The Right Age

      Is it better to get married older or younger. Since I have done neither it may seem odd that I am writing this. Nevertheless I have an opinion so write I shall.
      I think that it is better to get married younger because one is less set in one's ways when one is younger. One is also more likely to have biological children if one marries younger. If one marries younger and stays married to that same person one has the possibility of a deep long relationship with another person. I love seeing old couples who have spent their lives together.
     People who marry older can still have long marriages , children and a life with another person . Not everyone finds a spouse in their twenties. Not everyone is ready for marriage at a young age. A lot of people who marry young divorce and marrying young does not guarantee having children young.
       Some people who got married young regret not having the time on their own before meeting their spouse. They regret having children so young . They divorce to relive lost youth.
         No matter what age one marries one does not get everything one wants . That's just how life is. All one can do is their best .

     

Young or Old

     People always say that age is just a number. this is true but not exactly. As it turns out you can't do everything you want to do in life and age can dictate some of that. Fortunately age does not determine everything. Age does not determine one's attitude and surprisingly age does not determine if one is old or one is young. Some people never seem old no matter how old they really are. My grandma lived to be a few months short of 89 and she never seemed old. This is not because she  was my grandma and I loved her, its because she was never old. She was always engaged in the world around her even as she aged and it was harder for her to get around. She was always interested in new things. My father passed away at 74 which is not old but people who did not know him well were surprised to hear he was as old as he was. He was never old. I have met a lot of elderly people who are still quite vibrant. They never got the memo that they should think like an old goat. It is so refreshing. It makes aging less frightening and more exciting. Maybe I am noticing this the older I get the younger old seems. Perhaps that's part of it but not entirely. Many people who are 65 today do not look or act as old as 65 year olds twenty years ago.
     With age one gains perspective and wisdom of what the world is about. 

Point of View

     On the whole the Jewish film festival of New York attracts an over 60 crowd with a smattering of younger people depending on the film. Or at least this is my view after attending 6 shows this year at various times of the day and week. There was a lady sitting next to me at the 9pm show on Thursday night who thought that the crowd for the Jewish film festival is getting younger now that she is older and it made her feel old.  She felt that she was one of the younger ones years ago  and now that she is one of the older ones she feels that there are more younger attendees now. I hope she is correct but judging by the shows I have attended I know she is wrong. There are some younger attendees but not so many. Israeli films get a younger demographic. That's about it. I never mind being the oldest in audience at a Jewish film because seeing the younger people restores my faith in the continuum of Judaism.If only older people are interested in Jewish things this does not bode well for the future. The best is when there is a mix of ages in the audience. If something is really good it should be able to attract an  audience of various demographics.

Happy Birthday

      Its not my birthday today, but I thought I would write about birthdays in general. It is true that birthdays can be limiting in many ways but in other ways they make me wonder "now what?" When I reach a dreaded age I realize that its not really that different than being the age I was the day before and that there are still things to do and experience regardless of age. There may be things that I cannot do because of my age, but there are lots of things that I can do and I would prefer to focus on the positives. I  enjoy not having to worry about taking the SAT ever again, not wondering how tall I won't end up being as an adult and not wondering about so many firsts in life. Its exciting to do things for the first time but its also nice to have experienced life a little bit  and know what I like and dislike due to life experiences. Then again, , no matter how much in life one has already experienced there is always so much more to accomplish. 

Age Issues

      Nothing more depressing than someone telling me a guy I may be interested is interested in finding someone a lot younger than I am  even though he is my age. It explains a lot- like why he has never asked me out, and though I suspected as much, its still upsetting. Men so have the advantage. What makes it difficult is that age is something that's a fact, its  not something one can do anything about. I try not to let the age thing get to me but this time it hit me like a ton of bricks.Then again, there is no guarantee that a guy looking for a much younger woman will find that much younger woman even if that is who he seeks. 

