The Blue Flash

By TAD BARTIMUS

When the flash of blue light inside the JCO uranium-processing plant near Tokyo signaled the worst nuclear accident in Japan's history, I was 3,000 miles away from home. Initially, when there were few clues about the seriousness of the radiation disaster on Sept. 30, all I could think about was the Cold War movie "On the Beach" -- if the world was ending, I wanted to be with the people I loved the most when it was over.

I thought about this the other day when I ran into a friend I hadn't see for a while. "How are you?" I asked. "Getting a divorce," she replied, starting to cry. While I'd been away her family had suffered its own blue flash. My friend's world WAS ending; Dad was leaving, the nuclear family was blowing up and the chain reaction of loss and anger promised to continue for years.

Two new box office hits this fall take a close-up look at why hard work, disillusionment, compromise and plain old boredom can cripple unions in their second decade.

Fallout from the dissolution of this once-solid unit won't affect just the four people in it; the lives of relatives, friends and neighbors also are being altered by the split. Almost overnight, the family house is for sale and the family business is being dissolved. Two adults who once worked for one goal now have to divide their pie into two smaller parts, leaving them both with less. Two teenagers whose lives are rooted in a familiar school don't know if they'll be able to stay there to graduate. Social connections will shift, friends will take sides, relatives who've exchanged Christmas gifts for years may no longer speak to one another.

One out of every two marriages don't make it. Two new box office hits this fall take a close-up look at why hard work, disillusionment, compromise and plain old boredom can cripple unions in their second decade. "American Beauty," starring Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey, and "The Story of Us" with Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer, underscore the difficulty of married life in middle age. But, like counselors and therapists, these films don't offer one-size-fits-all solutions to very personal problems.

At some point we all wake up one morning and realize we're not immortal. We're running out of time. We wonder, "Is that all there is?" Stepping in the cat's hairball; driving the kids to a thousand soccer games; running out of money before the bills are paid; telling your spouse for the hundredth time "don't lick your fingers when you eat;" getting vicarious romance by watching Kevin Costner and Kelly Preston kiss on the big screen? Is that really all there is?

Yes. Mostly that IS what daily life is about. Cat hairballs, kids' fevers, rotating the tires and buying a new microwave when the old one blows up – these are the connecting dots between those few-and-far-between BIG MOMENTS. They're the mortar that holds marriages together. But too much mortar – without the leavening of playfulness, laughter and romance – can also weigh marriages down so much they fall apart.

Why do some couples make it and others don't? Too much self-indulgence? Not enough patience or stamina? Inertia? Middle-aged crazy? Too much money? Not enough? Each pairing has its own mysterious chemistry; I'm working too hard at mine to try and figure anybody else's out.

But I wonder: if that blue flash in Japan HAD signaled the end of the world, would my friend's husband have wanted to spend his last few moments with the wife and children he's loved for nearly half his life -- or alone?

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