Certainly, as we age, we get to know ourselves well, and when we do, there is a certain calm. You learn to honour yourself, for having come this far, for having survived, for still standing in mid-life. Especially, after divorce – which is one of life’s most harrowing experiences – a little calm after the storm is welcome.

But there are times when it is not so great. When you are sick, for example, which happened to me this past weekend. A terrible bout of food poisoning sent me to hospital. Luckily, a son was at home. He was able to call 911. But if he had not been here? I was about the pass out.  I couldn’t get off the floor. What would I have done?

And other times. A friend of mine, single and divorced, in her mid-forties, called me the other day to say that she had had a difficult day. She had to get her son to a soccer practice. Her ex was away. After she dropped her son off at the field, on her way back home, her tire went flat. “It sucks to be single at times like this,” she moaned. She had to figure it out – call the garage, all that. Which is not impossible. But a girl gets tired of being wonderful, of being competent all the time. That’s the thing. When you have a spouse, or a committed boyfriend, there is someone who is always there to help. You can drop the Super Woman thing, at least for an hour, a day, perhaps, and be taken care of; be needy.

Oh, yes, needy! Because that is the very thing we try so hard not to be when we are on our own. You know, most of the time, I am so self-contained, I feel like an egg, with a lovely, smooth shell that no one can crack. I clean up my own emotional spills. I rarely emote to people – not like I did, when I was married at a young age. My ex-husband was a sponge, who would soak up all my emotional outpourings, and make me feel better. Now? I make myself feel better. I cajole myself out of funks. I take myself to movies and to a spa. I praise myself, when I need to, and I tell myself not to worry at night sometimes when I am awake, alone in my bed.

It is okay. Really.

But I also think that a problem – or attitude – we develop when we are single, and have been for a while, is that we convince ourselves – like I just did in the previous paragraph – that everything is just dandy and why would you want a husband again anyway? We rationalize away the romance that doesn’t exist. We say it is over-rated or that it never works out anyway, so why not just have fun with as many people as possible. We ditch the fantasy of finding love.

“I’m through with all that stuff,” I have heard many older women and men say about the search for the perfect partner.

But then….you meet someone, you have a fling, and even if it doesn’t work out, you are reminded of how lovely the whole business of romance is. Someone wants to know about your day. Someone sucks you up with his attention like a milkshake through a straw. Someone finds your every thought a revelation. And you find yourself looking at him with a kind of divine fascination – the way his hair curls, the way he smiles, the way he likes to eat.

“I think that as much as we have been burned in previous relationships, and therefore talk about how we can live without them, we need them,” said a friend of mine on our weekly walk on Sunday. She was just in the process of ending a relationship with a man, who had swept into her life, and given her exactly what she needed – while it lasted. “I have my work,” she explained. “I have the kids. I have my life. But this – being in love or lust or whatever it is – is a big, important part of what I want. And I am not going to sit around and think that I don’t need it. Because I do.”

When she met the man who became her husband all those years ago – and who is now her ex – she was the passive one, she said. “Men always came to me, even this latest guy,” she said. “But now, I am going to be more aggressive. I am going to go out there and look. Because now I know what I really want, and I deserve to be happy. I am going to get what I want.”

I have often thought that love is what we are here for. As humans, that is what we all want. It’s what we say to each other on our death bed. And from my experience with my children, I know that love works like a potent magic. It can fix things. It can produce great accomplishments. It can heal.

And as single people, unfortunately, we sometimes talk ourselves out of it – we find it elsewhere, of course, in friends and children – but we are often shy, scared, about putting our hearts out to the world in a random, vulnerable way. And that is a shame.

When you have been married and divorced or simply when you are older, whether you have ever been married or not, you have been around the block a few times. You have a keener character radar, I think. You know how people operate – the opposite sex, in particular.

So, Bachelor? Bachelorette?

Maybe something more like Courgareze (for a woman of a certain age) or Silverfoxer (for a man)?

Forgive me, dear reader, but I am still glued to the TV on Monday night – not for Jon & Kate Plus Eight – although their spit is very sad and those kids of theirs are adorable – but to watch that Jilly of The Bachelorette take those dudes of hers through the beautiful scenery of British Columbia, and then the most stupid choices about who should get the cheesy rose!!!

