When Jim and I started dating, it was Allie I went to. If anyone knew about dating a younger man, she did. I must admit, Jim being twelve years younger made me hesitate. Twelve years! I noticed the crepey skin above my knees, the creases gathering on my hands, the age spots that I renamed as new freckles on my arms, the weathering of my chest from years of sunbathing. Would he see me over him, the flesh of my face pulled by gravity into new pouches and bags, the sag of my ass and the sway of my breasts, and have his lust interrupted by the predictive scent of old age? Maybe we would only make love in the dark.

How did Allie take off her clothes in front of such a young man?

What did she do about the cellulite on her ass? The wrinkly thighs and knees?

That day, we walked around Hudson Mills, Disney on his leash. Both of us were determined to lose weight, but neither of us were actually doing anything except getting into better shape. But that was okay. I’ve been trying for three years to lose ten pounds and Allie loses and gains back the same six or seven a year. “Doesn’t matter if we actually get there and stay there,” she said once. “The point is we keep working on it. And, hey, we’re in better shape and healthier than if we stopped trying.”

The day was surprisingly warm in the midst of winter, as though we were given a respite from blasting winds and a curdled gray sky.

“He didn’t believe my age. He thought I was lying for some bizarre reason, but by then we had made love. When he told me he was thirty-two, I said, ‘You’ve read my web page, do the math. I’m old enough to be your mother.’” Allie laughed. “He told me after we were lovers for six months or so that he figured, since I was post menopause, maybe we’d have sex two times a week. ‘Two times a week? How ’bout two times a day!’ I don’t know why there’s this myth that older women don’t want sex. We just can’t get it as much because of men’s problems.”

The sun melted snow that clung to pockets of earth and the air had the scent of wet ground. Disney investigated the earth and leftover snow with his nose, looking for old friends.

“Yeah. I remember thirty-year-olds. They can do it all night and all day.”