It all started when I was 17 and madly in love with the boy next door, who was so flat-out sexy that just to look him in the eye felt, somehow, immoral. From the start, I could not get used to the fact that of all the girls that were throwing themselves at him, including the entire cheerleading squad, he wanted only me. Little did I know, that he had already worked his way through the entire team of pom-pom girls before I had moved in next door to him and his family.

Well, being the innocent girl that I was, and ferociously hell-bent to stay that way, there was no way on earth he was going to seduce me into his bed, no matter how much I was tempted to do so. So, after a few long months of getting nowhere with me, he finally gave up and moved on, later marrying the blonde down the street, whom he had gotten pregnant on the night of the senior prom.

Fast forward 44 years, and two failed marriages for him, plus one for me. We were both paying dues to the same online dating site, when our paths cross again. I was no longer the innocent flirt of four decades back, and he was no longer the babe magnet of that same period. We both recognized the other from our photos and profiles, but he was the one to take action. Next thing that happened was that we were making a date and catching up on the past 40 years over a very long candlelit dinner at the beach. By dessert, we were already convinced there was no more time to waste apart from each other. We’d already done that, after all. The following week we exchanged vows in that same candlelit restaurant, with the wholehearted approval of his three kids and my two, and not an ex-spouse in sight.

Time not only flies, it whizzes by. I was just getting out of my teens, and before I knew it, I was married, widowed and alone at the twilight of a very long day that seemed as though it had barely begun.

What do you do when you are over 80, and are expected to head for a home—not the kind you’ve lived in all your life, but one that is inhabited by strangers with whom you are supposed to live out the rest of your years, no matter how many?

Fortunately, my husband and I had saved enough over the years that I was now able to enjoy my leisure, expand my intellectual horizons, and give back to the community in mutually satisfying ways. But as much as I was enjoying my freedom to do exactly as I chose, in reality, I was missing the sharing that only a male/female relationship could bring me. Because I knew enough about how to navigate through the choppy waters of cyberspace, I had no excuse not to log onto an Internet dating site and sign up. It was discouraging to see all the men who admitted to being in their 70s, looked more like 80+, and were in search of women in their 40s. No point in hanging out in that neck of the woods, so I did some serious surfing in other corners of the Net and found an article that talked about how boomers and seniors were experiencing a satisfying new stage of their lives by joining the Peace Corps. What an interesting concept, I thought.

Without hesitation, I signed on for a two-year stint in a remote village in Africa, and was determined to write a book about my experiences. It took no longer than the flight over there to meet the man with whom I would share that extraordinary period, and by the time we had fulfilled our commitment, I had written my book, he had shot a documentary, and we both flew back to the U.S. together. Within a week, we assembled our families and friends, and were married in a candlelit ceremony in my hometown.

While we do not have our entire life to look forward to together, we do have the rest of it, however long it may be—and we are completely dedicated to making up for lost time. We are content in the knowledge that whatever the future holds, we have each other. In my line of reasoning, that makes us twice as powerful as before, and only half as old.

What if the boy or girl you fell in love with in the first grade suddenly reappeared in your life, say half a century later, and it felt to you as though the decades between had never occurred? It can happen, you know. It did to me a couple of years ago, after an ugly and protracted divorce sent me rushing for the security of my idyllic childhood life in Yonkers, New York, where my sister still lived with her husband.

As soon as I had unpacked my bags, and taken a nap, Jessica knocked on the door of my room, announcing there would be a surprise guest for dinner, and that I was to wear my fabulous blue dress. Before getting showered and dressed, I spent some time downstairs in my unwashed jeans, no makeup, and scruffy hair helping Jessica chop salad for dinner. The doorbell rang, and I wiped my grimy wet hands on my jeans to answer it, thinking it was Jessica’s husband John coming home early from work without his key. To my surprise, I was suddenly staring into the big brown eyes of Eddie, the boy I had loved so long ago, and hadn’t seen since right after college. 

He was grayer now, and a little chunkier, and that well chiseled jaw was nowhere in sight. But the twinkle in his eye was bright as ever, and that smile that caused my heart to flutter could still work its magic. I felt embarrassed he had caught me looking my worst, but he insisted I looked better to him than ever.

I never did wear the pretty blue dress that night. The jeans worked out just fine. So fine, in fact, that, three months later, I was wearing a sapphire engagement ring to match it.

Eddie and I have been married a year now, and doing our best to make up for the years we weren’t together. Last night, we saw the latest “Indiana Jones” movie in which he finally marries his longtime love. An anonymous wedding guest in the film pondered the subject of lost years, and mused to himself, “How much time is lost to humans in waiting.”

But Eddie and I have no regrets for the 50 years we were apart. We met again at a time in our lives when we could appreciate each other more than we ever did at 20.

Ah, the wisdom of maturity.