Pell - Love, again : the wisdom of unexpected romance

Love, Again is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed.

Copyright 2015 by Eve Pell

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

B ALLANTINE and the H OUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following to reprint preexisting material: Dorothy Cresswell: Song lyrics by Dorothy Cresswell, 2008. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Agneta Falk Hirschman: Poem entitled Two Birds by Agneta Falk Hirschman.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pell, Eve.
Love, again: the wisdom of unexpected romance / Eve Pell.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-8041-7646-0
eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-7647-7
1. Love in old age. 2. Older peopleSocial aspects. 3. Older peoplePsychology. 4. Love. I. Title.
HQ1061.P3423 2015
306.70846dc23 2014034541

www.ballantinebooks.com

Jacket design: Misa Erder

v3.1_r1

(In Order of Appearance)

Sam Hirabayashi and Eve Pell

Californians and competitive runners, Sam and Eve fell in love at the respective ages of 77 and 67.

Agneta Falk Hirschman and Jack Hirschman

Artists and poets, Agneta and Jack live in San Franciscos North Beach, where they are charter members of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. Her friends call her Aggie.

Howard Solomon and George Oliver

Howard is a retired professor and artist, George a retired writer and teacher. They go back and forth between Howards house in Maine and Georges apartment in New Orleans.

Patricia MacDonald and Winston MacDonald

Pat is a retired nurse, Winnie a retired coach. They were high school classmates in Athol, Massachusetts, married other people, lived their lives, and reconnected fifty years later.

Vilma Kracun Crisstomo and Joo Crisstomo

Vilma is from Slovenia, Joo from Portugal. They live in Queens, New York. She is a retired nurse; he still works occasionally as a butler.

Jack Osborn and Sherrie Osborn

Jack and Sherrie live in Marin County, California. Their relationship was orchestrated by their daughters, who were longtime friends.

Carole Abrams and Steven Katz

Though a committed couple, Carole and Steven have separate homes, she in New York City and he in Hackensack, New Jersey. This phenomenon is called LATliving apart together. Steven is retired from a varied career, while Carole continues to be involved with orphanages in Africa, and both are adoptive parents.

Tricia Elam-Walker and Chuck Walker

Tricia and Chuck met in 1977, at a gathering of black law students in Boston. Tricias father, a judge, was Chucks mentor. They married other people and reconnected decades later.

Maria Manetti Shrem and Jan Shrem

Philanthropists who each made a fortune in business, Maria and Jan are pillars of the San Francisco social scene.

Margaret Julkowski and Charlie Henson

Margaret and Charlie met after each had moved into the senior trailer park in Pismo Beach, California. They are LAT, with homes at opposite ends of the park.

Dusty Miller and Dorothy Cresswell

Dusty, a teacher and writer, and Dorothy, a retired kindergarten teacher, knew each other as part of a community of activist gay women in Massachusetts. Both had early marriages to men before they began relationships with women.

Bob and Rori

Bob and Rori, who prefer not to use their last names, recently eloped. They met on a bike path. She had a flat tire and he stopped to help.

Penelope Canan and Victor Hurlburt

These staunch defenders of the environment live in Orlando, Florida. Victor is a semiretired engineer, and Penelope is a retired sociology professor.

Dorothy Peterson and Bob Firth

Dorothy and Bob met at a retirement home in Georgia. She was a widow when she moved in; he lived there with his wife, who subsequently died of Alzheimers. They are newlyweds.

Sally Werntz and Donald Shombert

Sally and Donald met online and have been married for eight years. He is a retired chemistry professor, she a retired businesswoman. They live outside of Philadelphia.

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.

Robert Browning

This book would never have happened if it werent for Sam Hirabayashi. He was a Japanese American who was interned in camps during World War II, became a pillar of his community, and retired from a career as a government statistician. Doesnt sound romantic, does it? But he was a handsome, fit, and charming widower. After two divorces, I was single and looking. We belonged to the same running club in Northern California.

I planned a trap for him, which you will read about, and into which he tumbled. It was 2005, and we dated for two years. Then, when I turned 70 and he turned 80, we added our ages together, had a 150th birthday party, and announced our engagement. We married a year later.

Why would a pair of grandparents, when there were not very many grains of sand remaining in our hourglasses, do something that is traditionally thought of as the province of the young?

It was crazy; it was wonderful. After our wedding, we went to Hawaii. You must never call this a honeymoon, Sam told me on the plane. That way, no one can ever say that our honeymoon is over. See? Romantic.

In the time we had, we were truly cemented together. That boundless connection with him, something I had never experienced before, opened my heart.

I was not prepared for that, especially at my age.

Old models of the elderly didnt allow for new romance. When I was a kid, old men sat around and amused small children by making funny noises with their pipes; old women ran the houses and beamed when we came to visit. I saw old people as proper, set in their ways, conventional, slow-moving, and formal, as if they didnt experience the same kinds of feelings that I did. Even though two of my grandparents married again after their spouses died, I never thought of them as romantic and certainly not as sexualeach was just an old person who now lived with another old person instead of living alone.

Now that Im old myself, though, that is not enough and that is not me. Most of the people you are about to meet have also refused to be limited by stereotypesin fact, they are making their own rules. Old people who follow their own hearts now are not considered exceptional or outlandishless Auntie Mame and more Judi Dench.

Old people are meetingonline, in bars, at senior sports venues, in old-age homes, in grocery stores, on cruise shipsand falling in love, brazenly, quietly, unexpectedly, in ways as varied as human personalities. The fastest-growing demographic in online dating is individuals over 60.

America is graying, particularly as baby boomers, that huge bulge in the belly of the python, move into their 60s. The population aged 65 and over increased from 35 million in 2000 to 41.4 million in 2011and is projected to reach 79.7 million in 2040. Accordingly, there are more single old people than everwidows and widowers and those who have never married; those who have never found Mr. or Ms. Right; those who are too embarrassed about being old to look for love; those who feel that romance has no place in the lives of grandparents; and the silver splitters who divorce late in life. The AARP reports that 45 percent of adults 65 and older are divorced, separated, or widowed.