Dating and the Single Mom

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Divorce and Recovery

BY: Joanne Palmer

When I got divorced, I thought about child support, custody, and my ability to weather the split, but I never once thought about dating. I just assumed it would happen -- eventually.


A year passed. That's 365 days and what seems like twice as many nights without so much as dinner and a movie.


"I could fix you up with Killer," a friend volunteered. "It's just a nickname -- and he has a snowmobile." While contemplating how I'd ever introduce him to my mother, my son started waking up at 2:00 A.M. I stumbled over the haystack-size piles of unfolded laundry as I took the sixteen steps to his room, wondering how I would ever date or be intimate again when I might be interrupted by: "Mommy, I have a booger." Somehow, Killer didn't sound like the kind of guy that could handle it.


When I was single, I had a list of thirty-four qualities I was looking for in a man: tall, funny, successful, wants kids, and is a good dancer, were some of the things on my wish list. Now I had a new list with only one criterion: can help a small child use a tissue.


I reversed my policy on personals and answered one. It read: "Take a chance on a decent, responsible man, 43. Non-smoker with a good heart." It was two weeks before we could get together. In the meantime we exchanged twenty-five e-mails, each revealing another detail of our lives. As soon as he got out of his SUV, he started complaining about the price of snowshoes, the price of the cheese he'd packed for our picnic, the cost of gas... you get the idea.


A friend counseled, "Just go slow and remember, it isn't you. It's every bit as depressing as it appears." My next blind date, a 6:30 A.M. breakfast, proved her right. Before I even sat down, he started reading the newspaper and ate two soft boiled eggs without looking up, just like we'd been married for twenty years. It was, indeed, depressing -- even if my married friends insisted I was lucky and it was a luxury to be able to sleep alone at night.


It was time to go on the offensive. I'd run my own personal ad. I hesitantly entered the newspaper office and began, "Communicative male..."


The woman on the other side of the counter began to laugh. I looked up and she laughed even harder. She grabbed a tissue and started dabbing her eyes as she said, "That's an oxymoron. Lemme tell you about my fianc�." I left.


I tried a party. When you live in a small mountain town, people think it's fun to have outdoor parties in the winter. I bravely stood outside in a blizzard, endured a blowing wind and smoke from a bonfire. After one hour, in the initial stages of hypothermia, I left. On the way out, the hostess said, "Why leave now? Bow-Wow-Chow, the dog trainer I wanted to introduce you to, isn't here yet."


I highlighted my hair. I strapped on ankle weights and did leg lifts. Surely rock-hard cellulite would counter the fact that I was a hormonally challenged, forty-eight-year-old woman. It didn't work. The next date lasted just twenty minutes.


Desperate, I consulted a specialist in Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art of paying someone to rearrange your furniture. She arrived in a black Saab turbo, her briefcase bulging with mirrors, bells, and wind chimes. She placed a ba-gua (pronounced as if you're gargling) chart on top of a floor plan of my house. "I see the problem," she said in her clipped British accent. "It's the loo... I mean the toilet. It's positioned right in your relationship sector." I did as I was instructed: kept the lid on the toilet down and bought red bath towels.


The bath towels must have been the key, because my next fix-up was perfect -- a New Age Nick Nolte look-alike. David burned incense incessantly and although he had no furniture he seemed to have an endless supply of CDs of monks chanting. Instead of working, he spent his day in meditation so I figured he could handle my consumption of EstroPause. But after a few dates, David announced he was redirecting his sex drive into his third chakra and left town.


Maybe it's time for Botox and a few more red towels.

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