Jake, dear sweet Jake, he of the airplane wings and sweet smile, was let go ??? Whaaat??? And Wes, the snake with the guitar, got to stay??? He even admitted in one of the show’s behind-the-scenes-just-with-the-guys interviews that he could “taste” the fame he will get from being on the show and that he had Jillian “wrapped around my little finger.” Big ick.

Jake even told Jilly his feelings, and he was sincere. Any woman could see that. Well, maybe it’s just that older women, like me, who know a thing or two about men, could see. And Jillian considers herself a good judge of character. Maybe she sees him as the “ultra safe guy” – his own take on what she might think. But he is good. He is sweet. He would marry her. Jake and Jilly went up the hilly in the Rockies….All the poor guy can talk about is how great their first date was. He remembers it like it was the best thing in his life. Pick him! Pick him!

What I know, and maybe most divorced people know this, too, is that you should go for kindness in marriage, not how expertly, how charmingly, the men sweep you off your feet. The charmers almost always are that way because they have some twisted inner behaviour to hide. They compensate for their twisted hearts and minds by being smooth, gallant masters of the grand gesture on the exterior.

Phew! That felt better getting that off my chest.

Still, she was able to jettison Tanner P, he of the foot fetish and strange underwear. “That’s what Daddy wears,” he said when he dropped his pants and paraded in front of the group in his underwear. (He was also sporting some wood, by the way.) Jilly was just “not ready to see their packages” she said sweetly, while adding that his was “huge,” because, hey, we all noticed that she was peeking from behind her hands, which she put over her eyes in a show of demure Bachelorette-ness.

Then, Reid. Well, don’t get me started. He actually had a heart-to-heart with the train personnel guy, up there in the Rockies, about whether he should wear his glasses on his one-on-one date with Jillian. Please. Be a man! Don’t wimp out to the conductor! Where is your inner lumberjack?

My bet? Jake is going to march back into the show next week, and plead his case in his pilot uniform.

I must have men on the mind, or any news of available ones, I mean, even if they’re only on a TV show.

I have been going through an extended “dating dry spell,” if you must know.

Although…come to think of it…there is this 24-year-old young man, who came by my house the other week, to pick up a piece of furniture that he needed and I wanted to get rid of  which he had heard about through one of my neighbours – and hey, he was very cute. And we talked for about four hours. FOUR hours. Effortlessly. Alone in my house. About all manner of things. Work. Life. The world. Love. Finding one’s path. And next week, he is coming for a little supper chez Gracie, who is twice, yes, twice, his age.

I will report all, I promise.

He has a girlfriend, though. But still. Should I care? I don’t want a relationship with him. I want…..

But then, maybe he just likes the conversation. Do you think? Does a 24-year-old man come to a woman of a certain age’s house for conversation? I felt an instant connection to him, because he is intelligent, searching a bit, and smart emotionally. I did feel chemistry. But come on….I could be his mother.

You can see that I feel a little hesitation, and then another part of me thinks, ‘What the hell, just see where it takes you…’

This Courgareze is going to be wearing her best little sundress as she stirs up her sauce.

That Jillian! She gets so emotional about things – as if she really takes this whole finding-love-on-TV thing seriously. I know that’s the premise of the reality show, but if we’re honest, do any of us really think that these people will end up forever married? The split-rate of previous Bachelor/Bachelorette shows is dismal. One marriage!

But there was Jilly, sobbing when Ed, the IT dude, had to go home because he was worried about the safety of his job. She acted rejected, and said that she was falling for him. But if you ask me, I think her vanity was bruised. She wondered at one point whether she was “good enough” for the rest of the guys to stick around and vie for her heart. It was almost as if she was wondering how Ed could dare leave her – she’s the one who gets to do the dimissing!

Anyway, I seem to be hooked. So, pardon me.

On a brighter subject…I have a new manfriend. Not a boyfriend. But a man I take to go out with, as a platonic friend. I had tickets to a play last week, and while I have a squadron of female friends I could have happily taken, I was wanting male company.

