Turned 65 on Friday.
Have yet to collect on a senior’s discount. I’d like a reduction of 10% on the agro
caused by my work computer, just for a start.
Or a 10% discount on the number of people who don’t read the bulletin
at work and are outraged by anything at all that happens there because they
weren’t notified. A similar reduction in
the amount of torrential rain that falls at my grandson’s football games would
equally be in order. So far, I haven’t
realized one of these savings, so I’m not entirely clear, as yet, on the
benefits of the whole thing.
I am, as my one reader knows, retiring in 9 months. Wow.
It took me that long to cook up a son when I was 20, and I was no more
prepared for that event than I expect I will be for this one. Then, a child of the ‘60s, I really did look
at the lilies of the field, and, encouraged by their lifestyle, I was as
unworried about the future as a baby myself.
They looked great and had pretty solid careers. I assumed that their fathers had paid fully
for their college education, as had mine, and that they might have undergone
several shifts in career choice as they went along, before they settled on
field work, as I did.
I was lucky. I
ditched the idea of being an archaeologist as being impractical with a baby,
and a lack of science education, and selected teaching instead, and this lead
to a series of jobs in a youth detention center, a group home, and alternative
school, a degree in creative writing, another teaching certificate, and
ultimately with a few jogs in the road, a job as a high school principal. Back when I was 20 I never could have
imagined a job that required leadership, and to be honest, I’m a bit shocked by
the whole turn of events even now, as I’m 9 months away from becoming a
civilian. If you scan a field of lilies,
you never really see a head lily, but, here that lack of a science degree may
be impeding me, for all I know there are head lilies, and like me, they too
must retire.
I confess, if I’d spent less time nodding in the morning sun,
and soaking up whatever came, I’d have reached this point owing less money to
my local credit union, and maybe insulated my house a bit better. I say this last because I remember once
seeing a filmed biography of CS Lewis, and there was a scene of him as a much
older man sitting in his snug cottage by the fire reading, perhaps an enormous
mug of tea at his elbow, and I thought, that is how I want my old age to
be. At the moment, in my vacuous, airy
apartment with 18 foot ceilings, if I sit by the fire in winter with a book I
require several feather-filled duvets to achieve that same sense of snugness I
imagine he enjoyed.
When I was in my thirties I was reading a National
Geographic article about Cornwall, and there was a picture of a local community
theatre director, a woman of 90 with a shock of white hair and enormous rubber
boots, standing on the side of a hill in a stiff breeze waving her arms,
presumably directing a production of Lear that was unfolding just out of camera
range. She was my other great model for
aging. Be 90 doing something wonderful
on a rainy afternoon, and then go in for tea by the fire. If she’s still alive, she’s 120 now. She could be.
She looked like she was in for the long haul.
Of course, the point is, I’m not sure I’m ready for this,
but like finding myself 44 years ago with a baby and some obligation to keep it
fed and clothed, I will likely find a way to get keep warm and amuse myself
when I retire. There is the painting,
and the walking around Cornwall in rubber boots in the rain still to be
done. Although the top advice from
experts is ‘do not try to write books’ when you retire, I may ignore that
advice. Unlike in some of my earlier posts, I’ve begun to accept the idea of retiring a bit
more. It might just be that I’m not
getting that senior’s reduction in agro at work…because now instead of
thinking, “should I have picked archaeology after all?” I just think, “next
year, I won’t have to do this.”
