Confessions Of An Old Lady Read Free Page A

child-bearing hips, who would agree they were the biggest, strongest man they ever met and would make them look smarter and more important. They wanted trophy wives. I was none of those things. I may not be a supermodel, but I considered myself at least a seven on a ten-scale. But my hair wasn’t long and bleached blonde. I always kept it shoulder-length and straight and it was the color of dirty dishwater. My eyes weren’t robin’s-egg blue, as I’d always dreamed of. Instead, they were standard-issue hazel. My boobs weren’t humongous—just regular ol’ 34 Cs. And I was not tall with the legs of an elegant mare. Instead I was five foot four and I had a woman’s shape. I’ve never been fat…but I’ve never been skinny either.
    Needless to say, after a few disappointing blind dates, I canceled my membership—but not before having to be charged for three full months, even though I was only on for about two weeks. You’d think I would have learned my lesson, but nope. I just tried another site.
    After being burned by the hefty monthly fees of Match.com and getting nothing for my money, I decided to go a different route. I tried Plenty of Fish, a free website—which should have been my first warning—where people post their profiles and try to find that perfect fish in the sea. I caught a couple “decent” fish my first week on the site, but in almost every case, found they were looking for a one-night stand, not a lasting relationship. One guy even cut me off and blocked me when I told him I wouldn’t wear at least three-inch stiletto heels every day for him. I did meet one guy from that website and he wasn’t too bad…if you ignored the fact that he looked nothing at all like his profile picture. The one I later learned was taken ten years prior.
    After those experiences online, I vowed never to go online dating again. That left those few blind dates arranged by my buddies at the Agency. They meant well, I know, but those situations are horribly awkward for everyone. There’s so much pressure on both parties to like each other when you know you’ve been set up by a mutual friend or colleague, lest you offend them. Most of the guys I met that way were nice enough, but something was just…missing. I couldn’t put my finger on it, even when the friend from work would ask what was so wrong with my date. I had just never felt that feeling people describe when they meet their soulmate. I didn’t just want to date someone , I wanted to find the one .
    I set a pretty high standard for myself, I admit. I had always sworn I would never get married unless I found a love like my grandparents’. This is not to say my parents didn’t love each other—they loved each other very much. But my grandparents’ story was amazing. My grandmother, then Miss Isabel Hughes, met my grandfather, William Rockford, in their small hometown of Irvine, Kentucky back in early 1950. They fell in love instantly, but he was drafted to the Korean War only a few months after they began courting. They got married on Christmas Eve 1950 and he got on a boat the next day. William wrote Isabel nearly every day from the front until one day, the letters stopped coming. The next letter she received was from the War Department telling her William was missing in action and presumed dead. She grieved, not only for her loss, but for that of her unborn child, who would never know its father. Then one day she received a letter, hastily and sloppily written, from William, telling her he was alive. He had been injured severely when he stepped on a land mine and since he’d lost his dog tags, no one at the hospital had known who he was. When he returned from the war, they built a house, which still stands out on Red Lick Road in Estill County, and had five children, one each year.
    I always admired the way they looked at one another and the gentle way in which my Papa handled my Nana. They loved each other for over fifty years until my grandmother grew