Having an affair

Look, 2015 has just slipped by. The year is over and we have just begun a new one. I wonder what this year will bring. I know what last year brought. Towards the end of 2014 my daughter, who is married to an English architect, came over to visit. First, she arrived, then my handsome grandson, Julian, then her husband. Early January my grandson’s best friend Dan arrived followed by my grandson’s girlfriend. I had a full house.

Then my daughter and her husband left followed the best friend and the girlfriend. But Julian stayed until July. Then another grandson moved in and stayed until October. My life was turned upside down. You see, I live alone, totally alone. I love it maybe because I am an only child who grew up mostly alone. As we grow old we relive our childhood. So I enjoy being alone and tinkering with my crafts.

At last I am happily alone again with only occasional guests. Over the holidays, what does an alone person do? Knit and watch TV. A few months ago while surfing for better shows I stumbled upon a new one called The Affair. I watched that one show and sort of liked it but could never find it again. Have you noticed that there’s a fad on cable TV? They call it a Watchathon. It means that the whole day they will show a series.

One Sunday, Dec. 20, I accidentally stumbled across the Watchathon of The Affair. For one day, from 10:30 a.m. to almost midnight, the station showed the entire series. I sat and watched and knitted. The Affair 1 (there is The Affair 2) was the romantic part, so I could knit through it. It is the story of a New York couple with four children. He (Noah) is a college professor and a struggling writer who marries a rich, only daughter (Helen) of another famous author (Bruce) and his obnoxious wife, whose name I don’t remember. Bruce and his wife live in Montauk, a small but charming tourist town in New York. Noah, Helen and their four children come to spend the summer.

There is a restaurant called Lobster Roll where Alison works as a waitress. Alison is a pediatric nurse, married to Cole, who belongs to a big family that owns a farm in Montauk that is in danger of being expropriated by the government or the banks or whoever does those things. One day, Noah’s family is having lunch at Lobster Roll and the youngest daughter chokes on something. They panic until Alison steps in and saves the child.

That’s the basic setup. I get hooked by the first Watchathon. Can you imagine me staying up to almost midnight watching TV? I am usually in bed at 9 p.m. reading, asleep by 10 p.m., and awake at 6 a.m. But the first series is romantic with little threads of mystery and murder and secrets. The two women, the wife and the girlfriend, (I hate the words mistress, adultery, concubinage, they take the romance out of what you’re watching) have very distinctly different mouths. You will notice that if you watch. This sort of fascinates me. And they are both quite nice women. Helen is not a boring wife. Alison is not a cheap woman. That’s what makes it more interesting. It shows you how society just labels men and women and sticks them in stupid envelopes. 

Then I learned that on the following Sunday, Dec. 27, there was to be another Watchathon of the second series. So I watched again. This time the affair gets serious. Noah confesses to Helen and they finally aim for a divorce. Noah gets accused of accidentally running over the younger brother of Cole. Cole finds and marries another woman. Helen has two boyfriends, the first was Noah’s best friend and the second her son’s doctor. It gets really complicated. I watched the second Watchathon without knitting. That’s how compelling it was.

In this second series, Noah becomes a successful writer and he explains that the book he wrote is not autobiographical though it draws from his personal experience. But then when you write, your characters begin to form themselves and you allow yourself to get carried into that. I understood that very well because my books are only sort of autobiographical but not fully so.

Whoever thought there would be a TV series that I found so compelling that I would sit through it for 13 hours, getting up during the station breaks to go to the bathroom, brew a cup of coffee, eat lunch, snack on fruitcake and cheese, and mess up my living room? But that’s what this series The Affair did to me. It’s very good and I highly recommend it. It’s like life.

Anyway, just to remind you, my writing classes hope to start on Jan. 9. I am still thinking about the knitting and jewelry classes.

Until then Happy 2016.

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