FINDING LOVE AFTER A 'CERTAIN' AGE

When people of a ‘certain’ age find themselves suddenly single, where do they turn to find love? Let’s forget for a moment singles bars and dating sites. Most singles bars have closed down due to lack of interest and smaller centers just wouldn’t have one anyway. Dating sites, while productive to some, don’t always work. People in their fifties and sixties may find it too personal, they don’t trust their information being sent off into a cyberspace. Anyway, lots of us just aren’t computer savvy.

Setups by friends can work, assuming you have friends who have single friends they want you to meet. Lots of people, though, don’t want to be in that position of being a matchmaker. Too much trouble and it can come back to bite you. So where do people of a particular age find love? Take the story of two of my favourite people in the world. Both I have known for many years, and seperately have played a part in my life.

They find themselves with spouses who are terminally ill and spend hours of each day visiting the hospital, each devoted to the care and needs of their ill partner. Mary, not her real name, has the kind of personality that is nurturing and all giving. Mary loves to take care of people and to feed them and look out for them and iron their clothes. Mary loves being a wife. Her children are grown with kids of their own. Her husband, who she visits daily, is her second husband; her first having succumbed at a young age to heart failure. Mary now finds herself, once again, contemplating the world alone without the love of a good man to whom she can cater.

Enter Joe. Not his real name, but nevertheless it fits with Mary and it’s an honest name. Joe is visiting his wife of many years who is also ill with no hope of recovery. Joe and his wife have been married for more than forty years, have grown children and several grandchildren and they are all at a loss about what will become of Joe.

Joe and Mary meet up one day in the hallway of the hospital. They have several mutual bonds. First and foremost, Joe and Mary knew each other many years ago; in fact they had many shared acquaintances. Time, as it often does, and circumstances had separated them as life took them down different paths. Secondly, they have their ailing spouses.

Of course, Joe and Mary, stayed in touch after the passing of their spouses. They had that in common. Their shared grief. And as their grief lessened they saw attributes in one another that would ultimately lead to love and marriage. There were no awkward introductions as they became reacquainted with each other’s family. It was familiar and easy.

At the time of their marriage, Joe and Mary were only in their early sixties. Not old. Young enough to grab at and hold onto another shot at love and life.

Joe and Mary have recently celebrated their twenty-first anniversary with a continued sharing of love and respect and an enormous sense of fun. They are busy with their extended and combined families, their many, many friends and their outside interests.

What is this phenomenon that draws us ultimately to someone from our past? Is it the safeness of the encounters? The shared background that makes our conversations, as we start the courtship, so much easier? Not having to ask the usual questions because we already know the answers?

Think of it. Dating is awful. When you are thirty and your skin is taut and your muscles are toned and you have energy to spare, it’s daunting. When you are well into your fifties and sixties, dating is downright intimidating. What will you talk about? What will you do on the first date? The second? If there’s a third, what then? You will discuss the banalities of life. Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Have you had any lasting relationships? The questions are never ending and the answers can be disappointing. Compare this with the accidental or intentional meeting with someone from your past. In the case of Mary and Joe, an old neighbour from many years gone by. No need for the mundane questions. You probably know if they have kids, what they do or did for a living, their religious views. It would be more a case of catching up with their life rather than getting to know about their life. You have a sense of how they treated their former partners because chances are good you were around them and saw first hand. Doesn’t this allow you to skip all the preliminary stuff and jump right into the important stuff, such as, Where is this wonderful road taking us? Are we falling in love?

I think it’s more than the safeness of the encounters. As we live longer and fuller lives, at the ripe old age of sixty we are more than ready for marriage again. We are ready for the romance when it comes along, the intrigue and the all-important love and what better person to experience it with than someone with whom you have some shared past. That’s what Joe and Mary have and now, at eighty-seven and eighty-four, their romance, intrigue and love are still strong with no visible signs of diminishing.

Clearly, Mary and Joe aren’t of the Baby Boomer generation, and, clearly, I did state that my articles would be Baby Boomer related. Yet their story is still valid and important for three very good reasons. First, Mary and Joe were our age when they had the fateful encounter in the corridors of a hospital that led to their romance and ultimate happy marriage. Second, they are the age of our parents so their children are Baby Boomers, and, third, I just really like their story.

