When this writer’s mother found herself suddenly single at 61, she turned to her daughter for advice. And that advice led to a crash course in online dating.
Two years ago, when my 61-year-old mother called me in tears to announce that my stepdad wanted out of their 18-year marriage, I did the only thing I could think of to make her feel better: I found a pretty picture of her in a lavender satin dress and wrote her a Match.com dating profile. My three brothers and I hoped she’d find a nice guy who’d watch The Voice with her and rave about her Brussels sprouts.
We were completely unprepared for the feeding frenzy that followed.
Dozens of men responded, and my mum had a steady stream of suitors — at one point juggling four. It was awesome to see her happy again: hiding one man’s flowers under the sink before another one rang the doorbell; making Eagles CDs to go on cruising dates down the coast; sending me texts, such as “OMG! I just rode a Harley for the first time.”
My mum and I have always been close, and I loved my new role as her dating coach. I imparted all the romantic advice I’d read on the Internet about how to talk to a man about exclusivity and whether to consider a widower who’d lived alone for the past decade as a good bet for marriage. I persuaded her to trade in her boxy black sweaters for lacy camisoles, although she insisted on keeping her tall black boots. (“The boys love the boots,” she said.)
When she lamented about what to do about her greys “down there,” I told her about Brazilians.
Then it got awkward. Sometimes we forgot we were mother and daughter, and conversations ambled into TMI discussions about safe sex and Viagra. Let's just say that relationship expert Iris Krasnow got it right in her new book Sex After...: Women Share How Intimacy Changes as Life Changes when she revealed that our baby-boomer parents are having a pretty good time out there.