One thing I have to say that has come as a revelation about being single – there are times when I really miss the presence of men in my life. I have sons, who are grown. But that doesn’t really count. They don’t live at home for the most part. I enjoy being with them, and going out for a drink with them, but they are not always keen to hang out with Mom.  And I work with men and all that. But many of the people who I count as my close friends are female. And when women get together, well, the conversation takes off, the wine flows, and there you are, jabbering away about the ex, about work, about the geek you went out with last Saturday night, about impending menopause. It can all get gender-specific and gossipy. And while I like that – and my female friends have saved me on more than one occasion by just being there when I needed them – I sometimes really need to be with a man, as a friend, as a companion, if nothing else.

And so, I called up a man I know casually. We had met through mutual friends. He is heterosexual, and a lifelong bachelor. I like him. He is interesting and shy – which I have to say I also like. I am tired of the players, frankly. And he said he would be pleased to come with me.

We met at the theater. We had fun talking about the production at intermission. After, he wondered if I would like to go for a little walk. Sure, I said. Then he asked if I would like to go uptown for a nightcap. Sure, I said.

And so we talked and talked. And as we exited the restaurant, it was about midnight, and I said that I could get myself home (simply a block away) and he was going home in the opposite direction.

He thanked me for the evening, and said, ‘Anytime, anytime, I love the theater.  So, count me in.” And then he suggested that we could go to a nightclub that’s new with some of our mutual friends. Sure, I said. We kissed each other on both cheeks.

Now I am thinking that this sort of arrangement, this sort of friendship, is just what I want. There’s no pressure. There’s little expectation. But there’s fun, and with that, I feel a real ease, which is very welcome.

There’s something about being with a man that can be more relaxing than being with a girlfriend. The connection is different, even if it’s platonic.It’s the dance between the sexes, I guess.

And this summer, aside from watching that dumb Jilly pick Her Man on The Bachelorette, I will be having casual, non-committal dates with my menfriends.

(And the audience knew that it was Wes, the 32-year-old  musician from Austin, Texas, because in earlier, private interviews, some of the guys had expressed concern that he wasn’t here for the right reasons. In other words, he was here for the publicity about his music. In an earlier episode of The Bachelorette, he had sung a song, “They Say That Love Don’t Come Easy,” which seemed to woo poor Jillian.)

I say poor, because if that girl thinks that one of these dudes is the real thing, lord, save her soul. How could she possibly be expected to “pick” from this group of hunks, when all she gets are brief one-on-one “dates” in which they all seem to have stiff conversation.

I mean, please. Tanner P with the weird foot fetish?

And then, last night, when she took Kiptynite (okay, it’s Kiptyn) on a kayaking shopping trip to Granville Island so they could buy groceries to make dinner back home? They briefly discussed their desire to do charitable work while they threw food at the disgusting pigeons. Next thing you know, they will be confessing the vulnerability of their hearts.

Oh wait, I think they did that in the next sentence of conversation!

It felt as badly scripted as an episode of The Young and The Restless.

Sweet Jillian, who does seem as genuine and fresh as the snow-capped mountains in the tourism-happy sweeping shots of the city in last night’s show, is clearly drawn to the less flashy types.

How else to explain why she gave Mark, the pizza entrepreneur, a rose on the two-on-one date that she went on with him and Mike, a rugged type who looked like he had walked off the set of The Godfather. His dark hair greased back, his conversation well oiled, too, he took the lead in that date – running to greet Jillian, and then snuggling up with her in the helicopter, as hapless Mike – have I told you he is a pizza entrepreneur, whatever the hell that means (He makes boxes, perhaps???) – lagged behind. At the dinner at the top of Grouse mountain, Mike barely said a word. But then, in their brief one-on-one chat, he let it be known that he was shy (Gee, never would have guessed) and that he has had his heart broken a few times, so he is reluctant to make himself vulnerable. But hey, that’s what he is here for, he says to her. And she understands.

Our Jilly. Canadians are so sweet and understanding – in between being polite, of course.

Then, to the surprise of Mr. Mafia, Jilly gives Mark the rose. And off goes our oily stud in the gondola, back to Earth.

That was a moment of alpine drama, but the best part of the show last night was when David, aka Rage-oholic Caveman, made the moves on Jillian, telling her he liked her ass – on full view in the spandex at the curling match, earlier in the show – and then he leaned in for a kiss. She rejected him, turning her cheek to his lips. And he was startled. He had never been turned down for a kiss before. He even tried to pull at her shirt a bit, remarking that she was so comfortable, her boobs were hanging out. (Well, he might have said boobs. The producers had to bleep his words several times in that exchange.)