ON BEING A SNOW BIRD

Snow birds have always interested me – you know the people who live in cold northern climates and escape to warmer southern climates in the dead of winter. I lived in Florida for six years in the 1960s . My mother was a permanent resident and I visited often, some times twice a year right up until 1984 when she died. Living there and having a home to go to while I visited made me feel more like a native than a snow bird. The snow birds were those very pale people who swam in the very cold ocean on days that Floridians wouldn't even venture to the beach.

This year I officially became a snow bird, travelling by car with my husband to Sarasota to visit a friend who had rented a condo for the winter. All of this was pretty new to me because I had never, in all my visits, been to Sarasota. When I lived there and during the time that I visited my mother she lived in southern Florida.

The drive down was fun as we watched the outside temperature begin to increase by a degree an hour and the snow gave way to bits of greenery, glorious sun and our first palm tree sighting. Boots and coats were relegated to the trunk as we donned shorts and sandals. Bliss.

Crossing into Florida from Georgia was, for me, a major shock. Suddenly there was traffic and lots of it. There were visitor information centres and lots of them. People at the visitor information centres wanted to help us get into Disney for practically nothing in exchange for a mere 2 hour tour of their Timeshare facility. They would even give us a reduced rate in their luxurious and well appointed resort. Ha! We thought, why not? We have no intention of buying anyway and if it saves us millions of dollars it can't hurt. We nearly did it....

Fortunately, we came to our senses. Disney, in my opinion, needs and deserves more time and attention than we could give it. I love Disney and to show it to my husband properly wouldn't be possible on our tight schedule. Better we leave it to our next Florida visit.

Instead we drove to St. Augustine, the oldest continuously settled city in the United States. It was during the drive from the border to St. Augustine that I started to wonder....what has happened to Florida. When did it become this awful urban sprawl? The traffic going along the freeway was bumper to bumper and moving at lightning speed. Going south on I95 through Jacksonville mid-morning on a Sunday seemed busier than rush hour traffic in Toronto. And it didn't let up until we pulled off the freeway to St. Augustine.

If you have been to Florida but not St. Augustine I would highly recommend that you do go there. It's a charming little city with preserved buildings, Victorian and older, that have been maintained in their original state. Owners of downtown houses and businesses can change the inside in any way they wish but must keep the outside historical. There are many ways to see St. Augustine; walking is a great option since it's a compact town or you can hop onto one of the tour 'trains', open air motorized vehicles that stop at about 20 or more locations allowing you to get on and off at will. The buildings and the colour of the downtown are lovely to look at and the pace is slow and easy. After a restful two day stop over in St. Augustine we continued our way through the unbelievable traffic to the Gulf Coast of Florida and Sarasota.

Sarasota, unlike St. Augustine, is an urban sprawl with four lane highways going through it and over it and under it. Sarasota beaches are wonderful, very fine white sand that is almost like talcum powder to the touch. For some reason it doesn't get too hot to walk on barefoot even at the height of the day's heat. There's an abundance of great restaurants, golfing, tennis, fishing, shopping pretty much anything that a snow bird, or a resident, could want. The problem for me, once again, was the weaving in and out through traffic that had to be done in order to get to the beach, the restaurant or the shopping. For this small town Brockvillian, while enjoying immensely the sunshine and the break from our every day lives, it didn't feel restful. St. Augustine, on the other hand, with its old world charm and quieter atmosphere will definitely be my destination of choice, should we decide to go back some winter.

Since coming back home the weather has been a mixed bag of snow, rain, sleet, spring-like temperatures followed by more snow and wind and rain and sleet and cold weather. I have found myself surfing the net for rental deals in the St. Augustine area of Florida, particularly for the month of March and more particularly for accommodation that is pet friendly so we can all go, us and the dogs. The pictures of palm trees, blue skies, bluer ocean, and the memory of walking shoeless on the beach is becoming more and more enticing. Winter is fine. Cross country skiing is fun, we love it and the dogs run along with us but March is something else. March with its sporadic weather patterns has, quite frankly, been getting on my nerves. I think next year, come the first of March, we will be packing up the car, doggies in back, and heading for Florida.

