The Missing Something Club

Kate was an aging baby boomer fully entrenched in mid-life crisis. Educated, literary, kids off to college and beyond, newly divorced, and no longer affluent. Suddenly isolated after a lifetime of steadfastly playing a role that wasn't her. So she reluctantly posted an invite on a social networking website in an attempt to find others who were also missing something out of life. Five strangers responded, and they began to gather each week at a bar in Harvard Square, eventually sharing the secrets of their dispirited lives and attempting to play therapist for one another.

The Missing Something Club is their unusual story. An incredibly beautiful and confused mother of three young children who could not escape the guilt of having misled an unsuspecting husband she wasn't certain she ever loved. A beguiling but adrift young man not much older than Kate's own sons, who, as a result of so many unfortunate events in his brief life, lived to meaninglessly hook up with women he hardly knew. A too often disregarded pharmacist (a consequence of her large size), who yearned for her first real romance but who had little concept for how to attract or interact with men. A man they nicknamed Wallflower with a dysfunctional home life that would be nearly impossible to replicate.

The root of the group's eventual magic, however, was an eighty-two year old MIT engineer who peculiarly projected the number of days that remained his life. And who painted the women in the group nude to help them better understand who they really were. Who taught them that you can't force relationships. And with whom Kate was trying so very hard not to fall in love.

Together they established a set of rules for their gatherings and then proceeded over the next nine months to break them one by one. Emboldened by their unfamiliarity and too much alcohol, they contemplated relationships, sex, love, parenting, and mortality. Their collective evolution was both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

It was the most incredible experience of her life.