Paradise Preoccupied

If you don’t already know this, I’ll share that one of the pro blogs I write is on the topic of adopting as an older parent.

Since I’m about to turn fifty-six and have a 4.75-year-old and a 2-year-old, I’m qualified to write about being a geezer mom. I try very hard not to make that blog all about ‘Oy, my achin’ this and that‘ to keep an encouraging tone for others considering heading their walkers down that path (That’s a “Zimmer frame” to British readers … which I apparently have now.), and in hopes of giving my kids something to look back on and be fooled into thinking I was hip and groovy well into my dotage.

In my daily perusal of newsal … trawling for blog fodder … I found a story that grabbed my attention, then held it long enough for me to spend some time wondering about someone else’s life and choices.

You see, I’m not just an older mom, I’m an older woman with a younger husband … not exactly a cradle robber, since Mark was 26 when we met at my 42nd birthday party — more like a bike thief in a ‘You-can-forget-about-ever-buying-a-motorcycle-now-Mister’ sort of way.

But back to the morning’s news …

Bopping around my usual haunts, I found this story coming out of the UK about a 51-year-old grandmother and her new husband, a mere slip of a lad of 27.

Ack! You might say. That certainly does warrant a news headline or two. After all, there’s almost a quarter of a century of long, hard years between that woman and her Toy Boy. Aside from the sex, what could they possibly have in common?

And well you might ask. Since her husband isn’t allowed into Britain, sex isn’t much of an issue, and they most certainly come from different backgrounds.

She’s a five-times married granny and respected parish councillor who lives in the village of Moulton in Oxfordshire.

He? Well, he was raised in Afghanistan and now runs a scrap metal business in the Saudi city of Jedda.

Although they are legally married after the blossoming of the holiday romance in Egypt, she continues to go by her previous married name Mrs. Jane Felix-Brown. Perhaps some day she’ll change it to match her husband’s, and officially become Mrs. Omar bin Laden.

Osama’s her father-in-law.

And to think some people are all het up about the age difference!