No matter your preference, busy city or quiet seaside town, there's nothing like sitting in a beach hut restaurant, sun on your face, eating shrimp and conch fritters, a glass of cold Pinot Grigio in your hand while looking at the ocean on a very warm and breezy afternoon. It makes it all the better knowing people back home are battling snow, icy winds and shovelling driveways. I'm going to like being a snow bird.

I ALWAYS KNEW I WOULD RETURN - IT WAS MY PLAN

Kim Little always knew that she would raise her children right here in Brockville; even before she had any children to consider, it was just "the plan".

Except for a short stint between grades one and five, when she lived in Kitchener and Pickering with her family, Kim’s school years were spent right here in Brockville. It was upon graduation from TISS that she left home to attend McMaster University and then Bishops University in Quebec. "Even then I knew I would come back to Brockville." And come back she did. Armed with her Bachelor of Arts degree Kim returned to Brockville where she quickly realized her education wasn’t going to help her. This was in 1991, a recession was raging and jobs were scarce. Not without determination, Kim secured a part-time job at a local gift shop and another part-time job as an instructor at St. Lawrence College.

"I was able to put together enough work so that I was doing full-time hours. I did that for a little over a year then moved to Edmonton with my then husband. He attended law school while I worked part-time at the University of Alberta where I also studied for my MBA." During the time Kim spent in Edmonton she recalls really missing Brockville. "I missed the rolling, rocky, lake-riddled terrain of Ontario and the geography of the St. Lawrence River. I once asked someone if there were any lakes around Edmonton for swimming and was told the lakes were either glacier-fed (too cold to swim) or ‘sloughs’." And what exactly is a slough? I had no idea and was given the explanation that it is "a kind of boggy marsh where you certainly didn’t go to swim".

Once her husband had finished law school, the young couple moved to the Toronto area where he was obligated to do his articling while Kim continued her studies at the Rotman School, University of Toronto. It was during this period that daughter, Jessica, was born. "We were like most young couples, not a lot of money, small apartment, but thrilled with this new addition to our family."

"On one of our visits to Brockville we bought a small house downtown. The studying was almost finished and the house would be waiting when the time came to return. With the help of family we would come down pretty much every week-end and work on fixing up the house so that it could be a home and office. It was a comfort knowing that we would have a home to come back to when my studies and his articling were completed."

"When Jessica was just over a year old we drove into Brockville for the last time as visitors. I was so happy to be back. We moved into our house just in time for Christmas with lots of family around. I remember the feeling of driving back knowing I was going home. It felt settled and right."

The only hindrance was they were both temporarily unemployed. "It didn’t matter though. It was so good to be back home in Brockville. This is where my roots were, my parents were here and it didn’t matter. There was a whole future out there. If there were no jobs to be had in Brockville, it wasn’t too far to Kingston and Ottawa." For the first four years back, Kim was self-employed on a contract basis. “I worked for local organizations, for companies in other provinces and even on different continents. With technology today, you can work just about anywhere at just about anything from a home-base of Brockville -- it's fantastic!"

Kim has been living back in Brockville for fourteen years now and there have been changes. The addition of son Zach, born in 1999, and the dissolution of her marriage a few years later. Today, Kim is a supervisor with the Human Services Division of the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville. She is frequently asked how an MBA landed her a job in the social services field, but insists that she applies her education routinely to the business of people serving people. "It is rewarding, challenging, and requires integrative thinking, something the MBA program fostered," says Kim who has been with the Counties for over 10 years in a variety of roles and programs.

Her personal life is equally gratifying. Kim now shares her life with her "co-pilot" Kyle who also left Brockville at one time, only to return to his roots. Kim, Kyle and the kids live in an older bungalow in the east end of Brockville. Though building new was appealing, Kyle and Kim like the convenience of being in town, the safety and maturity of their neighbourhood, and the proximity to schools. And so, they have been renovating for the past year to update the home. While mostly a DIY project, Kim had good things to say about the access to, and quality of work of the local trades people engaged over the course of the project. "Contractor, plumber, electrician, HVAC–they all showed when they said they would, finished when they said they would, and did a quality job."

