He could have been Parents Without Partners' poster child. Not too tall, not too short, cute but not to the point of intimidation, dark hair lightly shot with gray, kind eyes, a sensitive soul.

Jeff was my first contact with the group. I was immediately impressed.

After four months of trying, I am now an official card-carrying member of PWP. Since Thanksgiving, I have tried and failed to make one of their orientations, required before you can pay your dues, become a member and attend their events. A few weeks ago, I became fiercely determined to do it.

I'd stared at the calendar of events each weekend, noting that had we joined, we'd have had two or three family events from which to choose. Places to go at which Robby and I would both have people our own age with whom to consort. Instead, our weekends were typically just the two of us, often lonely, sometimes boring. We relied on one another too much as playmates, a situation that had grown worse since our move to the child-light apartment complex. This had to change, I knew, the sooner, the better.

Last week, I canceled a night out with the Hot 'n Spicy Food Meetup, an evening to which I'd been looking forward because the last event had been heavily male (4 women/16 men) and I had engaged in hours of mutually satisfying flirtation. But I believed the people at PWP would play a far more key role in mine and Robby's life than the Hot 'n Spicy group boys. Reluctantly, I turned my back on them.

Last Wednesday, I drove 45 minutes north to the suburban town in which the orientation was scheduled. I ambled into the McDonald's, and scanned the diners with puzzlement, a look that was not lost on the handsome stranger who approached me. "PWP?"

I nodded.

"We're back here." I followed him into the playland, where another graying man sat. I sat down on a bench facing them. My black skirt, professionally just below the knee when standing, now rose up to several inches above it. The legs of which I was usually proud were suddenly embarrassing, too obvious, too long, too much out there. And we were all too close, facing one another on the insides of two kid-sized benches. I tried to push the skirt down. Did I look a strumpet or a professional? Or perhaps just what I was -- a professional woman overdue for some masculine attention?

Whatever. The polite conversation among us was awkward.

Eventually, thankfully, two other parents - making for a total of seven children - joined us. As well as another PWP board member, a wide-faced, big-bellied fellow named David.

PWP, I quickly learned, is a place of multiple children and fresh wounds. I am an irregularity from the start. The mother of one older child, a divorcee of - gasp! - 10 years! Not a soul I've met has yet failed to express surprise at this. I'm not sure how to take that. But I see clearly that almost all of them are in the healing stages.

Mine is a would long since become a scab picked off and dropped on some bar-room floor. The process for me was not difficult, in large part because I was the one who left. My respect and corresponding love for my husband had died by degrees over a course of years. By the time the parting came, my pain was minimal.

Lest you think this sounds cold, know that I grieved it before that day, watched in sadness as it all slipped away. And that my greatest wound was yet to come. Via a boyfriend. Not my husband. We are all wounded by relationship. Just not necessarily the same ones.

Jeff is on the soft edge between healing and a clean bill of health. From what I gathered, he has been divorced less than two years. Perhaps he is naturally sensitive, but his emotions are high, and ring to me of some still-worrisome pain. Perhaps it's one of those pains that never entirely leaves.

When he spoke last week of the role PWP has played in his life, his brown eyes filled with tears. My heart softened.

"My self-esteem was shattered when I came to this group," he said. "These people helped me so much. They've been so supportive.

"I met my best friend here. Todd and I now have an LLC doing fix-and-flips. Next week, I'm going to Mexico with seven other PWPs."

He smiled at all of us, his eyes lingering - I wanted to believe - on mine.

"I met my girlfriend here, too. She's going to Mexico with us."

I blinked. Thought, 'Damn.' That thought almost immediately trampled by my self defense, which said, 'Honestly, he's a bit too much of an emotional sap anyway.'

Jeff continued. "This is not a dating club, though people do date here. It's not a drinking club, though there is alcohol."

He spoke of the many volunteer efforts the group made, the educational programs for kids and adults. I liked everything he told us, at least all that I could hear.

Because the kids apparently were hitting it off great. Piercing screams emitted from high up inside the primary-colored twists and turns of the playland. The other adults appeared not to notice. I was as long past piercing screams as I was my divorce. The sounds were jarring. I concentrated fiercely on not jumping, starting or grimacing. We were all parents, after all. If I was to be one of the team, I had to accept all the players.

The meeting adjourned with the payment of dues, signing of papers and promises to see one another soon.

At home an hour later, I saw that I finally could tap into the pre-dues-paying forbidden PWP calendar. Saturday, the group planned to meet at a mega-swimming complex on the far north end of town. I RSVP'd 'yes.'

What did one wear to such an event? A bikini seemed over the top, yet my aging one-piece had lost its stretch and become little more than a black bag.

Spring is imminent. I'd just been paid. Surely, it was new swimsuit time. Surely, Target was calling my name.

I opted on something slightly less than a bikini: brown boy shorts with a brown-patterned bikini top. I wondered if I should remove the belly button ring. Was it too much? What sort of message did it send?

