THE WINK OF AN EYE: Some Thoughts on Retirement Ten Years In

 "I've been aware of the time going by

They say in the end it's the wink of an eye."

                                    _ Jackson Browne, The Pretender

Ten years ago, I cleared my desk and walked out of my downtown office into the world of retirement.  In truth, I didn't retire all at once.  I eased in, working from home a few hours a month for three more years.  And then I walked away from it all.

I have never looked back.

In the early months, when I started to speak of my retirement, the word graduation would come out instead.

Freudian slip?

Well, maybe.  It did, in fact, feel like a graduation.  A graduation into a life of choice.  Of available time.  I have filled the available time with occupations of my own choosing.  Writing.  Gardening.  Learning.  Walking. Volunteering.  Puzzles. Outings with my husband or friends.  And, most recently, play with my grandchildren.

To be honest, play has not come easily to me in adulthood.  I have, I confess, approached life rather seriously.  What a wonder it has been, then, to relearn play side-by-side with my granddaughters, to partake of their joy in every new-to-them experience.  What fun it will be when my grandson is old enough to join the pack.  How fortunate I am to have lived long enough to experience this pleasure.

When I retired, I told myself I would be lucky to have 20 more years.  And now ten years have passed in a heartbeat.  I suspect the next ten will go by even more quickly than the first ten.  The only days when time has dragged have been days when I have been down with a cold or a flu.  And given that I don't invite illness, there is nothing for it but to embrace the rapidly passing days.

Of course, those rapidly passing days bring my end ever closer.  I don't dwell on this, though; I do not expect an early death.  If I follow in my mother's footsteps, I could be looking at not ten years, but twenty.  Still, I know my days are numbered, so I will fill my cup to the brim for as many years as I have left.

And when my time comes, may the gift of these post-graduation years glide me gently into the mystery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OH, CHRISTMAS TREE

I used to love Christmas. 

Of course, I loved it as a child, but I kept my sense of wonder well into my twenties, and it came back with a vengeance after my daughters were born.  I took such pleasure in their pleasure and excitement during their early years.  I confess, however, that my interest in the holiday was much diminished after they grew up and away. What would be the point of decorating a tree without little ones to enjoy it? I didn’t have it in me to do much more each year than buy a small potted tree or decorate a large house plant.  

 

Indeed, the most “Christmassy” I have felt for the past few years has been while visiting granddaughters on my husband’s side, and enjoying their excitement.  But, now, those girls are 10 and 14 -- nearly past the age of wonder, and my Christmas doldrums might have snuck back in, had it not been for the arrival during the past two years of four grandchildren on my side.

 

I am happy to report that the delight of my toddler granddaughters, aged one-and-a-half (twins) and two, has revived my own latent excitement over the season. 

 

Although the girls aren’t old enough yet to be anticipating presents, 

they talk excitedly (in their fashion) about Santa Claus and reindeer. And they are entirely engrossed in shifting ornaments on and off their trees.  (My grandson, aged two months, will join in the merriment next year, I am sure.)

 

So, of course, we had to have a tree this year.  A few days ago, my husband and and I and the two-year-old brought home a four-foot-tall fir—just the right height for two senior citizens to fit in our car and carry into our living room.  Yesterday, I put lights on the tree.  (I will wait for the granddaughters to help me add some ornaments.)  

 

Which brings me to today, when, after being awakened by stormy weather at 5 a.m. I lay in bed, listening to rain and branches land on the roof, and telling myself I would fall back asleep any minute. Sometime after six, I gave up on this notion and got out of bed.  Downstairs into the darkened living room I went and turned on the tree lights.  

 

Sitting there in the dark, I was immediately transported to a Christmas long ago.  Was I eight or 18?  I don’t know.  Maybe it was the amalgamated memory of several Christmases.  In any event, there I was in the early evening gazing at my family’s tree, mesmerized by the colored lights and tinsel.  (Yes, those were the days of tinsel, and the perennial argument over whether to place it stand-by-strand or throw it on in bunches.)

                                                          (With my bother Jim - can you see the tinsel?)

In memory, I am sitting in front of that tree, with its large and clunky lights, for hours.  Perhaps it was ten minutes that are stretched by recollection.  I do know that I felt peace staring at those lights, and sitting in my living room this morning, I wondered what had become of the girl and young woman who had taken such delight in a tree.  

 

Could I bring her back?  

 

Surrounded by toddlers, I think maybe I can.

 

And you?  What will it take for you to bring back childish delight in the season?  I know some of you have never lost the gift of wonder.  

 

May it be so for all of us.

 

May we see the world through the eyes of a child, and may we know peace, love, and wonder this year.