Walking away, he later remarked that she was obvisouly really hot for him and was just trying to play the game.

Talk about a guy who can’t pick up a signal, even if it’s flashing bright orange right in front of his beady eyes.

Thankfully, she got rid of him in the rose ceremony. He even took his rejection hard, saying that he thought she had made the wrong decision.

No grace there.

But really, I think the overall message was just how ridiculous this show is – not for entertainment value – that was fun – but for the assumption that this gal is going to fuind lasting love with one of these guys.

She was visibly upset when it was revealed to her by two of the guys that she should be careful, because not all the men had her best interests at heart. She felt cheated on, when she heard that one of them had a girlfriend back home. She canceled the cocktail party. She consulted with the show’s host. She thought she was a good judge of character, she said in her little on-camera confession.

Wes, Mr. Girlfriend-Back-Home, remains in the running. He was given a rose. (Jillian wasn’t told who the “bad guy” was. And she decided to give a rose to the two guys who told her of the revelations in the guy-world that she never gets to see. So, I guess her thinking was that she trusted them enough to have told her the truth, rather than as some ploy to get rid of someone they considered a rival. In the next episode, to air next Monday, she will likely pump one of these “snitches” to tell her the name of the offending suitor.)

My favorite guy, if that’s possible? Jake, the 31-year-old commercial pilot. She went on a Western date with him in one of the early episodes. And he seems to really care about her, wincing at the rose ceremony last night as she chose to give Wes a rose.

He knows, you see. He knows.

And he also told her that he is not perfect, which was kind of sweet. A hunk worried that he isn’t perfect.

Sounds too good to be true.

There she was, decked out in a silvery full-length gown, her hair gently coloured, eyebrows plucked a wee bit, singing the song that got her noticed in the first place, “I’ve Got a Dream” from the musical, Les Miserables.

But she didn’t win. In fact, I didn’t think her singing was a good as it was the first time she took the stage and shocked the world.

Or, was that because what made us marvel when she first appeared in the contest was the beauty of her voice compared to her plain appearance? It had been, as the doll-like judge, Amanda, said, ” a wake-up call.” Everyone was snickering at Susan, as she stood there, dressed in her creamy mother-of-the-bride-type frock with dark stocking and, ouch!, white shoes.  But then she sang, and her voice was, well, blond and svelte and smooth.

She was even called a spinster – which has to be the most ancient of words for a woman who is unmarried. That she claimed to never have been kissed only ramped up the interest. We all evaluate each other on our so-called hotness, our desirability in the romantic realm.

Appearance is everything. Isn’t it? Would you have fallen in love with Susan if she appeared for a date and talked about her cat, Pebbles, and her small Scottish town and the fact that she likes to sing in the choir at church?

Didn’t think so.

Even when we get a wake-up call like this, it only lasts for so long. Maybe the voting audience that determined her fate as #2 got used to the whole, strange dichotomy of her appearance as contrasted to her singing voice, and no longer felt so infatuated by the whole story.

I don’t think she deserved to win. As I said, her singing was not as good as it had been. The pressure she was under can’t have been easy. She had world headlines, many of them against her. Entertainment Tonight sent a correspondent, for goodness sake, to London, to cover the event. Please. Talk about overkill. Susan was cracking under the pressure, news outlets screamed.

And yet, just as the audience who adored her was turning cool on her, she showed herself to be a rather remarkable person. But did anyone notice?

“I feel at home on the stage,” she said, as she finished her performance. “It was well worth it,” she said of the competition. And then she added: “I’m among friends, am I not?”

And you couldn’t help wonder, well, was she? Here she had been plucked from obscurity, not just because of her ability to sing, but because of the way she looked, or didn’t look, really.

She is a funny, hip-wiggling kind of gal; a feisty woman who is willing to stand up to her critics, and give the song her best shot. Not many could have withstood that level of scrutiny. And she could have decided to just walk away from the circus of it all. She played our game, and we gave her losing marks.

Even Simon, the nasty, mean Simon, said at the end,” I’ve got to know the real Susan Boyle. You’re a nice, shy person.  You can walk away with your head held high…I absolutely adore you.”

The whole Susan Boyle phenomenon made me think about how sad it is that the world operates on appearance.

She has been the mouse to our cat.