Am I obsessive? Paranoid? Insecure? Do you want to slap me? Yes, yes, yes and, I'm afraid, yes.

My friend Stephanie critiqued the suit and gave me the directive I needed. "It's cute," she said. "How many women ..." she stopped short of saying "your age" and quickly took another direction. "Jane, if you've got it, flaunt it."

Flaunting was not at all what I wanted to do. Flaunting did not make new female friends. And flaunting was something I could only do with alcohol, which usually meant that I also stumbled, killing the whole flaunting thing anyway. Flaunt I would not. But wear the suit I would.

We arrived at the complex about 10 minutes after the start time. On my right wrist was the orange band we new members had each been given at our orientation. "Wear these to your first few events," Jeff had instructed. "That way, we'll find you."

It would also likely not be difficult to find the group, one man suggested. "Look for the group with too many kids and too few wedding rings."

Dave, attired in swim shorts and his orange wrist band, found me before I spied them. I introduced him to Robby and he gestured to two boys just coming out of the slide pool. "Neil, Alex, this is Robby."

Neil was a tall, gangly, acne-besieged 13-year-old with long black hair that flopped over one eye. Something in his stance said he was the leader of the pack. Alex was brown haired, slightly taller and broader than Robby, with eyes that radiated good humor.

Both extended their hands to Robby. "Hi Robby," Neil said. "How's it going Robby," said Alex. Robby shook them, his face red with embarrassment at the formal adult gesture and his sudden center-stage status.

But there was little time for that. Neil turned, grabbed a tube and handed it to Robby. With his other hand, he touched Robby lightly on his shoulder, steering toward the stairs that led to the top of the tube slide. "C'mon, let's go." Robby grinned, turned with them and did not look back. I saw the three of them begin to chatter at high speed.

My eyes brimmed with tears. This was exactly what I had hoped PWP would do for him. This picture before me was my vision come to life.

David looked around the pods of adults on the edges of the pools. "Let's find the others," he said.

We found them, a group of 8 or so adults, a healthy mix of men and women. They were accompanied by an unknown number of children, since almost all of them were in the water.

The women lay on loungers, surrounded by towels and beach bags brimming with kid treats. They were dry. All but one wore one-piece suits. A heavyset blonde wore a too-small bikini. She was smiling, but yanking repeatedly downward on the elastic of her bottoms down.

Two of the men were wet and smiling, fresh from the pools. Another lay prone on a lounger, several feet away from the rest of the crowd, eyes closed, apparently sleeping.

The women were talking about people, perhaps other members, I did not know. They greeted me, then turned back to their conversation. I padded around after David. He was someone I knew, someone friendly, someone to whom I was not attracted, and someone whose role it was to welcome the newcomers. He may not have wanted me to follow him, but he had to. Most of all, he was safe.

David and I went down the tube slide. We watched the kids. We sat in the hot tub. After about an hour of this, a few other PWP members joined us in the adult-only tub, blessedly far removed from the shrieking crowd at the "family" hot tub.

I clicked with Doris, a pretty late-30ish woman with a nice figure dressed in a shapeless, flowered one piece. I wondered why she didn't reveal more of her figure. Until she began to talk. She had been left, and not all that long ago, by her husband. Why she did not say. But now she had sole custody of her two boys, 12 and 8. Like Jeff, her self-esteem had been shattered by the divorce. And while it had happened some time ago, she had not had time to date since. Without hearing the words, I could see that she had not yet regained her self confidence.

I liked her even more for this. Because she was uncertain, and didn't realize she was so attractive; she was sweet and dedicated to her kids. Because I sensed the zip that had fueled her in her younger days was only shallowly buried. I thought we would be friends, and I could help unearth it all, and we would have some real fun then. And also because her mother had saddled her with a bad name.

I walked back to the group of women, and made an attempt to converse. Doris aside, they seemed to have an established clique. I talked to them about the orientation, meeting Jeff, the trip to Mexico, his mention of a PWP business partner and a girlfriend.

At that, Renee turned immediately to Christy. "Jeff's back with," she said an indistinguishable female name.

"Really?" Christy said, leaning in toward Renee.

Renee shrugged. "I guess so," she said. She turned back to me, but I knew this was fodder for still more conversation.

I retreated to the hot tub, where most of the men now sat. Charlie, like Alex, had sparkly eyes that promised mischief. His face was open, friendly and kind. Scott also had a pleasant manner, but his conversation - critical of the club, his schedule and other things - suggested to me he was deeply bitter. Tom was simply aloof, offering a nod, a hello and little else.

Robby hung out with his two new friends all afternoon. I waited him out and finally, he confessed that he was tired. He wanted to go home.

We said our goodbyes. They shouted out farewells, and come-again soons.

"Was that fun, Robby?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Yeah, I guess." In Robby speak, that meant he'd had a blast. But because the day had been my idea, he didn't want to admit it had been a good one just yet.

We walked out in the gray day and I felt a small surge of hope. It was too soon to say for sure, but perhaps, just maybe, we had stumbled onto something good.

Perhaps even, something wonderful.