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It only took about 30 years of dating for the right one to show up! The one with little baggage, no children and never married. The one who would seamlessly slide into my life. Who was encouraging and kind. The one who was looking for a heart connection.
I was 45 and he was 41. In less than two years, we would be married. The odds of getting married in your 40s, according to census data, are 15 percent. In 2008, when I met Larry, the median age for a woman to get married was 28. I’ve always been a little off! But when your person appears, it’s never too late. We have been married for over 14 years. Honestly, it was the easiest and smartest decision I ever made.
Certain moments, events, even whole days sometimes sear into your memory. What you were wearing, the weather, the food. The people. December 6, 2008, is one of those days for me.
I was wearing a crushed velvet silver V-neck button-down and a shimmery short skirt with red roses fluttering across the shiny material. He was wearing a dark, maybe black overcoat with a blue oxford shirt peeking out, a blue that matched the color of his eyes, clear and warm behind a pair of metal-framed oval glasses. My hair was long, wild and curly. His was neatly trimmed, as was his beard. Precise. We were opposites in every way.
It was a Saturday and I was hosting an event at my new-age bookstore, Breathe Books, in Baltimore. Many people came out on that cold day for the book talk, including a man I was seeing at the time, J. After the event, J waited for me to grab my coat to head out to lunch as my employee, Robin, motioned to me.
“There is a guy over here who wants to talk to you about a book,” she nodded towards him standing by the Vegetarian cookbooks.
“His name is Larry.”
I believe Robin knew this was a moment. There are gut moments. YES moments.
Larry jumped right in and told me about a friend, an author in the United Kingdom, with a new book from a small press. The book would fit in here perfectly, he said, even though this was his first time in the store.
Ley lines, grids and energy that wrap around the earth were the topics in the book. Crop Circles and burial mounds in Southern England rounded out the conversation. The year before, I took a group to visit Crop Circles and explore the standing stones at Avebury, Stonehenge, and Ley Lines in Wiltshire, England. Larry had been there a few months before, doing much the same.
In quick order, he dropped into the conversation that he had been a literal rocket scientist at NASA and was now an eco-entrepreneur, environmentalist, and into earth science and metaphysics. He was speaking my language, and there was a definite spark, but all I could think was too, too, too, too… To tall, too good-looking, too smart, too young.
Still, I couldn’t resist.
My mind jumped to a cool picture I’d taken at Stonehenge that summer, with faint orbs of light floating around the standing stones. We hovered over my desk together, looking at the mysterious balls dancing around the ancient stones on the computer in the back of the shop. It felt a little electric to stand there with him.
Larry asked for a copy of the picture, so we exchanged emails. I feel like I straightened my top and brushed down my skirt, shook my hair and composed myself, although none of that happened, physically, at least, but perhaps mentally.
At 45 years old, single, never married, I had done my share of dating. They could be great on the surface but soon turned needy or distant, overbearing or inscrutable, available then unavailable. I had to admit that Larry seemed different. The conversation flowed as we chatted, looking at each other with appreciation, curiosity, and familiarity. I came home to an email that offered to enhance my orbs, in the Stonehenge picture.
From December to June we would see each other with increasing frequency. Larry was silly, sweet, and supportive. He joked with waiters and baristas, told goofy stories to friends we bumped into, was delighted by my successes, and was helpful and creative in failures. He didn’t need me to complete him, and I didn’t need him to complete me.
We were two whole, grown-up human beings who recognized just how nice a union would be.
Neither of us had or wanted children. And neither of us liked watching sports on TV. Marriage had not been the most important thing to either of us. A deep connection, however, was key.
Previous boyfriends tried to change me, were intimidated by my independence, told me I was too loud, enthusiastic, even chaotic. Larry thought I was extraordinary, exuberant and exciting.
Was it the psychic who told me that “the one” would ask to hold my hand out of the blue? (Larry did.) Was it when Larry brought his dog Shadow over to meet me? (The dog and I fell instantly in love.) Was it the time when I wondered out loud at dinner, “Are we moving too slowly?” Larry reached across the table, touched my face, and said, “It’s inevitable.”
Exactly one year to the day we met, when Larry and I had already been living together for over four months, he stoked the fire in the fireplace while I read the Sunday New York Times, The Modern Love column, to be exact. He snuggled up to me and said, “I’d like to propose…that we spend the rest of our lives together.”
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
“If you’ll have me!”
We were married on September 26, 2010, when I was 47 and Larry was 43. A potluck wedding on a farm with 100 guests. Our home soon expanded to three dogs. Too, too, too, too became so, so, so, so ... So loving. So easy. So right. So worth the wait.
Have any of you married later in life? Let us know in the comments below.
