An anniversary....

January 17, 2012 Rota
Yes, today is an anniversary.  I year ago today I met someone special and today we are celebrating.  But let me start at the beginning.  You will remember that I had been looking on the internet for a companion.  Well, after a few adventures with Americans and English living in Spain, I was still dissatisfied.  It seemed like foreign women tended to run with packs of other foreigners and not mix very much with the Spanish.  Even the flamenco aficionados were that way. That group did mix with the gypsies, but sort of ignored normal Spaniards.  Well, I didn't much like that because my favorite thing about Spain and my reason for being here is that I love the people and their way of being, gypsies and non-gypsies.

So one afternoon, I was bored and decided to do a search limited to just Rota.  That way I was sure to find someone that I didn't need to drive all day to visit.  Well, in Rota I got about 50 hits.  It was pretty easy to weed out the ones who weren't for me.  Most of them smoked.... pass!  And then a lot in my age group were sort of typical middle-aged Spanish women - sort of like fire-plugs - short and squat.  Quite a few put phoney numbers for their weights, but it was pretty easy to read between the lines.  There were a few Americans who had divorced their military spouses but for some reason were still here.  But nothing attractive.

But, I did notice one woman who fit a lot of my criteria...non-smoker, tall, slim, and educated.  She was a retired school teacher, having taught many years here in Rota.  She didn't have a picture on her profile which always made me a little nervous.  But the text showed a person of substance - so many of the women wrote things about themselves that were really superficial or showed off their lack of education.  This one showed promise.  So I sent off a few indications of interest and a message.  And got a response in due course.  So we started trading emails.  After a while I invited her to join me for a coffee.

Well, on the other end, she was dealing with my emails with some concern.  She wasn't really actively searching for anyone, but her kids made her put herself on the internet.  As a divorced women, she had found that men were mostly looking for an "adventure" and even if they weren't, few of them held any interest for someone at her level of education.  So she had decided that she just wanted a "friend", but not a "pareja" (lover).  She was pretty conflicted about meeting me.  She asked her youngest daughter what she should do.  Her daughter knew me because she worked in the office of the marina where I had kept the boat.  She told her mom, "Go ahead and meet him.  He is a perfect gentleman".  The pressure was mounting.  But I had indicated in my profile that I was looking for a "pareja" and so she wrote to me turning down my invitation saying that since she wasn't looking for a "pareja" she would be wasting my time.

But by this time, I was getting really curious about her and so told her that it couldn't possibly hurt for us to have a coffee.  I had never had a coffee with a Spanish woman and so it would be a unique experience.  What did we have to lose?  So she agreed to meet me at a restaurant close to my house, right next to the cathedral.  And at 4PM, a year ago today - we shared a coffee.