Looking for Love

I recently came across an article in Marie Claire magazine dated June 2018 with the headline, “How to Choose a Partner” by Pamela Druckerman. Below the head was an intriguing subhead: “In this exclusive exerpt from her new book, There Are No Grown-Ups, the author reflects on how she ditched boys and found a man.”

Since everyone in New York talks and writes about this subject fairly often, I thought I’d give it a fast once-over because it was probably everything I’d already heard. Then, I started reading and found it was very well written, insightful and deliciously funny. I checked Amazon and yes, one can purchase the book for: Kindle ($13.99), hardcover ($16.20) or paperback ($18.76).

For now, I’ll just stick with this article – however, Amazon does have an eye-catching paragraph about Pamela that says, “The best-selling author of BRINGING UP BÉBÉ investigates life in her forties, and wonders whether her mind will ever catch up with her face.”

Frcnch vs. Us – I saw this firsthand at the beach on the island of Guadeloupe where American mothers watched, scolded and hovered. The French barely remembered they had children  -- both sides survived beautifully 

IN MARIE CLAIRE: HER WACKY ROMANCES

• I was especially drawn to foreigners who read newspapers in exotic languages

• I embarked on a romantic world tour, dating a German-speaking genius in New York who was unable to make eye contact

• I dated a Hungarian psychiatrist who – when he dumped me – said I wasn’t emotionally wounded enough for him

• A Russian suitor spoke four languages fluently. It took me nearly a year to realize he didn’t have a sense of humor in any of them

Eating well in Russia – Photo courtesy of National Geographic Traveler, July 2018

• I knew it was a bad sign when a Mexican banker brought nothing to read on our beach holiday except a bond-trading manual

A scene at the tip of Baja, Mexico where it’s too dangerous to swim in the ocean

• I dated a lawyer’s son from the Chicago suburbs who decided I wasn’t exotic enough for him. “Sometimes I think you’re just a Jewish girl from Miami,” he said. I feared the same thing

IT WAS RARE TO GET ANY CONCRETE GUIDANCE

• My romantic life felt like a procession of sitcom episodes. I’m not sure how I got any work done. I was in an almost perpetual state of romantic anguish

• I ignored the aunt who warned me that a man “won’t buy the cow if he can get the milk for free.” (She was on her third husband and had given away a lot of milk.)

• I was relieved when someone told me that everyone has 30 potential soul mates in the world. When I repeated this to a single colleague, he said, “Yes, and I’m trying to sleep with all of them.”

THEN A ROMANTIC MIRACLE HAPPENED

• A mutual friend introduced me to Simon at a bar. He was handsome and had a winning London accent

• Simon’s family was different from mine. Their house contained several thousand books, including many written by family members, friends and colleagues

• Simon was a human decoder. He could spot people’s motivations and explicate their good and bad qualities as clearly as I could detect the brands of shoes and handbag they were wearing

• When I was sacked from my newspaper, amid mass layoffs, I moved to Paris and became a freelance journalist. Soon afterward, Simon proposed

AMAZON WEIGHS IN WITH THESE THOUGHTS

Part frank memoir, part hilarious investigation of daily life, “There Are No Grown-Ups” looks at the in-between decade when…

• There’s a least one sport your doctor forbids you to play

• You become impatient while scrolling down to your year of birth

• Your parents have stopped trying to change you

• You know it’s okay if you don’t like jazz

This looks like a terrific plane/train book to me. What do you think?

Shaun Nelson-Henrick

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