Swimming into Caves

Swimming into Caves.

You like and then you love and then there is sex and then children. Is this merely the evolutionary thrust and parry of life, or is it now for me in later life the fairytale or the fable? I realize the happiness that I still long to cradle is slightly tinted now with these options. And by that I don’t mean tainted by opaque relationships. You see up until I was about 45 my marriage and my children were largely my wants and desire. They were the ‘fairytale’ story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending , and I so wish that I could finish this story here. However my wife saw elements in that life that she perceived as designed to mislead her from a fairytale happiness. Once the children were gone in record time the storm clouds rolled over the rainbow and this part of my life did not finish with happy colours. The cruel irony of the fairytale is that it can turn out to be the dull rain of disappointment. 

But after a few years and more of 50 years old, I finally discovered what love was again, and at the least this was not the same fairytale or even the same story. After a brand new awakening of the means of social networks and proximities and travel and swimming and dancing we finally got to sex. Mind you it took a month to kiss and another month of acting like teenagers but finally we referred to it demurely as ‘making babies’. This had a nice familiar ring to it for both us, even though we had never been so crass as to call it this before, but we like our children and see them as the enduring happiness of other happy lives. I meet her children and she meets my children and they all wince at the thought or mere suggestion of our intimacy, and we look past them only thinking of far off grandchildren. Those young couple's are more needing of the term baby making, but I know that these words can never be uttered for them let alone for us! But in all they represent future and now a different sort of commitment and the warm inner glow of non-judgemental acceptance née, love. 

Much less is said of the others progeny rather than an openness about the beautiful babies we could make. This of course is only said out loud as almost in relief of the vast array of dead relationships and dreadfully dead bodies that I had to step over on the battlefields of on line dating. So many times I arrived at the place called just satisfactory and I filled out the questionnaire of just how much do we agree on so many times I knew it by heart... probably the wrong noun there maybe try rote learning for it’s sheer repetitiveness. Are my peers inhibitions and suspicions as commonplace as theirs? The weirdness of online and the super weirdness of meeting sans children and without any other social structures, was happily broken with the outliers. Since this is about the love-sex-children equation this starts at the, first meeting tongue down throat why don’t you try me out, date. No. 

I quickly discovered that everything about our interactions, our bodies and our expectations are different at 50+, like from another planet different. All of these cues have ahead of them a lifetime to fester and depending on what path you have arrived from means none of these might be similar.... starting with mere intricacies such as the truth, photos and real life, and what exactly does available mean? And the phenomena of, no this is the way it’s done and this is the only way it’s done, to the other juxtaposition (pun intended) of, I missed out in my past nun life so you better give it to me good every which way you can and hurry up about it. I’m sorry but actually I am the rare and endangered one woman man, but even so when those relatively young 40+ women lay claim to having my babies I am just not up for it (so to speak). Once we ever got past the fact that I am not an axe murderer and have manners to boot, then the explosion of women’s liberties would kick in and throttle the fairy out of the tale. There’s also that old notion of love, ladies.

Generally my faithful golden retriever aged eight and looking good, so about 56 blond and attractive, was a terrific barometer. The women that slapped her repeatedly on the head like a statue, virtually insisted on sex after a week and thereafter asked for money in the form of a new gaucci handbag after two weeks. When I left her with another faux date in the park to go to the toilet I returned to find here stretched to the end of her lead, rather than usually with her head nestled against their knee, and promptly found that she was a chronic racist against Asians, but presumably also against dogs. One pretty little woman stared at her in fright as she sat and stared steadily back with those dumb cow eyes that most woman fall in love with. After overly hugging me and gushing at us for two dates she then texted and asked never to see me again. We were both relived. Yes my dogs reaction was usually spot on and a precursor to her instantly liking my current partner and us sticking together ever so easily. 

By giving it more time and more intimacy and discovering love slowly I did find love with my eventual partner. After trying and giving up and trying to overcome the obstacles again and again it was the ever slow and steady that finally got us both to the mutual love station. At 55 now we are engaged and the sex is better than ever and we still joke constantly about making babies and how beautiful they would be. We know this is not a fairytale because we have been there before, but as a fable it is also not a fictitious narrative or statement, it is not meant as a falsehood or lie. The beauty of our fable (as a transitive verb) is to talk or write about it as if it were true. To test this, well after a year on we awoke one glorious morning in my tall trees fairytale bedroom with the birds chirping at sunrise and us hugging furiously in the cold and listening to the slight rumble of the ocean in the distance. I pulled my love close and cheekily asked about making babies but she stared at the ceiling for a little and then said almost apologetically,

‘You know my body can‘t make any more babies.’ To which I let this sit for a bit and I said back quietly and gently.

‘Yes I know I don’t have any swimmers on the blocks anyway.... but let’s keep trying anyway!’

ACJ050421