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To All The Women I Have Dated (Who Are Now Grandmas)
By Mihar Dias June 2026
There comes a stage in a man's life when the women he once dated are no longer former girlfriends, old flames or youthful romances.
They are grandmothers.
This realization arrived not with drama, violins or Julio Iglesias singing To All The Girls I've Loved Before. Julio, of course, had girls walking in and out of his door. My problem is that the girls who once walked through mine probably now walk much more carefully, carrying grandchildren, handbags and perhaps prescriptions.
At nearly eighty, memory itself becomes a part-time employee. It turns up late, leaves early and occasionally files documents in the wrong cabinet. Looking back over five decades and three continents, I sometimes attempt to reconstruct the women I dated before marriage.
It is rather like trying to restore an old film after someone has removed half the reels.
Sometimes I imagine telephoning one of them.
The phone rings.
A young voice answers.
“Hello?”
“May I speak to Jane?”
The voice shouts: “Grandma! Telephone!”
At that point my courage evaporates.
Of course this never happened. I never made the call. The entire scene exists only in my imagination. But suppose it did happen. What would one say to a woman one has not spoken to for fifty years?
“Hello. This is the man who took you dancing in 1968.”
Silence.
“Sorry, who?”
“It was during the Johnson administration.”
More silence.
The difficulty is not merely that both people have become old. The difficulty is that the relationship itself has become an archaeological site. One fears disturbing it.
Imagine receiving such a call yourself.
A voice emerges from half a century ago.
Immediately the mind races backwards. What have I forgotten? What promises did I make? Did I borrow money? Was there an argument? Did I fail to return a book? Was there a misunderstanding? Did I say something foolish?
The dead, after all, are supposed to stay dead. Former romances belong to a similar category. Their proper residence is memory.
Something close to this happened to me in 1980 after I had returned from America and was working in Penang.
The AT&T operator announced:
“I have a call for you, sir, from Bloomington, Indiana.”
Indiana?
I had never been to Indiana.
Curiosity defeated caution.
“Hello?”
The voice at the other end sounded warm and friendly.
“You're a difficult man to find.”
Before I could identify either the caller or the voice, she said:
“Hang on. Let me put Ryan on.”
Then came a young boy's voice.
“Hello, Dad.”
I nearly stopped breathing.
The human brain is a remarkable machine. In a fraction of a second it searched every romantic file from the previous ten years. Every woman I had dated. Every farewell. Every possibility.
No one, as far as I remembered, had ever mentioned a baby.
Panic is an excellent memory aid.
I summoned my secretary.
“This cannot be my son. Please pick up the extension and find the correct father.”
For several hours I lived in suspense. Had my past finally caught up with me? Was this an American surprise package delivered by AT&T?
Eventually the mystery was solved.
Another gentleman had recently joined our organisation. He had almost exactly the same name as mine and, unlike me, had actually studied in Indiana.
The child belonged entirely to him.
My relief was immense, although I confess there was a tiny disappointment. For several hours I had apparently become a father in America.
To this day, no woman from my life before marriage has ever telephoned me.
Neither have I attempted to contact any of them.
Perhaps this is wisdom.
Or perhaps cowardice with excellent public relations.
Some years ago an old friend asked me a dangerous question.
“How many women did you date in your life?”
I remained silent.
Thirty minutes passed.
He asked again.
Forty-five minutes.
An hour.
Finally I replied:
“I am still counting.”
The truth is that age changes arithmetic.
At twenty, one counts girlfriends.
At forty, one counts anniversaries.
At sixty, one counts grandchildren.
At eighty, one counts memories.
And memories are peculiar things. The faces become softer. The disappointments shrink. The awkward endings disappear. The arguments lose their sharpness. The people themselves become almost fictional characters.
Somewhere in America, Australia, Europe or Malaysia, there may be women who once knew a younger version of me with dark hair, unreasonable confidence and enough optimism to believe that life would take forever.
Today they may be grandmothers.
Their grandchildren may know them only as kindly ladies who bake cakes, complain about their knees and remind everyone to carry umbrellas.
The grandchildren cannot imagine that Grandma once danced until midnight, laughed at foolish jokes and tolerated a young man trying very hard to appear sophisticated.
Neither, perhaps, can Grandma.
That is the curious gift of old age.
You discover that everyone else has grown old too.
The girls we once loved have become grandmothers.
The young men they once knew have become grandfathers.
And somewhere Julio Iglesias is still singing to all the girls he loved before.
The rest of us simply sit quietly, grateful that AT&T eventually found the right father.
Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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