Color Me

I sit here, gritting my teeth. I hate internet dating. I do. I think because I'm not good at it. Oh, I get plenty of emails. But even the ones that sound interesting...I just don't know what to write back. So mostly I ask questions. Like what do you do? where do you live? Invariably, after a couple of exchanges in which they write verbosely and I return with one-word answers, they comment that for a writer, I don't write very much.

Which is exactly what my mother used to say. Especially to strangers. She'd be visiting wherever I was living and we'd be out at some restaurant, maybe in a buffet line, when out of the blue she'd turn towards the person next to us and say, "My daughter is a writer. Have you gotten a letter from her? I haven't." Invariably the stranger would smile, then quickly move way.

My mother had always been different, but in her last few years she became even more so. Never a big talker about anything personal, she became even less so. Still I'd try, hoping with each attempt that this time I'd pull something out of her.

Once, yearning for conversation, I asked her something silly like, what's your favorite color? Her response: "Don't ask me that. I don't know. You just make me feel like I have the wrong answer."

"There is no wrong answer," I replied. "Whatever you like, you like."

But she was done, leaving me feeling badly for having made her uncomfortable.

A painter friend, who has met her last several boyfriends through the internet, takes time in answering her emails, really thinking through each message before sending it out.

But I don't want to think too much. I don't want to consider whether what I like to do, or what I like to read, or for that matter, my favorite color, will be simpatico with anyone else in the world, let alone some stranger.

Maybe in that way, I am like my mother. Although if she were alive today, I think she'd flourish on the internet. She'd be in her element, putting herself out there, not caring whom she was talking to, saying whatever entered her mind without even noticing the consequences, let alone worrying about them.