All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [50]
It’s February, and I’m celebrating my forty-fourth birthday, throwing a pizza party with my friend Guillermo, the Italians and Latin Americans competing against each other to see who can make the perfect crust, the guests happy for whatever combination of arugula, prosciutto, mozzarella, or mushrooms comes out of the kitchen next. I’m grateful for my lively group of friends, and many tell me, leaving the party, that they met so many interesting people.
Sandra helps me clean up, collecting wineglasses and washing dishes. “This was fun,” she says, as we dry the last of the pile.
“Definitely,” I say, flicking back the olive green boa my Italian friend Tonia gave me earlier in the evening. I pour us another glass of wine and we finally sit, sinking into the couch.
“Here’s to a great year,” she says, and we clink glasses. We revisit the guests—who was funny, who was the handsome guy with the gray hair, who didn’t show up, when did so-and-so get divorced. “There were some really nice, interesting, smart men here,” Sandra observes. “Why aren’t you dating any of them?”
“There’s a different, complicated reason for each one,” I tell her. “Let’s just say I’m lucky to have a lot of great friends.”
“Things haven’t exactly been easy for you in the past couple years, especially with men.” She folds a dish towel. “I suppose it doesn’t get easier for any of us after forty. It’s tough terrain.”
I nod. She’s faced a lot of challenges herself: a child with learning difficulties, trying to keep her family afloat financially, having to move to the suburbs to find an affordable school. Almost anyone who is middle-aged can give you a long list of things that have gone wrong or that didn’t turn out the way they expected. But at least by now we have some measure of experience and wisdom to deal with it all. “Things definitely aren’t easy for anyone.”
I have made progress, I tell her, in getting over my setback, a difficult experience that left me skittish with men, more aware of my vulnerability. I have even come to think that it’s probably not such a bad thing that I am more in touch with that side of myself. But though I’ve dated a couple of men, even for a few months each, I still feel buffeted around by my fears. I’m also still unsure how to reconcile my wanderlust and desire for companionship and a home. In other words, I am right where I started when I headed out into my forties.
“Now I only have a year until I’m forty-five,” I tell Sandra, “and that seems like the expiration date.”
“For what?” Sandra asks.
“For finding a husband, a home, a family.”
Sandra shakes her head. “We adopted Aldo when I was about your age,” she says. “Your friend Ben adopted a kid when he was sixty. Nothing expires until you do.”
STILL, AFTER SANDRA leaves and I go to bed—the mattress dips on my side, unbalanced—I decide I need to wage a campaign to find a real boyfriend before I turn forty-five. I’m not sure where to begin. The obvious place to start would be with the usual resolutions about losing weight, but I’m in good shape and by this age I realize that my problem with relationships is heavier than fifteen pounds, convenient as that excuse has been.
Actually, thinking about my weight reminds me that I did have a big success with a previous campaign, in my thirties, to learn to eat normally and feel better about my body. Having had a grim history of chaotic eating and hating my body, I decided, at thirty, to reinvent the way I eat. That involved going to Italy to learn to cook and eat like an Italian, with a good deal more discipline, sociability, and appreciation than I was theretofore accustomed to, always sitting down for meals instead of compulsively grazing by the light of the fridge. I managed to completely turn my eating around, learning how to