Just saw a movie in which a 57 year old man comtemplates starting over with a much younger woman who has a four-year-old. Ironically enough, he abandoned his own child years before. The older man/younger woman reminds me of a friend, male, of course, who started over at 50-something. Grown children, sons and daughters. Married a much younger woman. At 60, he became a father again, delighted, brimming over with grandfather energy, only toward a son, not a grandson. Meanwhile, the grown children are distant, far away; he was too busy carving out a career to be close to them when they were growing up. His then wife kept the homefront. He got to do it all again, with a kinder heart.
It makes me mad. As a woman, I can’t start over, not without the kind of surgeries and invasive procedures I’d rather not do. I can’t make a new immediate family through my body. I think about the grown children of men who begin young families again and wonder what they think. And what about the ex-wives, unusually in solid middle age when husband moves to someone younger. Now there are all kinds of reasons marriages die; interest in sex goes, boredom sets in, people travel down separate paths mentally and emotionally. I understand that. I understand it isn’t necessarily the man’s fault.
I’m just jealous that my friend got another clean slate, family-wise, to do it over again, this time with heart. I don’t want a startover, but I’d love the option. Interesting nature didn’t provide it.
Karleen Koen — writing life 