Never Tell

     When someone asks you out and you are not interested the best thing to do is say no thanks . Don't say you are dating someone . Don't make excuses. Just say no.
      A while ago a guy seven years younger than I am asked me out. I had zero interest in him. Silly me I thought that the age difference might be an issue for him so I told him my age. Big Mistake. He was still interested and now every time he sees me he asks me "What's seven years? What's seven years?" Crap. I'm not interested in  him AND he knows how old I am. If only I had been honest and just said  "No thanks , I am not interested" life would have been so much simpler.

appropriate age differences

sometimes when men divorced men remarry they remarry women who are significantly younger than their first wives. its almost like they have traded up for a younger edition. to be fair some of these men who are remarrying are divorced from their first wives because their first wives initiated their separation.
it is hard to know what to think. these younger women aren't being forced to marry older men.
i would say that it does depend how much disparity there is in the ages of the couple. if there are about ten years difference plus or minus a few years i don't think its such  a big deal. i think that if there is a twenty year age disparity that it is  a bit disturbing because sometimes the man has children who are close in age to their young bride. i think that if a man has never been married and he marries a much younger woman it is a bit different because  he is not thinking that he could have a daughter her age he is just thinking its cool he is marrying such a young woman.
personally, i am looking for a man who is within ten years of my age because i feel most comfortable with someone who is of my generation. if someone prefers the may/december pairing it is their business. different strokes for different folks as they say.

must drive car

among the geriatric set the most important requirement of a romantic partner is that he/she must still be able to drive a car. this of course makes me pause and think . is this what it all boils down to ?  what  does  this mean for   singles under 80 ? perhaps this means that the most important quality in a partner is if he/she can get you where you need to go. for the geriatric this means a car, for those of us who don't yet qualify for medicare this might simply mean "does this person help us get where we need to be in life?"  not so simple to answer and i wish just having a valid driver's licence would do the trick.

age limits

when i was younger all of the singles events had age ranges that were never upheld. there was a crew of men 60-80 who were let in even when the age range was 28-38. i was at an event once with a friend who was 35 and she saw her friend's father there. obviously he was outside of the age limit. now certain groups are very strict about age ranges not even letting someone a year or two above the age range in.
i disagree with the groups that stagger the ages of men and women. whenever they do that i know that there will only be much older men there.
in theory i understand why the powers that be are strict about age ranges, but i also know for a fact that many who are way above the age range are let in if they know the people running the event. if i really wanted to i could push the envelope and get in, but some of the organizers of these events get really rude, so i don't bother.
i wouldn't have such a problem being closed out of an event if there were equivalent events with quality singles for my age range. there are not.
if i had true emunah i would be able to say that its just not meant to be that i go to some singles events but its hard to have emunah without just feeling like i've given up.
i think that there could be a happy medium when it comes to age limits at events. its not the person five years older that you don't want attending, its the person who is 10-20 years older that you want to filter out.
yet again, i am never the right age at the right time.

is 30 the the new twenty?

for the past 10  years i  have heard people say that 30 is the new twenty and 40 is the new 30 but is it really? and if this is true, should it be?
longevity is certainly a factor of the the "new" decade definitions.  when people lived shorter lives it was more important to be more serious about life sooner. with shorter life spans it was more important to have children in one's early twenties because having a child at 40 would mean one had even less time to see them grown up.
though its nice to have extended adolescence  im not sure its necessarily ideal. i think it would be nice to have a spouse and a family earlier in life so one could be more settled earlier and have longer to spend in the more "settled " stage of life.
then again, no matter how "settled" life can seem, there are always curve balls . someone who gets married young could also be divorced or widowed young.
i think that it is good that people are given a longer acceptable time to be young and unsettled these days than they did fifty years ago.it eases the pressure.
i realize that in frum society people are still expected to marry young, but i guess since i am more modern orthodox, there have always been a lot of people around who haven't married young.
as much as frum society thinks that they aren't effected by secular society they are still effected by it. this is why there are a lot of frum people who are in extended young adulthood.

love etc...

