During that week of “absorbing,” Myron confessed to Rita, he spoke to Myrna, his deceased wife, whose counsel he had always relied on. He still talked to her, and now, she was telling him not to be so judgmental—to be cautious but not closed-minded. After all, had she not been fortunate enough to have loving parents and a wonderful husband, who knows what she would have done under the circumstances? He also called his brother back east, and he said, “Have you told her about Dad?” By which he meant, Have you told her about Dad’s deep depression after Mom died? Have you told her that you were afraid of the same thing happening to you after Myrna died?
Finally, he’d phoned his best buddy from childhood, who listened intently to Myron’s story and then said, “My friend, all you do is talk about this woman. At our age, who doesn’t come with enough baggage to bring down an airplane? You think you’ve got nothing? You’ve got a dead wife you talk to every day and an aunt in the loony bin that nobody mentions. You’re a good catch, but c’mon. Who do you think you are, Prince Charming?”
But most important, Myron spoke to himself. His voice inside said, Take a risk. Maybe our pasts don’t define us but inform us. Maybe all she’s been through is exactly what makes her so interesting—and so caring now.
“Nobody’s ever called me caring before,” Rita said in my office, tearing up as she related the conversation with Myron. “I was always called selfish and demanding.”
“But you’re not like that with Myron,” I said.
Rita thought about that. “No,” she said slowly. “I’m not.”
Sitting with Rita, I was reminded that the heart is just as fragile at seventy as it is at seventeen. The vulnerability, the longing, the passion—they’re all there in full force. Falling in love never gets old. No matter how jaded you are, how much suffering love has caused you, a new love can’t help but make you feel hopeful and alive, like that very first time. Maybe this time it’s more grounded—you have more experience, you’re wiser, you know you have less time—but your heart still leaps when you hear your lover’s voice or see that number pop up on your phone. Late-in-life love has the benefit of being especially forgiving, generous, sensitive—and urgent.
Rita told me that after her talk with Myron, they went to bed, and she enjoyed what she called “an eight-hour orgasm,” just what her skin hunger craved. “We slept in each other’s arms,” Rita said, “and that felt just as good as the several orgasms that came before it.” Over the past couple of months, Rita and Myron have become life partners and bridge partners; they won their first travel tournament. She still gets pedicures, not just for the foot massages but because somebody other than her actually sees her toes now.
That’s not to say that Rita doesn’t struggle; she does, sometimes mightily. While the changes in her life have added much-needed color to her days, she still experiences what she calls “pinches”: sadness over her children as she watches Myron with his; anxiety that comes with the novelty of being in a trusting relationship after her unstable history.
More than once, Rita has been on the verge of reading something negative into something Myron has said, of sabotaging her relationship so that she could punish herself for her happiness or retreat to the familiar safety of loneliness. But each time, she has worked hard to reflect before acting; she channels our conversations and tells herself, like on her tissue-box cover, “Don’t blow it, girl.” I’ve told her about the many relationships I’ve seen implode simply because one person was terrified of being abandoned and so did everything in his or her power to push the other person away. She is starting to see that what makes self-sabotage so tricky is that it attempts to solve one problem (alleviate abandonment anxiety) by creating another (making her partner want to leave).
Seeing Rita in this phase of her life reminds me of something I once heard, though I can’t recall from where: “Every laugh and good time that comes my way feels ten times better than before I knew such sadness.”
For the first time in forty years, Rita tells me after I open her gift, she had a birthday party. Not that she expected one. She assumed she’d celebrate quietly with Myron, but when they walked into the restaurant, she found a group of people waiting for her—surprise!
“You can’t do that to a seventy-year-old,” Rita says today, relishing the memory. “I almost went into cardiac arrest.”
Standing in the crowd, clapping and laughing, were the hello-family—Anna, Kyle, Sophia, and Alice (the girls made paintings as gifts); Myron’s son and daughter and their children (who are gradually becoming another set of honorary grandchildren); and a few students from the college class she’s teaching (one student told her, “If you want to have an interesting conversation, talk to an old person”). Also there were fellow members of her apartment board (after finally agreeing to join, Rita spearheaded a replacement of the rusted mailboxes) and some bridge-group friends that she and Myron had made recently. Nearly twenty people had come to celebrate a woman who a year earlier hadn’t had a friend in the world.
But the biggest surprise had come that morning, when Rita got an email from her daughter. After writing to Myron, she had sent a well-thought-out letter to each of her kids, to which she’d received the usual nonresponses. But that day, there was an email from Robin, which Rita reads to me in session.
Mom: Well, you’re right, I don’t forgive you, and I’m glad you aren’t asking me to. Honestly, I almost deleted your email without reading it because I thought it would be the usual bullshit. And then, I don’t know why—maybe because we hadn’t been in touch in so long—I thought I should at least open it and make sure that you weren’t writing to say you were dying. But I wasn’t expecting anything like this at all. I kept thinking, Is this my mom?
Anyway, I took your letter to my therapist—yes, I’m in therapy now; and no, I haven’t dumped Roger yet—and I told her, “I don’t want to turn out like this.” I don’t want to be stuck in an abusive relationship and making excuses not to leave, thinking it’s too late or that I can’t start over or God knows what I tell myself when Roger tries to rope me back in. I told my therapist that if you’re finally able to be in a healthy relationship, I can do this too, and I don’t want to wait until I’m seventy. Did you notice the email address I’m sending this from? It’s my secret job-hunting email.
Rita cries for a while, then continues reading.
You know what’s funny, Mom? After I read her your letter, my therapist asked if I had any positive memories of my childhood, and I couldn’t think of anything. But then I started having dreams. I had a dream about going to a ballet and when I woke up, I realized that I was the ballerina in the dream, and you were the teacher, and I remembered that time when I was maybe eight or nine and you took me to a ballet class I was dying to go to, and they said I didn’t have enough experience, and I cried, and you hugged me and said, “Come on, I’ll teach you,” and we went into an empty studio and pretended to do ballet for what seemed like hours. I remember laughing and dancing and wishing each moment would last forever. And there were more dreams after that, dreams that brought back positive memories from childhood, memories I didn’t even know I had.