Today, I had the chance to visit with a long-time friend and his wife. In this case long-time means upper seventies. In a hallway was a sweet picture of my buddy and his wife — when they were first married. He just looked like a younger version of himself. She beamed with youthful prettiness, really attractive.
I’m in their same age bracket, but I’m recently widowed. And I’m aware of a new gap in our togetherness. I’m single. They’re together. There’s a kind of solidity and structure in married couples that allows for continued friendship with now-single friends…thank god. But it really is different. I’m in a new frame, looking for something that goes beyond the quiet huddling, the bedroom cuddling, the stability of playing house with predictable chores and support like shopping together and cooking and doctor’s visits.
Similar, but in a new way, with new limits and angles. Child rearing is off the table…hopefully, if not your own then your progeny’s. Wage earning is complete. Comfort, fun, travel, gentle hobbies or just plain reading and relaxation fill the days. And if we are lucky in health and adequate wealth the agenda for our later time together slides to companionship, caring and convenience, beyond the larger life goals of family and career and solvency.
But it’s still a crap shoot beyond the wrinkles around the eyes, family longevity and the power in your golf-swing. Pairing in old age is certainly about compatibility and shared interests beyond grandkids, in-laws, religion and vegan diet. Can it work? Sure, it can. But it has the feel of a similar game…like moving from tennis to ping-pong. New partners add the joy of shared interests in special recipes and favorite restaurants and dancing and music and, and, and. We are living our life at another level of pacing and depth…scuba diving versus racing over the waves. Intense in its own way.
So, of course, there’s quite a change, I find, as I age. No longer drugged by the pheromones of early attractions, there is still, of course, very real attraction, mellowed by the life experience that we bring to the connection, and of course the shared comfort of sharing comfortably with another well past all the busy-ness of the past but rich and mellow, nonetheless.
Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/
