Decoration Day

Dan and Cheryl are an unlikely couple. While she claws her way up the corporate ladder, he is a house husband to their two children, Kyle, aged five, and Sarah aged nine. With Kyle now in all-day kindergarten, Dan feels compelled to use the increase in free time to return to his dream of writing a best seller. This desire is conflicted by guilt that his writing has contributed so little to the family's financial health.

After ten years of marriage and tenure with her Fortune 500 company, Cheryl feels stuck. She senses that her rise through the ranks has stalled and itches to move on to a new company in a new locale. Dan loves their current neighborhood and house and wants to stay put, arguing that the kids will be devastated to leave their nearby best friends.

Sarah wins the lead role in a school play, a fundraiser for the PTA. The male lead is a new student at their school. During rehearsals for the play, Dan becomes acquainted with Merrie, the mother of the male lead.

Encountering Dan while dropping her son off at school, Merrie asks if there are any good coffee shops in the area, and he jumps at the chance to introduce her to his favorite neighborhood spot. He finds her increasingly attractive as she tells her story: new to Chicago, no friends, missing her close-knit family in Nebraska, her son having trouble adjusting to the diversity of his classmates. She also shares that she feels neglected by her husband and suggests they relocate to his nearby house and make love. He is shocked at her boldness but also troubled that she has picked up on his estrangement from Cheryl.

The attraction to this new temptress only adds to his struggle to reconnect to his increasingly unhappy wife.

Dan's mother organizes a visit by a busload of relatives to see Sarah perform in the play, which further erodes Dan's confidence. And the trip proves to be too much of a strain on Bea, Dan's 106 year-old great-grandmother. Within weeks of the visit, Bea begins a steady decline towards death, news of which makes him come to dread even more his next birthday, on May 31, traditional Decoration Day. Bea shares this birth day with Dan and his father, which makes the celebration an annual obligation Dan wishes in the best of times he didn't have to endure, and the stress of Bea's decline only adds to Dan's estrangement.

Can this couple survive?