Of course, I asked if she had any regrets, there are usually some regrets but all I got from Kim was a resounding, "No."

Is there anything she misses that Brockville doesn’t have that she became used to when living in larger cities? "Well I miss the selection of restaurants. And if I were still living in a larger centre, I'd probably take in the theatre more often. Sometimes I miss having those options."

Her quality of family life is so much more than she could have had living in a larger town. "The time that I don’t spend commuting for work means more time with my kids and Kyle. I believe my children are getting a good education here. It is so easy and rewarding to be involved in their education, and their activities." What about their activities? Do they have the same availability to them as larger towns offer? Kim’s reply, "The kids may have the same amount or even have fewer activities to choose from, but the accessibility is greater. It easy to get them to and from their activities. And when I’m there I know the kids, I know the parents of the kids; there isn’t a bunch of strangers all the time."

"Actually, the reasons why I am here could very well be the same reasons some people don’t want to be here. It’s small, you recognize people, people in service industries get to recognize you. My banker says hello to me on the street. I like the feeling that people here in Brockville really look out for each other."

"BROCKVILLE IS A FINE TOWN"

Melinda Hodgins grew up on Butterfield Place in the house her father had built for his family in 1957. A 1967 graduate of BCIVS, Melinda attended Queen’s University in Kingston, where she majored in English Literature and History of Art. In her third year, she attended Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.

“Living in Ireland was wonderful, and after graduating from Queen`s, I returned to Dublin and studied for a further two years at Trinity. I spent as much of my leisure time as possible in the countryside, riding the incredible Irish horses. I loved living in Ireland and being at Trinity, but ultimately, the pull of Canada proved stronger.”

Ready to enter the working world, Melinda, found that Ottawa offered her exactly what she wanted and needed. It had the amenities of a city while retaining a small town aura. “I could take advantage of all that the city offered and still be in the country within thirty minutes. I found it easy to make friends because I had a horse, and when you have a hobby, any hobby, you will meet people through that hobby.”

Melinda secured a position with The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), an agency that works with researchers from developing countries in their search for the means to build better societies. She was surrounded by experts from all over the world and loved working in the company of highly trained and dedicated individuals. She agreed with the philosophy of capacity-building but was never really comfortable in the role of a bureaucrat. In the mid-90s, she was able to take advantage of a buy-out after eighteen years with the IDRC.

Melinda moved to the Canadian Psychiatric Association, where she served as the Senior Copy Editor of several medical journals. “Although I had a background in the humanities rather than in science, my skills in grammar, proof reading and editing served me well. I had also learned some invaluable managerial and administrative skills over time. After working with the Psychiatric Association for almost ten years, I was offered a position with the Canadian Medical Association as Managing Editor of The Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and The Canadian Journal of Surgery.”

“I had certainly planned to work until retirement age. However, one day in June, I woke up to a beautiful morning and decided, just like that, to retire. It struck me that I was, fortunately, in a position to retire, and therefore ought to make the most of what might be the best years of my life.”

“In the meantime, my mother, back in Brockville, was widowed. I was again single after some twenty years, and we had been discussing combining our households. It made sense for me to move to the more spacious family home in Brockville.”

In August of 2008, with her house sold, Melinda moved back to Brockville, although it feels to her sometimes as if she never really left. “We have always been a close-knit family, and I was always coming home for week-ends, birthdays, that sort of thing. That’s not to say it wasn’t a change to actually leave the Ottawa area and re-settle in Brockville.”

Because of the close proximity to Ottawa, Melinda had watched Brockville change and grow since the 60s. “The core has not lost its charm, although I still regret the loss of the lovely old Revere Hotel, which once graced the site now occupied by the Bank of Nova Scotia.” As Melinda sees it, “After a decline, there has been a rejuvenation in the downtown area. Brockville will only improve. Over the years, I have seen communities go through amazing tranisitons. To give two examples, in the 80s I lived on a hobby farm just outside Carleton Place and watched that town revive from a depressed community with boarded up shop fronts to its present vibrant state. More recently, I`ve been watching Kemptville go through the same process.“

Melinda continues to maintain her friendships in the Ottawa area, where she still boards her Arabian gelding. However, on returning to Brockville, she made a point of joining The Newcomers Club of Brockville through which she was able to find and take advantage of groups of interest much more quickly than she could have done alone.

