Genie In A Bottle

Molasses (slow as)

I haven’t written about the “Dating Game” in quite a while. There’s a good reason for that. During my last go-round with online dating, I, against the odds, met someone special. 

I wasn’t at all optimistic that a few months of interviewing people would pay off. 

It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy most of the meetings I had with these women (eleven again this time). It’s just that I was looking for the kind of magic that had me driving off into the sunset with the love of my life when in truth, I was stuck alone on the reality bus with its back wheels mired and spinning. I was an old dog chasing his greying tail.

But I started trading some emails with a girl in Toronto who I found interesting, and it wasn’t long before we arranged to meet at a pub in the east end of town.

That was the second week of July 2019. It wasn’t until Oct. 12 that we became a couple. 

More To It Than You Think

Why so long? There was a snag. 

This requires some context. 

Her name is Jeanette Lynes. She is a novelist and poet with eight published books, and she’s good, really good. She is also an English professor at a well-established university. She’s close enough to my age to preclude any generation conflict but looks a very attractive twenty years younger. She’s wholly unassuming and can laugh until she cries. She hasn’t an enemy in the world, and it’s easy to see why. There’s a sense of real sincerity in all she does and innate empathy for people and animals. 

She had been single for a few years with no strings attached, and she didn’t seem burdened with any dark psychological baggage. No PTSD, father issues, or serious regrets, and she carried no torches.

I didn’t presume to know her feelings about me, but we got along great, and she was sending the kind of messages that even a keyboard player could decipher. 

Let’s review: Attractive, intelligent, winning personality, independent, loves to laugh, seems to like me, has a “Great Job”……? Again, what took so long? 

The “Great Job” is at The University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

See? I had a reason

We had only four dates before she had to leave for the fall semester. She would be back, she said, for Canadian Thanksgiving. And she was. Then back again for two weeks at Christmas. In February she flew down to Pensacola, FL, to see me while I was on the road. In March, the pandemic hit, and I was grounded from touring. So the opportunities increased.

With long-distance travel, the flight itself is the easy part. It’s the bullshit at both ends that kills you. Customs isn’t a problem if you stay within your country, but security takes time. Also, if the airport is a long way from the city and most are, you can add hours to the trip. I’m twenty-five minutes from Pearson in Toronto, and Jeanette is ten minutes from Diefenbaker in Saskatoon. 

Simple, unless the weather’s bad or the plane runs out of vodka

Air Canada has three and a half hour direct flights to and from Saskatoon that aren’t overly expensive if you book a few weeks in advance. 

With a little planning, you could easily be door to door in five and a half hours. 

Driving it would be eighteen hundred miles (about thirty hours without stopping), so that three and a half hour flight doesn’t seem bad at all.

And we aren’t going to be living three thousand kilometers apart forever. We’re in our sixties. Things change. 

Off into the sunset

Here I am, sixteen months later, feeling lucky and more than content with our decision.

Oh, and for the record, I’m smitten.