Retirement, Take Twenty: Two Years In

   

     Two years of retirement already.

     Even though the time has zoomed by, I can certainly say my time has proven to be my own.

     I can say no in a way I didn't used to be able to. And there may be some truth to the observation that once free from work (mostly), people become more themselves, more who they really are. And if I learned nothing else working in open-door community colleges for most of my adult life, I learned that people have an incredible capacity to bloom at different times in different ways. If we're lucky, we do contain multitudes.

     Two years ago I really WAS a recovering employee: I used to sleep until eight just because I didn't have to get up at six to get to work. But these days: hey! I'm retired! So some days I get up when the birds are singing (which I assume is because the sun is shining, a comparatively rare event where I live), and other days I sleep in. Some days I have to remind myself what day it is.

     I am still grateful for all the opportunities my places of work afforded me even as those days are receding in the rear view mirror. More than that, I am grateful that I made it this far. When I had lunch with a former colleague who had retired voluntarily six years ago and when I think about those who recently were "realigned" (management speak for their positions being abolished), I am certain that I retired at the right time.

     What's changed?

     I am aware, or more aware, that I need to get exercise, as much for my brain as for my body. And I do. I get enough exercise to know I feel better when I do, but I also know I have no aspirations to be An Athlete.  I also listen to Slow French on my iPad (intermediate level, and most of which I do understand). I read. I write. 

     My time is my own--and it is mine to fritter away if I like. My routine is good until it is not, until it gets interrupted by, say, a phone call or the new episodes of Orange Is The New Black.

     Now that I am home and refocused, the seasons seem to matter more than they used to. Or at least I am more aware of them than I used to be. I no longer have to drive on unplowed streets to get to work. I can stay in. I can go out. Where I go is up to me. I actually notice when the weather is nice in part because I am not in an office eight hours a day. I am no longer exhausted at certain times of the academic year (say at the end of the first week of classes or at graduation).

     I no longer have to suffer fools the way I had to in the past. And, to be fair, perhaps a few of the fools are not grieving that they have found themselves Sandy-free for a couple years.

     I am no longer offended by being given the senior discount, most often at Dunkin Donuts. Not that I have ever asked for it. I have other things to think about. And when I am home, and, for example, the power goes out, I am the person in the neighborhood likely to know when it is going to go back on. I have been known on occasion to watch what goes on in the neighborhood, but I don't see myself ever saying, "Get off my lawn". Yet.

     Because my time is pretty much mine, my using it wisely is more important than it used to be. I left full-time work two years ago, and since then, others have left as well, either to the Great Beyond or to other locations--this last so much that there are very few people left to swing by and say hello to except, maybe, my annual Girl Scout cookie supplier. Otherwise there is little reason for me to visit quickly because I am in the neighborhood and taking a book out of the library on the floor below. So maybe there is some truth to the where-we-are-is-who-we-are idea. Or who we are determines where we go once we retire and realize time has passed for everybody else, too.

     More than that, maybe in a recent synchronicity-type occurrence the Universe reminded me to continue to pay attention to what matters--or maybe it just was a random event: I read a telling obituary the last time I was in New Hampshire. I happened to be sitting in a coffee shop and I came across an obituary in the Manchester Union-Leader (which was far less right wing and vitriolic than I remembered it). I didn't write down her name and I haven't been able to find the obit online, but the 90-plus year old woman had died after a life that included a husband, several children and grandchildren, and a successful business that sounded like she had made wrapped-submarine-sandwiches-for-supermarkets. Though she had grown up in a local orphanage and the obit made reference to "her orphan sisters", it also gave the name of her birth mother, and said about the deceased: "She always wanted to be a nurse." 

     Which she had never done, apparently.

     How much of our lives do we make and how much is a matter of luck and circumstance? She must really have wanted to be a nurse for her family to mention that fact. (Unless, of course, she wrote the obit herself. No matter if she did.) Maybe we contain multitudes, and, well, maybe we don't. I don't know for sure. I just kind of toodle along with whatever purpose and interests I have.

     Even though my left knee pops more than it used to, I am fairly content in my SandyNiche as I define it for now.  Few things are as calming (not that I need calming) as a snoozing cat. I still think that you can never have too much flannel and and that it is wise to never underestimate the power of Vietnamese coffee, cafe sua da, iced espresso with sweetened condensed milk as a power drink.

