When Susan first e-mailed me, it was to pitch herself to one of my single peeps. One of the pictures she sent me was of her standing, in a blue cocktail dress, one hand leaning on a silver Aston Martin, in the driveway of a beautiful home. Not wanting my peep to think she was high maintenance, she made it clear that the picture was taken at a party and it wasn’t her car. “The only reason I sent the picture is because my guy friends insisted on it, but I’m much more like the cool girl next door.” I liked the honesty and asked her if she wanted to become a Single Peep.
Susan’s in her 40s — she wouldn’t narrow it down any more for me — and is looking for a guy in his 40s to mid-50s. She sells mobile and Internet advertising to national advertisers. It sounds boring as hell to me, but she says, “I really like it a lot. It’s fun. You get to meet a lot of cool people at the ad agencies, and my clients are really interesting. I also get to travel a little bit.” She tells me she’s a big traveler.
“I want a guy with a sense of humor. A guy who has integrity. That’s really, really important to me. I’m at a phase in my life where I want to give back, and I want solid, stable people in my life. Someone who’s employed is good,” she says, as she laughs. The reason this is so important to her is because Susan has decided to foster a child in a few weeks. In July, 38 orphans from Colombia are coming to Los Angeles as part of Kidsave’s Summer Miracles Program, which brings older kids to the United States from orphanages all over the world and tries to place them in permanent homes. Susan is taking in one of the girls. “The 11-year-old will definitely change things. I’ve been looking for backpacks and trying to find her one. I also registered her for camp.” I ask Susan if she’s ever met the girl. She hasn’t. “We’re Skyping on Friday night,” she says. “Are you nervous?” I ask. “I’m terrified. Mostly it’s the language that worries me. You can’t learn a language in a month and a half.” She’s been learning Spanish by listening to CDs in her car.
I ask her if she’s interested in adopting, and she says she wants to take it one day at a time. “Because I don’t know where this path is going to take me, I want to find someone who is open to more children in their life. A good, solid, honest, menschy guy. I’m really interested in building a family, a sense of community. I don’t know what that looks like right now, but it’s really important for me to form some new, close, permanent bonds.”
I ask her what prompted fostering a child. “A couple of years ago, I lost my father (a Holocaust survivor) and stepmother within two months. I felt like there was this void, and I wanted to give back. Through Kidsave, I saw they were working with kids in Colombia. As advocates, we’re supposed to go out and find adoptive families through press and events for prospective adoptive parents.”
Susan tells me she doesn’t just want interested men to contact her. She wants prospective parents, or people interested in hosting other children, to contact her, as well. She wants a man, but she also wants to find a child a home. Maybe she’ll find both.
If you’re interested in anyone you see on My Single Peeps, send an e-mail and a picture, including the person’s name in the subject line, to mysinglepeeps@jewishjournal.com, and we’ll forward it to your favorite peep.
Seth Menachem is an actor and writer living in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. You can see more of his work on his Web site, sethmenachem.com, and meet even more single peeps at mysinglepeeps.com.