Asked what she does with her spare time now that she is retired, Melinda is adamant that she absolutely loves leisurely mornings. “When I worked, I was up at the crack of dawn to commute into Ottawa. It was always a rush, since I`ve never been a morning person. Now, I read the paper, drink coffee, and stay in my jammies all morning if I want to.”

“I do see my horse almost daily, but it’s not a long drive and there isn’t that urgency to be there at a certain time.”

In addition to her long mornings and visits to her horse, Melinda loves to cook and garden and has joined two book clubs offered by The Newcomers Club. She has recently taken up Irish set dancing. “A family friend had also lived in Ireland. She is an accomplished set dancer and has introduced me to it. As we get older, we need to work harder to maintain a healthy life style and keep moving. Stretch, limber up, but move! Set dancing does that. ” To that end, Melinda has also taken out a membership in the local Curves.

Asked if she would stay in Brockville, Melinda says that she has never been good at planning too far into the future, finding it easier to live for the moment and enjoy each day. “I've never had a rigid game plan. I’ve always built on past experiences. In the meantime, I enjoy living in Brockville. I'm watching the transition of our downtown with great interest. There are positive developments and we are moving forward well. The waterfront is beautiful now compared to when I lived here years ago. Brockville is a fine town.”

On Moving Back to Brockville

 This was the first article I wrote for our local paper. It's the first in a series of four about local people who had moved from Brockville only to return. Hope you like it.
One evening as we watched the Victoria rain pour past our window, my husband, Erik, and I discussed our shared past in Brockville. I had lived there for about seven years back in the 60s and early 70s; Erik had been born there and left for university in 1972. We both admitted to having a hankering to return. It would have to be some years down the road, though, since we had not yet reached retirement age. Then we received an invitation to attend the fortieth wedding anniversay of mutual friends in Brockville and, as newlyweds, we were thrilled to be going back there together. We discussed it and analyzed it and as we talked we realized that we could do it - we could move back to Brockville. After all, housing prices were one-third of what they were in Victoria, we had a good base of friendships and family, and it was something we both had individually thought about when retirement came.

The anniversary party became the catalyst. Our two week vacation, spent in a rented cottage on Lily Bay, was wonderful as we fished on the beautiful St. Lawrence, watched the tall ships at Blockhouse Island, and generally enjoyed all that the area had to offer. We contacted a realtor and within three days found the perfect home; before our two week vacation was half over we had a house to come back to.

All we had to do was return to Victoria and sell a home that we had owned for less than a year in a declining market. Needless to say, that happened. Everything worked in our favour. We sold our house, put our three dogs in a rented RV and drove across the country to our waiting home.

We arrived in early May to see the new leaves, a delicate shade of green, sprouting on the maples on our front lawn. It was our first Ontario spring in many, many years and we loved it. We lived through a hot, humid and mosquito filled Ontario summer that found us, most days, on Graham Lake in our little fishing boat and loving it. We knew it was summer because the maple trees were so full of leaves we couldn’t see through them.

Fall came and the leaves turned their glorious shades of gold and burgundy, the mosquitoes left us and a slight chill in the air took the place of the humidity. It was wonderfully beautiful and we loved it too.

Winter came and brought the snow - something neither of us had experienced in over twenty years. The leaves dropped and we could see clear across the fields to the lake beyond. We got ourselves some cross country skiis, bundled up, and slid across the new snow, the dogs running behind. We loved that too.

We go into Brockville to the ‘new’ areas - where the big box stores are and marvel at how we lived in Brockville without them. We go downtown and point to the storefronts and remember “that used to be Walkers” or “that was the Beamish store” and marvel at how it is all so different and yet all so much the same.

