By MICHELLE YORK
Published: August 29, 2008
Dear Amy: I am a funny, intelligent woman in my mid-40s. I was married a long time ago, and I have a wonderful daughter. Now that she is bound for college, I would like to find a meaningful relationship. Every man I meet seems more impressed by my career than by my heart. What can I do? — Confused.
Dear Confused: Men are hopeless! I suggest you give up entirely. Focus on something completely different. Write a book or renovate your house instead.
THOUGH that may not have been the advice she would have given herself, it is nonetheless the path that led Amy Dickinson, who writes the syndicated Ask Amy column for The Chicago Tribune, to find the love of her life.
Ms. Dickinson, now 48, grew up on a dairy farm in the Finger Lakes town of Freeville, N.Y., population 505. Her family’s roots there date back two centuries.
Growing up, she realized that her classmates divided themselves into two groups: those who wanted to stay and those who wanted to leave. She knew the group to which she belonged. “I would sit on a hay bale and pretend I was on ‘Johnny Carson,’ ” she said. “I had dreams.”
Bruno Schickel, the brother of her friend Jacques, was in the other group. He was four years older than her and fierce. He was already a young man hard at work on the family farm, barking orders when he found younger siblings whiling away their time swimming in the pond. “He was a little frightening,” Ms. Dickinson said.
But the young Amy caught his eye back then. “She was as cute as a button,” said Mr. Schickel, belying his gruff demeanor.
After high school, Ms. Dickinson left for Georgetown University,began her career as a journalist, married and had a daughter, Emily Mason, now 19. The marriage fell apart when Emily was a toddler, but Ms. Dickinson used her experiences as a single parent as fodder for a column in Time magazine.
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