Dennis McCarthy has the day off. Here is a “Best of Dennis” column originally published on May 25, 1993 with the headline ‘No age limit on romance,’ in the Los Angeles Daily News.
Rose Dorman, 103, elbowed Ann Abrams, 84, at the breakfast table last December, whispering a few words that would turn the widow’s world upside down.
“See that fella?” Rose said, nodding at a nearby table in the dining room at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda. “He’s got a crush on you.”
“What are you talking about, Rose?” Ann said, dropping her fork into her eggs.
“I’m telling you, he’s got a crush on you,” Rose whispered again. “I can tell.”
“What do you know about crushes at your age?” Ann said, smiling as she picked her fork back up.
“Hey, we had crushes back in the 1800s, too,” Rose answered, feigning indignation.
Ann Abrams laughed, turning her head slightly to catch a glimpse of Hy “Spike” Spikel, 84, smiling at her like a lovesick schoolboy.
“By golly, he is looking at me,” Ann thought to herself, avoiding the stare of this young whippersnapper giving her the eye.
Five hundred people sit down for breakfast every morning in this dining room, Ann knew — 475 women and 25 men. What were the odds? Nah, no way. The guy’s just being friendly to all the ladies, that’s all.
She was wrong. Spike Spikel says he’d had his eye on the dish at the next table for a few months, trying to work up the courage to talk to her. He could tell by eavesdropping on the conversation at her table that she was a woman with a good heart, plenty of compassion, who liked to laugh at stupid jokes.
Spike had no shortage of stupid jokes he liked to spread around the home to liven things up.
After you’ve been married for 59 years to the same woman who you lost after a long, painful final year of daily hospital visits, laughter and friendship were the only elixir that seemed to work anymore, the only thing that made him want to continue living.
Love again? Out of the question, Spike thought. But what was it about the woman at the next table that made him smile like a lovesick schoolboy, he wondered?
He’d have to find out.
Ann Abrams was wondering, too. She’d have to find out, she told herself.
“I began eavesdropping on the talk at Hy’s table,” she said. “He seemed to have a wonderful sense of humor and a kind nature. And his looks weren’t too bad, either.
“He finally got brave one day and walked over to our table,” Ann said Monday, counting the days on one hand until she steps to the altar again after being a widow for 43 years.
“Good morning, ladies,” Spike Spikel said.
Rose elbowed Ann again. “See I told you,” the smug look on her face said.
It went on this way for a few more weeks, Spike bidding good morning to all the ladies while fixing his warmest smile on Ann Abrams.
Pretty soon, she was eating a little slower, positioning herself to be the last to leave the breakfast table.
Spike began eating slower, too. He was no dummy.
“We began to sit and talk after breakfast, learning about each other’s lives,” Ann said.
About his four children and his career as a kosher butcher.
About her one daughter and her years of charity work.
Friendly chatter, nothing more. Until the cold, rainy afternoon in January when Ann looked out her window and saw Spike walking the grounds, shivering from the cold.
“She came outside with a sweater for me and suggested that I find a girlfriend to keep me warm,” Spike said, with a laugh.
“I thought about it for a moment, and said, ‘How about you?’”
So when the official day of love arrived this year, Spike Spikel slid a box of chocolates and a valentine across the breakfast table at Ann Abrams, and the look in their eyes said there was no fooling themselves anymore.
They were in love.
“So, that’s what happened to this little old lady,” Ann said Monday, preparing for her marriage to Hy “Spike” Spikel this weekend at the home before leaving for a honeymoon in Las Vegas.
“Never in a million years did I dream something like this would happen,” she says, squeezing the hand of the man — who sharp-eyed, 103-year-old Rose Dorman had scoped out perfectly.
The guy at the next breakfast table with a schoolboy crush.
“I guess there’s no age limit on love, huh?” Ann Abrams says.
No, thank goodness — no age limit at all.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.