In another package, she would be considered a great catch, fun to be with, full of potential, but as it is, we see her only as a sort of spectacle. I’m not sure the interest in her was ever really genuine.

Maybe this is something short men or fat women can relate to.

We have these stereotypical ideas of what makes an attractive person. Do others ever really take the time to know the person inside?

Weirdly, I think this is also true for attractive people – they get all this attention, and yet they wonder, is he, is she, really paying attention to me because of what I say rather than how I look?

In the end, a good relationship is about how much fun the person is to be with, how kind he or she is, how thoughtful, caring and generous. And none of those things come in a tube of lipstick.

It’s always in your heart – or it is not. And no one can find out if it’s there until they take a closer look, beyond the pretty dress, beyond the six-pack, beyond the handsome face or the doll-like features.

We got into a boil about Susan Boyle. But in the end, she was cooked.

Her children are 10 and 12. She and her ex have been divorced for almost five years. “I just don’t want them to start wondering if this guy is their next father.” She shrugged. “And besides, it feels  that this relationship is just for me. I am not even introducing him to my family. They will start asking all kinds of questions, too. I’d rather just keep it private.”

It’s an issue, isn’t it? When and how do you tell your children that you are dating someone? And how much do they need to know about your private life?

It’s normal for kids to look at a new partner in their parent’s life and assume that he or she will step into the role of spouse. It’s all they know, after all.(Well, that’s if you aren’t a serial dater, of course.)

“I think it would be nice to have Dave as a Dad,” one of my children said after I introduced them to a man I was dating a few years ago. He was the first serious-ish guy I had dated since my divorce. And so, he came to the house a fair amount. And he slept over, too.

I now think that was a mistake. We went out for about two years. And the break-up wasn’t bad. But my youngest son had grown accustomed to him – I wouldn’t say attached. But he had come to know him. And they liked one another.  When I decided to break up with him, my son thought I was being mean. “Give him another chance,” he said. “He is a nice guy.”

I don’t think he needed to be trying to get his head around why I was rejecting another man when he was still a young teenager. He had witnessed the divorce. Who was I? His loving Mom who didn’t like men? What kind of message was that for him to absorb as he was reaching manhood himself?

It soon blew over, and that was fine. I tried to explain in the most rudimentary way about the vagaries of relationships.But with subsequent relationships, I kept quiet. They knew I was seeing someone, but I never introduced them. Which was just as well. Because the dates fizzled.

I have male friends who worry about whether they should call their girlfriend’s house, out of fear that one of her children will answer and wonder what strange man is calling Mom. (She had yet to introduce ‘the concept of another man’ to her children.) And I know several women who say that their boyfriend’s children automatically attach to them – perhaps because some Dads have a hard time creating intimacy with their kids on a weekend basis, and the presence of a woman can make it easier.

Still, just because a woman is a woman doesn’t mean she automatically feels love for all children. (That, too, is often assumed.) The whole blended family thing is complicated, especially before it’s even officially blended. The Brady Bunch was a drama sit/com, remember? Not a documentary. The relationships are often hard to untangle – and fuse.

A lot depends on the ages of the chidren, of course. But my sense is that we should be parents first and lovers second. They didn’t ask for their Mom and Dad to suddenly be out there on the singles scene again.

Most of the people I know who handled it well did so by keeping it private for a long time, and then, when they were sure that it was a relationship that had longterm potential, they gradually included the person on outings and at family dinners. But if the children were young, they always slept in separate rooms. They connected later, when the kids were asleep, but they didn’t want to cause them any upset about what was going on in the bedroom. They usually just introduced the person as Mommy’s new friend.

Our children grow up fast enough as it is. Divorce forces them to mature faster, I think. And when we can,  we should keep the home as stable and safe as possible.

But I have a new little theory about love.

We have been fooled if we think we only get it in a romantic relationship.

There is love from friends, and there is love from family that, when you are lucky to come from a happy one, is the most constant and often the longest-lasting.

I, like many, bolted out of my family in adolescence to find my way, which included getting into a marriage by the time I was 24. I was fully into the vanity of youth. And the love I felt for my husband was big and more consequential than the love I had from my parents. (At least, that’s how I felt.) He was choosing to love me, to share his life with me, after all. My parents didn’t have the same choice. A child is a parent’s obligation, a responsibility.And he could know me in ways they could not – my innermost thoughts; my body.

