I have to confess that retirement is not exactly what I expected or what it is cracked up to be. I pictured myself off on a world cruise or spending the winters on some exotic island. Of course, in those fantasy retirement dreams, I looked like Jane Fonda at age 78 with all of her many cosmetic surgeries and lithe body honed by personal trainers and her devotion to her fitness videos of the 1970s.
My other fantasy retirement scenario was that all four of my children would live right around the corner. We would all have dinner together every Sunday, and the grandchildren would walk down to my house every day after school for milk and cookies. Gary and I would have sleepovers with them on the weekends. That certainly isn’t going to happen since my children live from coast to coast and none are even married.
The dream that did come true about retirement is that time has expanded exponentially. I now have the time to do all the things I said that I might do “someday.” I can grow vegetables in my garden and can my own tomatoes. Of course, I don’t do this—but I now have time to do so. I can take yoga class weekly and get more involved in my local community. These things I have done, and they are quite fulfilling. I can plan my day around an afternoon nap as well. Win win.
On the negative side, because I don’t have a set schedule, I tend to put things off much more frequently. Spring cleaning turns into Fall cleaning. Then when Fall comes, I decide it is too cold to wash all the windows in the house; I will just wait until warm Spring weather. And so it goes.
What I love about retirement is that I can knit or read all day long. My mother used to have a saying that she used whenever she couldn’t put down a good book and hence spent the entire day reading. She would say to me, “I wasn’t worth the powder to blow me up today.” A lot of days, Gary and I aren’t worth the powder to blow us up. We may have spent an entire day gorging on episode after episode of House of Cards. Why? Because we could, so we did.
Cooking in retirement has changed as well. No more huge evening meals or big family Sunday dinners. We are so limited now in what we should eat that cooking really is no fun. It takes about half an hour to cook a piece of chicken, throw a potato in the microwave, and steam some broccoli. We have to eat our big meal in the middle of the day so that we can sleep through the night without getting up to pee 15 times! The downside is that when all the kids do come home for a family event, like the big family picnic we had this past weekend, I seem to forget how to make things. I made the Three Bean Salad that I have made for at least 30 years, but I forgot the green beans and wax beans. Luckily, no one seemed to notice. That scares me in two ways: How much of my long-term memory have I lost, and was the bean salad always lousy but no one ever told me???
I hate to confess, this but I do not miss my “career.” I miss the interactions with my students, but I hope to never spend every hour of every weekend grading essay after essay after essay again. I don’t miss being chained to the Academic Calendar. When the first day of school rolls around, I now do what I did when my four kids were young and the school bus picked them all up and they were finally gone ALL day long—Gary and I take ourselves out for a lovely, relaxing breakfast at Eat N Park.
I think that for so many people, the word “retirement” symbolizes getting old and dying. In point of fact, I have known a few people who retired and then died shortly thereafter. That may be the reason why so many people are afraid to retire. If your entire identity is entwined with your career, it is really difficult to retire. Then you have to figure out who you really are. I discovered that I actually am a creative person and that recognition came as a pleasant surprise to me. Also, I am fortunate enough to still be healthy enough to do all the things that I enjoy like yoga, walking, and gardening.
Money worries is a huge issue in retirement. I know people who are deathly afraid of retirement because they are afraid that they will run out of money. These are usually the people who end up getting cancer from the stress of working and leaving behind a huge pile of money that goes donated to the Animal Shelter. I really couldn’t afford to retire, but I decided to do it anyway. I may end up being a Greeter at Walmart, but I will try to be the most friendly and helpful Greeter that you have ever seen. Of course, hopefully I will remember where everything is located in Walmart because even though my memory is shot since I have taken my mother there every Friday for years, my rote memorization skills should kick in if push comes to shove.
Like everything else in life, retirement is what YOU make it. It is about the attitude that we bring to the table. Gary has spent years advising me to “Live in the Present Moment.” This was way before Zen Buddhism and yoga classes became all the rage. This morning after I finish writing this blog Post, I will take my morning cup of coffee out on my sunporch and sit for a long time and watch the bees and the little hummingbird sip nectar from those frilly red flowers on the plant whose name I can’t remember. Life IS good. Life IS short. So why waste time either fearing or dreading retirement? As my oldest daughter would tell me, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
