“Dahling,” she said coyly. “Come over here and sit yourself down beside me.” Tilting her head, she gently patted the overstuffed sofa, and her face broke into a seductive smile as her arms slowly unfolded, beckoning him to join her in this very private moment.
“Who? Me?” he responded, pointing to himself, and cracking that impish grin she had known so well. There seemed to be fewer of these roguish smiles these days, even though retirement had brought more time to create them.
“Well, you are the only other person in the room!” she announced while he stretched out his arms and moved gingerly in her direction. As he flopped on the couch, his attempted hug, with her help, turned into a kiss—the kind of kiss that they shared now, not the lustful sort from days gone by. “Back hurting you again?” she asked.
“Yes, there is that little twinge when I move a certain way.” He let out a quiet “whew” as his body fell heavily into its little nest that he’d just created in the couch.
She turned to study him as he rested his head, eyes closed, there in what used to be their special lover’s location. “May we chat a minute?”
“What about?” he responded placidly. “After 45 years of marriage, I think we’ve probably talked about everything there is to talk about.”
“Actually, there’s still ‘us’ and how our relationship may be changing.”
“What do you mean? We’re retired and can do what we want when we want. We have family and friends. We have the means. Everything is going well.”
“Yes, dear, but we must maintain having one another. Remember how our relationship started? We were two people in passionate love with one another. We had a strong desire to know everything about our new partner. We also wanted our partner to know everything about us. We reveled in the passion, sometimes to the point where it was all-consuming. We had each other and that’s all we needed—we thought….”
“Boy, those were the days! We always longed to be together—day and night. And it’s quite a feat that we’ve had all these years, so what more can be said?”
“Not surprisingly, our emotions today are not the same type of fervent love we had all those years ago. We’ve had a lifetime of experiences individually and together. We’ve also had a variety of relationships with others—family, friends, and co-workers have come and gone. But most important, our bodies and our physical selves have changed. Rumor has it that we no longer have the ability or the willpower to stay up all night making mad, passionate love, or winning those marathons we used to run. In other words, we must create new passions.”
“But I’m happy with the way things are. Yes, it is getting harder to go places and do things. Sometimes getting out of bed is a chore. And, yes, most days there’s at least a brief moment when I remember how much I miss my crazy sister who died last fall. So, I sit in my recliner, read a book, and think of all the things from my past.”
“Really? You’re happy doing this all day, every day? You seem to be reliving old memories, getting extraordinarily little exercise, and that smile I just saw, has been absent from your face for a long time. We don’t talk much anymore because we don’t seem to have anything to talk about. Let’s discuss creating our new passions.”
“Ok, then, how are we going to reinvent ourselves?”
“It may be the autumn of our years, but it doesn’t have to be the autumn of our lives. There are so many things we could do—get a pet, learn something new, teach, get a hobby, do artwork, uplift others through volunteering, take day trips, start our own reading, writing, or discussion groups, work on our health and fitness.”
Pulling her close to him, he whispered, “How about another kiss to start the work of creating new memories? Then I’ll make us a cocktail to celebrate the reinvention of our love for one another.”