i was all set to see the serious movie crime after crime about an abused woman who kills her husband in self defense and ends up in jail and then almost 20 years later the case was reopened  and she ends up having a frum lawyer defend her. it was raining today. the fact that it was a rainy day really depressed me, so i decided to see a lighter film. i ended up seeing love etc.
love etc chronicles five love situations in new york city. i would call them love situations instead of couples because not everyone ends up part of a couple and not all of the love documented is couple love.
the first love situation is a first generation american indian couple. we see them before during and after their wedding. though i've never been married i believe that they were portrayed more realistically than any hollywood couple on the silver screen.
the second love situation was  a divorced dad with full custody of his two kids. while he was a hands on dad, and quite buff i might add, he didn't do as well as one might think with the ladies.
the third love situation was the first love of a high school couple.
the fourth love was an elderly jewish couple named al and marian. they have been married 48-49 years. al is , sit down folks, ten years younger than marian. marian had kids from a former marriage when she married al. in about 1960. now they are 79 and 89.
the last love situation was a gay man who wanted to have a child so badly that he found an egg donor and a surrogate and had twins. it was not shocking to me at  all that a gay man would want to be a parent. some gay men have feminine qualities that would make them a good father/mother to a child. i found this storyline intriguing on several levels. of course his actual story was fascinating, but it also made me think. a lot of women go it alone and have kids or adopt kids on their own when they fear they will never meet a man to have a child with. straight men get squeamish when a women is too gung ho on marriage and feel like they are only being loved for their donation to the possibility of a future child . hmm .... on the other hand many men will reject thirty or forty something women because they think they are too "old " to have a kid, but no one bats an eye at this. these men certainly are only looking at these younger women  only for their wombs and baby making abilities. come to think of it except for one lone frum male blogger whose name and blog name escapes me  who wrote about hiring a surrogate to have his baby i have never heard of any straight men doing this. why don't they? it would take a lot of the pressure off of dating for them. there would be less fifty year old men trying to unsuccessfully date under 35 year old (wombs) women and they would have children. women have taken charge of their parenthood. why haven't men? or is this fantasy of finding a much younger woman to have kids with just an excuse not to get married? hmm... i really have no answers just lots of think questions.

true love is the etc. true love is going through life with another person. true love is being able to deal with the changes life throws at all humans and still stay together. there is spouse love, friend love  and there is parent /child love. we are  lucky to have  any of these loves in our lives.
on that note, on some sunny day in the near future im going to have to go see crime after crime.

keep your teeth

during pesach i visited my great uncle who is temporarily in a nursing home . he has the most amazing attitude. in case you don't know it is rather depressing to see someone in a nursing home. especially when i last saw my great uncle he was not in a nursing home. anyway he was talking about how great his life has been and how wonderful our family is. he also looks forward to future family get functions. the hardest part was understanding his speech because he wasn't wearing his false teeth. false teeth get stolen in nursing homes. so he  wasn't wearing them. so folks make sure you tend to your teeth. no i am not a dentist , nor am i related to any dentists. but be sure to tend to your dental health.  it will be so much easier to eat and speak when you are old if you still have teeth.

fleeting beauty

its amazing how looks can go. we all realize this on some level but when you actually see it happen in real time it is truly mind boggling. even when you see it you can almost not believe its for real.
i have a college friend who married a guy who was cute as a button. they got married  at 23. at about 26 his looks began to fade. at 26 he didn't even look like he could possibly have been as cute as he once was.
i have another friend whose husband was also quite handsome when they married. he also had a slightly snarky personality. now that his looks have turned into just okay all one notices is the snarky attitude.
ive been to school reunions where you see how everyone has aged. some look good, some not so good. it really puts things in perspective. the guy who may have snubbed me in high school because he thought he was g-ds gift now looks like an demystyfied magic trick. the looks are no longer hiding his vile  personality.
even when someone does maintain external beauty  at 50 or 60 it is still not that vibrant beauty of 20 or 30. when i see relatives that i knew when they were in their prime and now they are not its disarming.
it actually better to end up with the guy with the good personality and the more average looks because in the end  its the personality one ends up with not the looks.

duds not dudes

i don't have any idea how people actually meet and get married and stay married . to me it seems impossible and yet some manage to actually do this. i must be missing something.  i actually had two dates this week with two different guys. they weren't even what i would consider the bottom of the barrel but i would rather eat black snow than spend another evening with either fellow.
one guy looked a lot older than his photo which though superficial  i do find to be a deal breaker. i think he may even have had a visible cataract in one eye.  i really don't like the old look.  sorry. the other guy looked young but could not go more than two paragraphs without saying a d'var torah. this isn't a bad thing, but its not the type of guy im looking for either.
perhaps this is all that is out there. lord knows i have looked. i don't want to be alone, but i definitely don't want to be alone with these shlemiels either.

age issues

when one is nine years old one is curious to see what one would look like as an adult. now there is some type of video imager that can show you what you will look like in twenty years. i think some ritzy dermatologists or plastic surgeons have these machines. personally i would not like to get within 3 days of a machine like that. i hate surprises, but this is one surprise i would not mind waiting twenty years to behold. unless i was nine years old i really wouldn't want to behold and image of what i  might look like in 20-60 years.