And so, I thought that I had embarked on the Big Love, partly I think because that is what we are sold on wanting and on getting. You are to marry. You are to find your soulmate.

Then, with a failed marriage, you learn the limitations of love. And you think, was the love – the real kind, the genuine, unconditional kind – really there in the first place? Or was your connection with your then-spouse something different? Some strong psychological bond that you needed as you emerged from childhood? Or was it all about some girlhood fantasy?

I was talking to a friend on Saturday night – a pretty woman in her mid-forties who is divorced. She said that she always had a dream that she would marry a doctor or a lawyer, have a nice house, a garden, two kids. And lo and behold, she fulfilled that dream. She married a lawyer. She had two beautiful children. And then she was standing in the garden outside of her gorgeous house one day, and she thought, “My husband is not very nice to me. In fact, he is mean. Everyone wonders why I am married to him. I am not happy.”

Now, as a single woman, she is trying to figure out what she wants, and she knows that when and if she gets married again, it will be for a real love, not a projected one, not a fantasy one.

Movies sell us on the importance of finding a romantic partner. Books do, too. The world does, really. Happy endings almost always involve finding a love match.

And it’s not that we shouldn’t want it or look for it. It is lovely and can be wonderfully fulfilling. But why put all our eggs in one basket? And why think that if you don’t have that, you have nothing?

I have found that the world is full of love, and that there is enough of it for everyone to get a piece, in different ways.

The love I feel for my friends is more unconditional often than the love I have felt for a boyfriend. Now maybe that’s because everyday friends are not so intimate, not in your life every second, not in your bed and your shower and your kitchen, so you can find relief from them. And with a boyfriend, that can be a little harder. Still, there is a loyalty in friendship that is often lost in a love relationship. We make deal-breakers with our love interests. But that is an oxymoron, isn’t it? How can you have conditions set for something that is supposed to be unconditional? With friends, I love them – or have great affection for them, if you want to put it that way – even when they do something really stupid. I love them for their limitations. And I rarely break up with them.

And the love for and from children…well, say no more. I know that much of my happiness at this point comes from knowing my children, all grown, who are remarkable people and so loyal and so loving. I heard from all of them yesterday – and the one who is in town took me to brunch. (The other two are students, currently in Europe.) Any parent knows how the love for one’s children opens the chambers of the heart in ways that you didn’t think were possible.

You love them no matter what. And that kind of love is a lesson – it is what we are supposed to feel, I always think. It is the way love should be – but often isn’t.

I have also come to see that the love from my parents – now in their seventies – has been the most important in many ways. They saw me through difficult times, and remain the same, always, in their stability, their certainty about family. I feel lucky to have that. It is far stronger than anything I got from my ex, who was more about control than anything, more concerned with his own needs than mine.

I also have several siblings, and I am finding now, when I think about them, how much of a through-line they are in my life as I am in theirs.  I remember having baths with my sister when we were young; playing with my brother. They, too, have known me longer than my ex. And they have been more consistent in my life than many of my friends.

Sibling love is under-rated.

Love comes in many forms, and if we can see that the romantic kind is only one sliver of what is possible to feel, well, I think we would be happier, less lonely.

We could see that the pursuit of romance is fun, a pastime and possibly even an amusing distraction. It is something we would like to have, but it is not necessary. And not everyone will get it, just like not everyone will have a perfect job or a beautiful child or a fantastic parent.

We are simply to be happy with the love we are lucky enough to have, in whatever way it comes to us.

I figure the Middle Years should be called The Clairol Years. I mean, how many mid-life women do you know who let their grey hair show?

So, I was sitting there in the chair, feeling a little annoyed. It costs so much, and at this point, because clearly I am a healthy broad whose hair grows fast, I have to come in for a touch-up every four weeks.

“What if I just leave it grey?” I asked the colourist, a nice young man with fake-blonde hair.

“That might be nice,” he mused.”We could start with a lighter colour so it all starts to blend when it grows in.”

“How bad it is? How grey?”I needed to know. It was like wanting to face a scary diagnosis from a doctor.

“Well,” he said, pushing at the roots. “It’s almost 100 percent white right here in the front, in these two patches.”

