Late love?…

In early October my best friend, Marcy, and I headed out on a car trip, one we laughingly called our Thelma and Louise trip. Our final destination was our cabin here on the St. George Peninsula to enjoy the early fall together – the pine woods, the sea coves, the long walks and some good food. 

We were first headed to Newport RI to see Marcy’s longtime college friend Andy compete in a sailing regatta. The weather turned blustery and miserable and we ended up hanging in our hotel room for most of the day. We finally did venture out into a downpour and found the BEST Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. Later in the day we found Andy looking pretty drenched and cold after finishing his race. We spent a couple of hours with an exhausted, but hilariously charming Andy and his awesome wife, Maureen. The next morning the day was bright and clear as we headed up towards Maine. We somehow managed to hit the autumn’s color show of leaves perfectly.

I told Marcy that when we got up to the cabin I was – as in, “we were” – going to create and publish her profile on Match.com. To say she was wary and uneager would not understate her reluctance. It had been almost four years since Art, her first love and husband of almost fifty years, had died. I’ve seen her become increasingly isolated and sequestered in a way that I didn’t thing was good.

Both of us share that quality about ourselves, her perhaps a bit more than me, but we both know how to retreat and insulate ourselves from the world. Truly, it can be a wonderful thing, but not always a good thing. My son likes to say it’s a cat-like nature, I’m not sure about that, but it’s something we both crave and can easily convince ourselves something we need.

There is no one like my gal Marcy, she is uniquely herself…ironic, contrary, creative, fiercely smart and quick-witted. I knew there was another chapter left in her life, and, although she was stubbornly resistant, she agreed to give it a try. A few days later when we were lounging around our cabin, I made her get her IPad out and we got started. She was quite the unwilling partner in crime. I aided and encouraged, helped her pick out photos, and struggled to get her to write a proper profile about herself. Her approach was to create a list of things she liked and disliked – I told her this wasn’t good, she wouldn’t budge. She ended the list by saying she wasn’t looking for a great romance, just someone she might share some conversation and a few laughs with. In all honesty, she had no idea what she was looking for. I was hoping she could find love, or even just some enjoyable company.

As I write this, three months have passed, and Marcy – having met an amazing man within five days of pressing the publish button on Match.com – is deeply in love and trying to figure out how to surrender to this almost unfathomable world of late love.

Watching her now, so young-hearted, so happily dazzled by a fresh intimacy she’s never thought could be hers, is like looking into a mirror, a reflection of my own heart lost in such a late love. Before Thom and I met, neither one of us had the imagination or nerve to expect this degree and this kind of love could be ours. For me, to know my dearest and oldest friend has stepped through and into the same looking glass of late love makes me extremely happy.

That riot of fall color Marcy and I enjoyed outside the windows of our cabin has been wondrously replaced three months later with our first dazzling snowfall of the winter. We built a fire and, as Thom and I nestle into each other and gaze out into the swirling snow I wonder to myself – is it really late love? I think what Marcy and her man are finding, is what Thom and I awaken to each day with an ever deepening and expanding understanding of what love can be, what it can do, how it can feel… I’d say it’s anything but late, really – seems like for me and my best friend, it has finally happened just in time.