its that time of the year again...

here we go again. its THAT time of the year again. its the birthday. yes , another year has passed. am i any wiser ? who knows? a lot has happened this year, a lot i would have like to have happened has not. so i guess it has been pretty average. i wish everyone a year of blessings . i am very happy to have reached this day of the year again. happy birthday to me.

living in a plastic surgery world

if you ever bother to read women's magazines like allure or glamour you will see lots of articles on cosmetic surgery. from the sound  of these articles it would seem that everyone and there aunt its having plastic surgery. i suppose that this is because it is more affordable these days. the more i read about cosmetic surgery the more it enforces the fact that i do not desire it. i understand if someone is disfigured that they want to have it, but if its purely cosmetic, im not sure why someone willingly goes under the knife.
when i was a kid i had elderly relatives who looked their ages. they could not have had cosmetic surgery even if they wanted it because they couldn't afford it. my grandmother who was shot in the nose in a pogrom when she was a child did have a bit of plastic surgery, but plastic surgery is not what it is now so she still looked somewhat disfigured from it. and you know what? even though i noticed it and i thought her nose looked like a hamantashen, it didn't make me love her less. there had even been a time when she was younger that she could have had more cosmetic surgery to fix it but she didn't. she was married by then and my grandfather told her that he loved her and thought she was beautiful just the way she was. okay , maybe they would have had a hard time affording the cosmetic surgery at the time, but i do believe this is what my grandfather had felt at the time. they had met and married years after she had been shot in the face in that pogrom.
beauty is in  the eye of the beholder. its important to make one's self  as presentable as possible, but even those who do plastic surgery are not always happy. happiness comes from the inside. with all of joan rivers' plastic surgeries, she is always having more. when does it end?

true romance

we live in a culture that worships youth. the media mostly portrays young people as being the only age group that experiences true love. while i do believe that a young person is just as capable of love as an older person, i believe that true love is the love that has withstood the test of time. if you still love someone after parenting, various types of loss , wrinkles, possible illnesses , success as well as failure, you have really found true love. this is why i love the leonard cohen video of dance me to the end of love that i have just posted. elderly couples dancing together in front of their wedding photos is true romance. they love each other with every fiber of their beings . after fifty -sixty years of marriage they know exactly why they cherish each other.

the fly on the wall

sometimes i wish i could be like a fly on a wall and hear juicy conversations that i shouldn't be hearing. i heard  one such conversation today. someone was talking about how someone was being locked out of a singles event because they were over the age limit. "fortunately" for the person who was organizing the event the person was over the imaginary age range so they could lock them out of the event. this individual was not "cool" enough to get into the event. lucky for the organizer they were "uncool" and old so they could be locked out of the event.
it was uncomfortable to be the fly on the wall while hearing this tidbit being circulated. i might be out of the age range, but i could have "passed" for younger and i am "cool" enough to get in.
one could argue that someone just  " isn't in t the age range " so its fair. bull dinky! its more than that. many who are not in the "age range" get in . its also humorous because the people who are setting  the age ranges are often very close to or above the age ranges they are imposing. often those who support  age ranges  being upheld are eerily close to that age themselves. perhaps they protest too much to cover up their advancing age. (as if we are all too stupid to realize how old they are!)
 i am all for banning the 60-80 year old men who show up to young singles events, but often when they start barring people from singles events they concentrate on barring those who are just a few years out of the range instead of  just banning those who are 20-30 years above the age range.

age limits

turning 35 was scary for many reasons most of all because that was the age limit for so many singles events. i had heard horror stories about 36 year olds who had to lie about their age just to get in.. even if you could get away with it how long could you keep lying about your age and still want to get in. not long after i turned 35 the dreaded age cap turned into 40. so then i feared turning forty.
of course nowhere along the way did i ever consider the fact that i could have gotten married before these dreaded age caps and avoid the whole lying to get in part. the worst part of lying about your age to get in to a social event is that once you've pulled the wool over every one's eyes and actually have gotten into the event you realize it wouldn't have been such a bad thing if you were barred from attending because the event turned out to be so gosh darn depressing .
i realize that sometimes life can surprise you and some people actually do get married, but im still waiting for that miracle. until then i will be pushing the age limits.