     I have never encountered anybody who was unhappily retired although perhaps they exist. All I know is the locus of control has made a tectonic shift to moi. I have a certain social (and personal) security that I never had in the full-time workplace. When I think about it all, it seems like I have done a lot along the way, including in retirement. But I don't want to be a nurse, and I don't want to find myself thinking that way in a few years. 

     Still, complacency is not good, for  as someone told me long ago, if you are complacent, then you are in a rut, and if you are in a rut, you are close to being in a grave. That may overstate things a bit, but still. 

     I have a loose and expanding list of things I want to do and that will happen: paint the deck and the wicker love seat; get the car inspected and the trees trimmed; decide what to do with oldish cameras and organize thousands of photos. Pick up an el cheapo chair for the beach. Buy the tickets to see John Cleese. Other occasions and ideas will appear, evolve--maybe will bloom--and I will do what I can to move things along. So good, so far.

     And if all these things seem small and ephemeral and whatever else--well, hey, what I did at work (and not at work) all those years was equally and cosmically small and ephemeral even as it all looked Very Important at the time. So things go.

     And so, as the T-shirt says:

                                    I don't want to

                                    I don't have to

                                    You can't make me

                                     I'M RETIRED

Copyright Sandra A. Engel

May 2017 

     

Retirement, Take Nineteen: A Fine Fellow

Ten years ago I went to the local humane society just to look at cats after I had to euthanize 20 year old Camden. I waited a couple weeks and initially thought I would wait longer, but the time seemed right just to go look. For the first time in many years I was without a cat. So I went.

And a couple days later I went back. The cat I wanted to see again was named Misi, a one year old calico who had miscarried three babies and who had been brought in allegedly because the family was moving and couldn't take her. Misi would be spayed later, but when I met her, she was cowering in the back of a cage, clearly the model of a nervous post-pregnancy cat--and, I now know, a drama queen calico to boot.

But her calico markings were striking and she looked nothing like the recently-deceased brown tabby Maine Coon Camden. After I stood outside her cage long enough, she came over and rubbed her whiskers against my fingers. When the vet assistant opened the cage, the cat was willing to be held. She looked to look around; she was nothing if not alert.

Between the first and the second visit, I had decided that maybe I would adopt two cats. Which two I had no idea. I do remember a couple grey and white sister cats together in a cage, but their eyes were rheumy. Kittens I did not want, but two almost-adults sounded good since, hey, I worked all day.

After I held then-Misi, I asked the assistant what cat she would recommend as a second cat, and without hesitation she said, "The Dude," who was already so big that he was in a double cage at ground level. He was big, he was smoky orange, neither of which I had planned on, but she assured me no, not all male cats spray, and sometimes a male and a female cat are a better pairing than say, two females.

He was an armful even then although his records say he was only 8 1/2 pounds. He had big bones, and he seemed cautiously obliging to be held like a baby or to be plopped in my lap as I sat in a chair. He had a good purr. (It never occurred to me to test drive him--so to speak--with Misi, but given her calico drama queen personality, she might not have easily approved of any other cat, really.)

So I filled out the paperwork, and, as things worked out, I brought then-Misi home a few days earlier than the then-Dude since he developed a case of the sniffles and had to stay a couple extra couple days to get better. Misi came home and seemed to adapt well enough.

The following week, I went back to pick up The Dude but neglected to bring the cat carrier since I left right from work. No problem since the humane society had a cardboard one for him (and me). He looked fine, and there were smiles all around except for The Dude, who, within the first mile, had clawed a hole in the cardboard carrier. As I shifted into traffic, I saw an orange paw reaching for the glove compartment.

But we made it home and he reverted to his calmer self once he was out of the box. The papers from the humane society pegged him right: "This animal has a friendly demeanor and has demonstrated good health during his time at the shelter...We hope he adjusts well in his new home and that your vet confirms good health at his post-adoption re-evaluation. Thanks--good luck with this fine fellow!"

