MeeMaw has a Boyfriend

In one of my crazy books written years ago, I talked about how tacky is was for someone named MeeMaw to have a boyfriend, meaning that a geezer woman needed to either hang in with the old fart she married when he was still young and cute or to be happy in her MeeMaw status, sporting roll-down stockings and keeping the cookie jar full. 

And when I became a grandmother myself I fully subscribed to my earlier stand, although I can't bake and I don't own a cookie jar.  I even wrote a blog post about how lacking I was in any interest in the romantic arts.  (See That Dog Still Hunts)

Until now.  I’m here now to tell the world that MeeMaw (in my case, Grammy, me, Marcia) has a boyfriend and his name is Joe.

Joe was my boss twenty years ago and his wife, Mary, was my friend.  When Joe’s beloved Mary and my adored brother, Sandy, died within just a few days of each other, we were both left wondering if that was it for us.  Would the rest of our lives be spent in lonely waiting for our own sad ends?

Enter Facebook, that newfangled arena for reuniting old people, and the rest is our own personal history.  We have liked and loved and lived and laughed and yes, lusted (sorry kids) in a powerful way, and I have to take back most everything I said about sex in our later years.  What we lack in prowess is made up for with some wisdom and great humor.  

So now, we are trying to figure out how to make it work, to love each other while still taking care of our children and grandchildren, to balance the me and you with the us, to look forward to the years we have and to prepare for the time we don’t have.

We feel very lucky to have (re)found each other at what might have been considered too late a date. Lucky and happy.