DO I REALLY NEED TO LOSE 45 POUNDS? LET'S TALK ABOUT INSTAGRAM

  

A few years back, I signed up for Instagram in order to enjoy family photos and maybe share occasional pictures of my garden.  This went well until Instagram figured out that I am a grandmother of a certain age, and started clogging my feed with ads aimed at what its algorithm perceives to be the concerns of my demographic.

 

Just today, I had to wade through messages telling me that I need wrinkle cream, a more supportive bra, sleep gummies, a mascara for aging lashes, an adult sleep sack, exercises aimed at seniors, a serum that will take 15 years off my face, a pillowcase guaranteed to prevent wrinkles, pills that will reduce bloating and hot flashes, mushroom coffee, a supplement that will help me to lose 45 pounds, teeth whiteners, a product to make grey hair shine, and a cortisol supplement.

 

Has the algorithm met any women my age?  Not everyone is trying to look younger.  I’m not saying I no longer care about my appearance – vanity dies hard – but, most of the time, I am too busy reading, writing, gardening, walking, helping with grandkids, getting together with friends, spending time with family – in short, enjoying retirement, to concern myself with aging eyelashes.  (And has no one told the algorithm I am a tea drinker?  Also, if I were to lose 45 pounds, I would be in the hospital.)

 

Sure, I would accept a product that that promised to make my half-grown-out hair grow faster.  And, if you want to advertise chocolate, I am your target audience.  But, mostly, I just want the haranguing to stop.  Aging is not negotiable, yet these ads work very hard to make us women of a certain age feel that aging is shameful, and can and should be pushed back by an endless stream of products.

 

Spoiler alert:  We will age.  More or less gracefully.  Less, if we let these ads get to us.

 

And how about the ads that require the viewer to watch a "short video"? I fell for this only once.  Okay. Maybe twice.  These short videos are up to a half-an-hour long, and generally consist of a guy in a white coat, claiming to be a doctor, singing his own praises and describing his life-changing discovery in excruciating detail.  

 

Do not go there.  There is no way to get to the punchline without watching the whole thing.  (And the punchline will not be worth it.) If you’re not careful, you just might be found with your cold, dead hand clutching your phone, as an endless video plays on and on.  

 

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. 

 

Here’s another piece of unsolicited advice.  Don’t buy clothing advertised on Instagram (or Facebook).  Sure, it looks good in the ads, but you will likely wind up stuck with a flimsy, wrongly sized, unwearable, and unreturnable item.  So, do as I say, not as I did. 

 

And don’t get me started on parenting advice. Am I getting these messages because I have grandchildren?  Too late for me.  I’m not raising my grands—just hanging out with them.  But I feel for the young parents who are barraged with advice—often conflicting—about the “correct” way to do nearly everything.  Leave them alone, for God’s sake.  Most of them have good instincts, and, in any event, there is no “perfect” way to raise children.

 

Before ceasing this rant, I will confess that I am occasionally drawn in by the endless recipes that appear in my feed, and I will sometimes go so far as to use the “save” function to hang on to these.  This is pretty silly, given that I have so little interest in cooking, but it does demonstrate the power of the beautiful photos.  I confess I have never once gone back to look at any of the recipes.  In fact–here’s a little secret–I have no idea where saved items are stored.  Are they in an undisclosed location with Dick Cheney?  

Just in case I choose to look over my lost recipes, can anyone tell me how to get to them without having to deal with him?

 

Please.

                                                                     Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

SUFFERING THE INSUFFERABLE

I have been thinking this morning about a brief exchange I had with a friend several years ago.  We had met for lunch, and as we took our seats in the restaurant, I exclaimed, "I'm starving."

She looked at me very seriously and said, “I have never been starving a day in my life." 

I felt suitably chastened for my hyperbole. 

Here are some things I have suffered in the course of my long life:

    Heartbreak

    Insomnia

    Depression

    Illness and physical pain

    The illness and physical pain of loved ones

    The death of loved ones

I mean in no way to downplay these, but today as I take in the horrors experienced by Israelis at the hands of Hamas and the terror being rained upon Palestinians by Israel, I am contemplating the fact that, whatever I may have suffered to date, I have always had a roof over my head, enough to eat, electricity (save for the occasional power outage), hot and cold running water, and the means to control the temperature in my home. 