People on Vancouver Island thought we were crazy to leave what they considered to be paradise on earth. The mountains, the ocean, all so close, all at your fingertips. But to us this is paradise. While driving along the TransCanada Highway, our huge beautiful country passing by, we were in awe. Each place we passed had its own particular kind of beauty. We passed through the magnificent mountains of British Columbia; the understated expanse of the prairies, stretching out, unblemished as far as the eye can see; the ruggedness of Manitoba and northern Ontario filled with lakes and forests. Coming into the home stretch we saw the familiar beauty of this area; limestone cliffs, rolling farm lands, charming little towns. When we reached Brockville, there it was, the magnificent St. Lawrence River stretching out before us, the landmark that is Brockville. We knew we were home. We’ve been here for nine months now and have not looked back.

Roy Orbison

    One of my all time favourite singers was the wonderful Roy Orbison. His lyrics were heart- wrenching and when he sang, he was clearly in the kind of agony you only experience when you are a teenager and love has gone terribly wrong. 'Crying' was one of the most perfect examples. “I was alright, For a while, I could smile, For a while” then the inevitable happens, he runs into her and his heart breaks all over again...”Then I saw you last night, You held my hand so tight”....the sentiment and emotion washed over this teen-aged girl like caramel syrup being poured over ice cream. Roy was the master. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he had an enviable range in his voice of three (some say four) octaves, something seldom heard. He was also a magnificent song writer whose music was very complex.

     It wasn't just the lyrics that got me going. It was the dreamy music and swaying to it in the arms of my current boyfriend. There was nothing like it—dancing on a crowded dance floor, Mr. Perfect leading me around, peeking every now and then to see all the other couples, their eyes closed, enjoying young love. The only thing better was listening to those songs with a broken heart. I felt the words so profoundly; they seemed to be written with only me in mind. Lying on my bed, a half-empty box of tissues next to me, sipping on a Dr Pepper and singing softly the words my portable record player was blaring out. The words that were intended to make my breaking heart shatter into a million pieces. When a heart is breaking those songs are better than any therapy. It was heaven to a teen-aged girl.

     Roy Kelton Orbison was born on April 23, 1936 in a small town in Texas. At six, he received a guitar as a gift and by the time he was seven he was completely given over to music. At eight he performed on a local radio show of which he was the host by the late 1940s. He sang in a band in high school and was signed by Sun Records. A classmate named Pat Boone was signed to a record deal which strengthened Roy's belief that he had a future in music. In the early 1960s twenty-two of his songs placed on the US Billboard Top 40.

     In 1960 he wrote a song called 'Only the Lonely' which was turned down by Elvis and The Everley Brothers so he sang it himself. It shot to Number 2 in the US and to Number 1 in the UK and Australia. The rest, as they say, was history.

There were many stories about Roy Orbison—that he was blind, that he was an albino, that his entire family was wiped out in one huge tragedy. Probably they were invented to explain his wearing of sunglasses, his wearing of black and his seemingly melancholy presence on stage as he sang his sad and mournful songs. Due to a childhood bout with jaundice, he had a permanently sallow complexion. He also had very bad eye sight and wore extremely thick glasses. Once, while on tour, he left his glasses on an aeroplane so wore his prescription sunglasses on stage. He found he preferred them to his regular glasses so continued to do so. His penchant for dressing in black had nothing to do with having a melancholy nature; he was in fact a happy and out going man. He was, quite simply, a bad dresser who had no manager so he never benefited from someone telling him how to dress or act on stage.

     While in the UK in 1963, he fronted a new local band called The Beatles. Roy enthralled the audience so much that after fourteen encores he was discouraged from singing anymore so that The Beatles could take the stage. It's said that the Fab Four, whose act was showy and action packed, were completely astounded at the way Roy stood completely still and simply sang his fourteen encores.

     Tragedy struck in 1966 when his wife, Claudette, (whom he had divorced and re-married and was the catalyst for the song Claudette that he wrote for the Everley Brothers) was killed while riding her motorcycle in Tennessee. Then, in 1968, while on tour in England, he received the news that his home in Tennessee had burned down killing his two eldest sons. He remarried a much younger woman in 1969 with whom he had two children.

     As a teenaged girl, I simply loved the feeling I got when I heard his voice; its melancholy lyrics stirring up teenaged girl sentiments. Even today, I find myself being able to recollect exactly where I was, with whom I was dancing, over whom I was crying, when I hear, “You held my hand so tight, As you stopped to say hello…”