We had managed to score the couch. Scoring the couch at Seattle is a rarity, but somehow tonight was our night and that couch was ours. M had bought two books and was eager to start reading one, while I was happy to just sit there in silence with my tall almond-flavoured cappuccino. But M handed one of her books to me to read, and before long we were both holding a book in one hand and a coffee in another, lost in other worlds.
But I was distracted and didn’t feel like reading. I also didn’t feel like getting immersed inside one of M’s books, only to have to give it back to her at the end of the evening. And I really felt like just sitting there in silence, quietly observing the world and allowing my thoughts to run away with me. And so, eventually, I closed the book she had propped in my lap and I peered at the coffee shop world from behind my coffee mug.
And that’s when I saw them.
At first it looked like father and daughter and daughter’s girl friend. The man seemed to be early forties. Grey hair. Balding. Paunch. Wealthy. Clearly he had also had a tiring Monday and was also keen to just sit somewhere quiet and drift away on a wave of coffee aroma. He really didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the friend that was tagging along nor about her constant jabber and girly giggle. In fact, he looked like he really wanted some silence.
The daughter, on the other hand, was evidently working hard to keep the gathering together. When she was talking to her friend, her body language and eye contact showed that she was trying to involve her father in the conversation and vice versa too. It was only when the friend said “You must be so excited to get married!” followed by (yet another) giggle, and when the daughter kissed her father in a very un-daughterly manner, that I clicked: it is not father, daughter and daughter’s friend – it is a couple, and the girl’s friend.
Suddenly the evening became interesting.
And I watched those two. What on earth would inspire a man like that to want to marry a girl like that? He looked as if he had already been married and had already fathered children. Why go through all that again with a young poppie like her? He looked tired. He looked like he should be sitting at home somewhere with his feet up reading the paper with a sherry in his hand while, every now and then, making small-talk to his teenaged children. Not here with a young bride-to-be.
And I looked at her. What did she see in a man like him? A young doll like her couldn’t possibly have found a grey, balding, bellied man like him attractive, so what’s the story? Their body language didn’t suggest that they were deeply in love and it didn’t look as if she was pregnant, so what was the story? How did they come together and why is it heading towards marriage?
And suddenly, in that moment, I had a bit of a reality check. I have, to date, loved two older men in my life. The one was between 10 and 11 years older than me, the other between 12 and 13 years. Luckily neither ended in marriage (though the one almost did) and maybe it is better that way. Granted, I tend to gravitate more towards older men simply because the men (or boys, rather) that I meet who are my age just simply don’t meet my requirements. They are usually too restless or too placid, too eager to please or too intolerant, too opinionated or lacking any opinion of any kind. Age, from what I’ve seen, tends to mellow men a bit and add some depth to their characters. Before then boys just want to get drunk and have sex. Older men want to savour a good red wine and appreciate that there is a difference between sex and making love.
But could I actually marry an older man?
Probably not.
How could I take a life partner who is almost a generation older than me?
How could I be the wife of someone who remembers hearing about the Challenger disaster over the radio? Or about the breaking down of the Berlin Wall?
And how could I, prematurely, sacrifice the whimsical and fickle nature of youth for more demure behaviour?
I don’t think I could.
So maybe it’s time I gave men my age a break and paid closer attention to them again. After all, I don’t want someone to one day think that my husband, or husband-to-be, is my father.
* This was blog was written offline on 11 June 2008.
