the jumping-off point for Mimi Schwartz's lyrical and evocative meditation on commitment-not only to family, but to memory itself. Beautifully structured, this book ripples and reverberates in surprising ways." Mary Morris, author of Nothing to Declare "I laughed and sighed and loved reading Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed from start to finish. Schwartz, who is a writer, professor, wife, mother, and friend, resists stereotypes of class, gender, and age to find or make, in lovely, clear prose, the sweetness of life for her audience. Do yourself a favor. Read this book." Hilda Raz, author of Divine Honors and Trans