“I could have a glorious streak of white!” I exclaimed.”Two, in fact! Couldn’t we just leave those and then colour the other bits of grey in the back?” “

But at that point, my hairdresser, a woman whose long hair is full of flips and strategic poofs of height  – she wears it as pridefully as a dress, I should add – overheard the conversation and was waving her arms in the air, as if declaring an emergency or trying to guide a 747 into its berth.

“Don’t do that!” she exclaimed. “The effect is Cruella DeVille! Any woman who does that looks ridiculous.”

I sighed.

“How old do you want to look?” she asked, hands on hips. “Sixty or forty?”

“Forty,” I said, chastened. I sighed again.

So, with that, on went the goop, and out I came looking my usual fortyish self.

It’s a strange thing, this dyeing of the hair. Most men of a certain age let themselves go bald or grey. (Well, some apply colour, and some, egad, try a toupee.) But women?

As another hairdresser I know said to me once. “Women with grey hair don’t get laid.”

What’s strange is that we are at an age where we pride ourselves on our authenticity. Hey, we think, I am who I am, like me or not. We have struggled through marriage, divorce (maybe), motherhood, career, and we get here, to this plateau of mid-age, and think, from here on up, I am going to be myself. I am going to honour myself. I am going to be the real me, and do none of this stuff of subsuming myself in other identities, like that of Wife.

And then we cover up our roots. We cover up our age.

Which doesn’t seem right.

I am not one of those women who would do Botox or plastic surgery. That seems to be the complete cop-out for age and authenticity. I have earned my face, its calmess and its lines.

But the grey hair? Yeah, I guess I have earned that too, but I don’t want to show it. When I do go to get the colour fixed, I feel so much more confident as I step out into the world.

When my grey roots are showing, I feel that I am walking around with my slip hanging below my dress.

I once read that Ted Danson, star of Cheers, the now-defunct TV show, when asked about why he had finally let his hair grow in white, said simply, “Because I deserve it.”

And I thought, Wow. The slogan for women is that we get to colour our hair with Clariol or whatever product, because “I’m worth it.”

Men get to be totally themselves as a right of passage of sorts at a certain age. And we get to cover ourselves up.

Hmmm.

Your assessments were so interesting. One person said he might be trying to alleviate depression about being lonely, so he overbooks his evenings. Could be, I thought. But the guy doesn’t seem like the depressed type. He has the look of a player, I have to say. Very smooth. Good-looking. Knows his way around a wine list.

Someone asked if he gave me his cell number, as it struck him that he could be dating someone else and/or still has a wife in the wings, and that he was scheduling dates for when this other woman in his life was unavailable – or out of town. That’s how another reader put it – I am “filler.” (And this reader has the grace to preface his observation by saying, “Sorry to tell you…” Hey, there are gentlemen out there!!)

Anyway, that all got me thinking about a woman I know, single and divorced and very attractive, who was dating for a few years before she met her current, lovely boyfriend.

She had a list of warning signs to watch for in men she considered players. She knew. She had “done” a few. Actually, she has a name for men who date on  the side without his wife knowing – the creepy marrieds. Almost every single woman I know (and that includes me) has dealt with the advances of married men. But what happens when they don’t make it known that they are married?

Ah, well, here’s a tip sheet:

1) If they often make the excuse that they have to work late and can’t see you, dump ‘em. (She talks like that, this friend of mine. She makes dump ‘em sound like something a truck driver would shout to his mates about some lousy bricks he found in a back alley.)The “work late” excuse, if used regularly, could very well mean that Wifey wants him home or that his other girlfriend needed to see him.

2) If they do not take you away for a weekend within two months of dating, dump ‘em. They can’t get away for a weekend, because they live with someone else! Surprise!! That Someone Else would wonder where the hell they are – and call the cellphone! Hello?

3) If they never invite you over to their house, dump ‘em.(She discovered that one guy she was dating was not only married but that his wife had a baby on the way. He took my friend out for several months, but never invited her to his house. She later realized why – after hearing from a casual friend of his, whom she happened to know, that he had a lovely wife at home, in there with her pot roast and a bun in the oven.)

4) If he goes days on end , a week, without emailing you back, dump ‘em. In the age of Blackberry, it’s easy to return an email. And I’m not saying that the email back has to be all gushy and interested. If he’s not that into you, so be it, but a simple reply, out of courtesy, is nice. And if he doesn’t do that, something is up. I once dated a guy who went silent for a week without returning an email, and then finally responded saying that his company server had gone down, This guy was an investment counsellor with tons of clients all across the country. Somehow, I doubted that his Blackberry/email service would be down for a week. But I didn’t say anything to him. Later, I found out that he had been in Mexico with another woman.