The first night at home, there were no fights even though we did not get much sleep. The Dude had been named wisely: he was mellow. He let Misi (renamed Moonbeam because she was so lunar, so calico nutty) do the theater. He wasn't a look-at-me, look-at-me cat. Not the least bit ostentatious. I changed his name to Doodle, and he proved to be a next-to cat, not a lap cat, and he snoozed next to Moonbeam and later near to new sister Swishy. He liked the top platform of the cat tree and he moved with ease from the top of the roll top desk to the top of the six-foot bookcase. He was big but fleet of foot. He was always happy to play with a wand toy, at least for a while, but mostly he just wanted to hang.  He met me at the door regularly enough, but he only once decided to try to go out one slushy winter day as I was hauling in bags of groceries. Doodle got down the couple stairs into the driveway into an inch of slush and then bolted full speed to the distant other side of the house, as if screaming, "Wet feet, wet feet!"

When I came home after being away, Doodle was the slowest to forgive, but when he did, he was the coziest. Doodle was an introvert--one difficult to ignore at almost 16 dusky orange pounds. He loved to be brushed, and he hated the 7 minute ride to see the vet once a year; he yowled on the way there but assumed the loaf position in the carrier on the way home and then bolted upstairs. He had a oink nose and a cute smile (and no, he did not spray). He was big but he was healthy, and he was a sensitive dude: if I dropped a metal dish in the kitchen or if a door slammed in the wind, he came to see what happened and to say a hello meow, although whether he was protesting or trying to calm me I was never sure.

Doodle's usual place on the coldest winter nights--and we had a lot of these this year--was next to me on the bed, which was fine except, cat-style, since he trusted me, after his nose-touching, he often lay on one side and faced away from me. Granted, his back end was discreetly covered by his tail, but still. Sometimes I tried to turn him sideways so at least his paws or his back were closest to me, but usually when I gave up and rolled over and slept on my other side, he didn't seem to mind.

Doodle was my favorite cat the way every cat I have had has been my favorite cat.

Over the years, the cats managed to do kitty time-sharing, which is to say they had their favorite places to sit but also took turns in their way: the bed, the cat tree, the couch. They managed their own routine.

Then one day after breakfast--after their breakfast, too--Moonbeam followed me into the bathroom, Swishy went up to the spare room window, and Doodle stretched out on the foot of the bed. I did the dishes, did some work online, and then went upstairs to put on sweatpants to go to the gym.

Doodle was on the bed, on his side as usual, but when I went to greet him, he wasn't moving.

He had been to the vet not six weeks previously.

First, disbelief. And then it was awful.

Once I could get myself together enough, I called the vet to say I needed to bring in Doodle. For better or worse, the person who answered the phone at 11:55  told me the office was closed between 12 and 2 but I could bring Doodle in at two. Over the phone I arranged for cremation and a post-mortem paw print (which made little sense, but I was not my most cogent, so okay). I said Doodle and I would be there at two.

I sat with Doodle for a long while. Moonbeam sat and watched from the hallway; Swishy slept through it until I got Doodle downstairs. Like Moonbeam, she sat and watched from a distance.

After a while I had to decide how to move sweet Doodle. He had been sleeping on an old flannel pillowcase, so that was the first layer of what ended up being a  kitty burrito. More than other cats, he liked cozy places. I didn't have a cardboard box (which he would not have liked anyway); I wasn't going to carry him in my duffle bag even if he fit: he was 16 or so pounds and pushing 3 feel long. At the end, telling myself again and again that he liked cozy places, I wrapped him loosely in bath towels and pinned them in a couple places. Once I got him downstairs, I slid Doodle burrito into a couple clear plastic bags lest any bodily fluid escape in the 7 minute drive in a friend's car.

To the veterinary clinic's credit, Doodle and I went to the front of the line when they opened at two. In the examining room, a very young vet tech handed me a form and said, "This just says that Noodle hasn't bitten anyone..." and there was another "Noodle" before I sobbed and corrected her and she looked totally abashed.

While she went out of the examining room to process my credit card, I slid Doodle in his kitty burrito out of the plastic bags, and, because I didn't know what else to do, I started to unwrap the burrito just to take a last peek, a last quick look at his pink nose.

Doodle wasn't much of a joker--he was too mellow for cheap cat jokes like trying to trip me or hiding his  toys--but he was a sensitive dude with a cat smile, and I like to think he would have appreciated how fitting it was that without intending to, I happened to open the back end of the burrito first--derriere with tail modestly down--before I finally got to his pink nose.

A fine fellow indeed.