Still tripping down memory lane ...

Back in February, I was prompted to notice how many adoptive moms on groups I visit have husbands younger than themselves. (Mark will be 40 in a few months, so he's catching up with me, but still spry enough to make life grand!)

There’s a lot to learn from Web groups, list serves, whatever you like to call them, and one for pretty much anyone about pretty much anything. I belong to far too many, but glean knowledge from posters (as in ‘those who post’, not ‘big pieces of paper with stuff written on’.) almost every day.

I’ve learned recipes, remedies and recreations, taken tips on sleeping, snacking and siblings and laughed a lot over the darndest things kids say and parental responses to downright silliness.

Along with facts and wisdom, there are hints about the people behind user names. Some aspects of members are obvious due to the list they’re on: GAARP -- Gracefully Aging Adoptive Refine Parents – has a mature population, for example, and some very amusing people participating.

I’ve noticed on the GAARP group especially that there are a number of adoptive families with mom quite a bit older than dad. Perhaps this has something to do with the reason they’re adoptive families, what with the reproductive capabilities on the mom side being more age limited than on the dads’. Maybe older women married to men some years their junior chose to pursue professional interests rather than marry young and starting families.

Or maybe, and this is my personal favorite, women with younger partners think outside the box on many life issues. (I’d also add that they’re likely to be: lots of fun, dynamic, intelligent, sexy, mellow in a fine wine-ish way, patient and understanding, loyal, clean, brave…)

I’m fifty-four. My husband is thirty-eight. Before those math-challenged launch their desktop calculator, I’ll admit that I lived 15 years before he was born. His mom is four years older than I am and my oldest child is 2 years younger than he is.

We met at my forty-second birthday party. I was backpacking around the world, made a stop in Seychelles to visit a Swiss friend I’d met in Costa Rica, and he crashed my party. He was twenty-six, and not at all expecting to have life as he knew it come to a crashing stop; his days, and nights, of just-too-cute-for-any-girl-to-resist-so-why-bother were over. Love hit us like a sack full of nickels. One year and many thousands of miles later, we came back to the island and were married on my birthday beach.

I wonder if there’s a Yahoo Group for 50ish women with 30-something partners who met on tropical islands and have adopted kids. I could start one, I suppose.

Nah. No time.