I know there are Ms. Datebooks out there, too. I have a friend who keeps three lovers on the go. None of the men know about the others. She has recently come out of a difficult marriage and just can’t commit to anyone right now, not even in an exclusive relationship.  She wants to have sex, and lots of it with different men. Oh, and a little dinner thrown in for good measure.

And another girlfriend of mine has two boyfriends, in different cities. I have to say, when I heard these stories, I felt a little sorry for these unsuspecting guys.

I find it all a bit icky, really. Why can’t people be honest with one another? That’s one of the beauties of being older, isn’t it? That you can say what you feel, and in such a way, that you don’t unduly hurt someone else?

I wish.

I am accustomed to being at a big party now, by myself, a single gal. I think I was the only one there who was unattached. I had no boyfriend or husband across the room or across the table to look at, to find safe mooring in his eyes. Oh, well!! Guess I will have to just rely on myself, I thought. And the taxi driver, to get me home….

The rest of the guests were mostly married couples, young and old, and some with boyfriend-girlfriend status. I know the woman whose birthday it was well, and her husband, too – newlyweds, really, as they, both divorced, were married about three years ago. I was pleased to be invited.

I was sitting beside a lovely woman, a doctor, married for 45 years, mother of four kids.

“Not kindness. Are you kidding?” she said, when I told her my theory that great, long marriages work because of kindness, the most under-rated quality in a man. Women look for charm, panache, big dough, good looks, but kindness? Nah. But that, if you ask me, makes for a good relationship. You want a guy who is always going to support you, be your cheerleader, and who will listen, not judge.

“Oh, Martin and I argue all the time, ” this 60-something wife told me. “He doesn’t always win, and neither do I. But that’s how we like it. We discuss things.We respect each other’s opinions.”

They met in Saskatoon, where their families were from. “I had lots of marriage proposals,” she told me, her bright blue eyes sparking. A very attractive woman, she maintains her figure. Dyes her hair brown. “But Martin and I just connected on some very fundamental levels. We like the same things. We talked about everything. He is not the best looking,” she said, laughing, as she looked over at her balding, paunchy  husband across the table. “But that never mattered. You have to have more than that for a marriage to work.”

The conversation got me thinking about marriages – what makes them work, when they work. I think I married when I did – at 24 – because my husband, a few years older than me, was extremely good-looking, charming, and we could talk in a way I had never experienced with another man. So, yes, love was involved, big time. But also, I liked his version of me better than the one I had of myself. And the decision to marry gave me a path, an identity, when I wasn’t sure I had one. I was in the midst of my confusing twenties. I was highly eligible, and a mess about who I really was. Figures, eh?

If I were to meet the same kind of person now – the same kind of man as my ex is – I would know better. He was more surface than substance. He looked good on paper and in a tux. Which doesn’t go far, when you are trying to live the rest of your life together.

Even so, even if I feel I have fixed my man radar a bit, I don’t see many marriages I would want at this stage. Do you? Mostly, I see couples who are in a habit, who are too lazy to look for something better, or who are too scared to try.  Marriage is safe, like apple juice. I’m not promoting divorce, per se. It is one of the most difficult transitions to make in life. So painful. But it does make it clear, once you have gone through it, just how clouded our perception of love is, of marriage. We have few illusions left, once you are divorced.

Sometimes, I think it is the institution of marriage that is at fault. It is not always the best custodian of love. The identities we assume, as husband and wife, somehow mess the whole thing up, when really, all you want to do is love, is live, is enjoy.

As I left the party last night, after a bit too much wine – gee, negotiating the stairs in my high heels was difficult! – I thought about how happy I am to be as I am right now, single, self-sufficient, loved by my kids, by my friends, my family.

Today, I went out into the spring day and bought tulips for my house. They are fresh and pink, and I read the New York Times, and I had a Starbucks coffee, then I went to the gym, made dinner for one of my boys, who is here, and now, well, I am going to have a nice, long bath, drink some mint tea, read my book and go to bed.

The world feels good, at least for tonight.