One year in my "new normal". Job is doing well, have made friends. Not the kind of friends who I can call and drop by for a glass of wine unannounced, but nice. Not like my "homies" but nice. There is an unusual amount of seniors up here. I find when I go back to Chicago I love to visit my sons in the city and just sit and enjoy all the hustle and bustle and young people moving around. In a vacation community there are young people but they're with their families and it's different.
I find I tend to lay rather low in the high tourist times. It's depressing to see all the families on vacation. my heart still breaks thinking of past times up here with the family when it was whole.
I have wonderful old friends from home who come see me, and my sons come up when they can.
Dating. Ha! Have been on Match.com, and others. There's a reason why men in their 60's are single. I know, everyone has a friend who met someone nice on line. (thanks, makes me feel even more like a loser). Note to self: "never say that to someone, or tell them that your friend met someone on line and are getting married next week" I've met a lot on line, but no one who I want to go out with another time. I don't want to get married again, but would like to go to dinner, movies, plays, etc. with someone. Never has gotten into doing that stuff alone. Am reading a book, Labor Day, by Joyce Maynard. There's a paragraph in there that really hit home for me and is exactly what I'm feeling.
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The young boy is describing his divorced mother: "What I decided was, it hadn't been losing my father that broke my mother's heart, if that was what had taken place as it appeared, It was losing love itself--the dream of making your way across America on popcorn and hot dogss, dancing our way across America in a sparkly dress with red underpants. Having someone think you were were beautiful, which, she had told me, my father used to tell her she was, every day.
Then there's nobody saying that anymore and you are like one of those ceramic hedgehogs with the plants growing on it that the person who bought it forot to keep watered. You are like a hamster nobody remembered to feed."
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Perfectly put!!