So, no I have never experienced starvation.  I have also never had to flee my home.  Here are some other things I have never experienced:

     A rocket attack or any other devastation of life in a war zone  

     Forceable separation from loved ones

     Awaiting news of a loved one trapped in a war zone or awaiting news of a kidnapped loved one 

     Learning that a loved one has been killed by terrorists or rocket attacks                                         

In making this list, I am only too well-aware that there, but for fortune, go I. And as I have walked through this day, wrestling with the juxtaposition of my good fortune and the awfulness of this war, these lines from the poet William Stafford have been running through my head: 

    Your life you live by the light you find

    and follow it on as well as you can,

    carrying through darkness wherever you go

    your one little fire that will start again.

In my helplessness before the misery of others, Stafford’s words inspire me to raise this prayer: 

    May those who are suffering the insufferable find light.

    May we, who live in comfort, lift our lights high for those who cannot find their own.  

    And may we humans, at last, learn to live in peace before our folly leaves us all in darkness.

Photo by David Tomaseti on Unsplash

 

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us

         - Traditional Scottish prayer

 

The first time was a month or so ago.

I had just settled myself for an afternoon lie-down, when I heard a strange noise--a very loud rattling.  At first I thought the sound was coming from outside, but when I got up and investigated, I discovered my battery-operated Quip toothbrush rattling around in the cup where it resides.

It had turned itself on. 

 

This seemed strange, but I didn’t think too much about it – just turned the toothbrush off, put it back in its container, and returned to my prone position. 

 

And then, a short while later, it did it again.  This time it got my attention. 

I took the toothbrush apart.

A couple of days later, I put it back together, and life went along without event.

Until --

 

Until a couple of weeks later, when just after getting into bed for the night, I heard a noise again.  Thinking it was the toothbrush, I headed into the bathroom, only to discover that, while my toothbrush was behaving itself, my waterpik had turned itself on.  

 

Huh, said I to myself, as I turned it off.  Huh.  What are the odds?

 

No sooner had I resettled myself, than it turned itself on again.  Now, I was, shall we say, the teensiest bit unsettled.  I turned it off and brought it into the bedroom, so I wouldn’t have to get up should it turn on again.

You can guess what happened next.  

 

Yep.  I lay rigid in bed, waiting for a repeat performance.  Sure enough, about 45 minutes later, my waterpik was back in action. Thoroughly unnerved now, I turned it off, carried it into the bathroom, and tried unsuccessfully to open it to remove the batteries--only to remember that it didn’t have batteries.  It has a wall-plug-in recharger. 

 

Beside myself at this point, I carried the offending object through the dark house and left it in the garage, lest it should turn on again.  

The next morning, after a restless night, I called my friend Linda.  

 

Her immediate response to hearing my story:  “You have a poltergeist.”

 

My response:  “Huh.  Now what?”

 

Was it possible, we wondered, that my body’s electrical system was out-of-whack and causing disturbances in the field?

 

Nah.  It was a poltergeist.  But, what to do?

 

I mean, are there really ghostbusters?  Probably not.  So, I put the matter behind me and went about my business.

With the waterpik safely in the garage, things were quiet for a while.  

Quiet, that is, until the toothbrush turned itself back on.  There was nothing for it, but to take it apart again -- and leave it apart.

 

The next time I saw my daughter Mara, I recounted the events to her.  “Mom,” she said, without a moment's hesitation, “you have a ghost.”

 

I was not comforted when my friend Noelle had the same response.

We decided to do the only rational thing.  That is, we decided to smudge the house.  She came over the next day with a sage bundle, and before proceeding, we pondered what the poltergeist/ghost might want.  

 

Was it someone who had recently passed, trying to be funny?  Was it a warning?  If so, what was the warning?  Before lighting the sage, we asked the poltergeist/ghost to kindly find a less alarming way of contacting me, and helpfully suggested it might use a dream to tell me whatever it wanted to communicate.

(Oh, you may scoff.  But, what, pray tell, would you have done?)

 

We then commenced to thoroughly smudge every room in the house, paying special attention to the bathroom.

 

I am happy to report that things have been quiet since the smudging, although it is true I haven’t had the nerve to put the toothbrush back together or bring the waterpik in from the garage. . .

Please share your remedies and/or like experiences in the comments. In the meantime, ponder this.  While I was visiting my daughter Anne a few days after the smudging, I was startled by her robot vacuum cleaner suddenly turning on by itself.  Oh, no, I thought, the poltergeist/ghost has followed me.  

Anne assured me that it had something to do with its settings and had nothing to do with me, but I’m not so sure . . . 

What do you think?  

 

 

 

 

TEA AND ME

Have you noticed that in British mysteries, whether in book form or on TV, tea is the universal comforter?  A nice "cuppa" will take care of nearly everything. 

And so it does for me.  

Because I grew up with Scottish immigrant parents, tea was a constant in my childhood home.  I don’t remember how old I was when I was first permitted to indulge, but I do remember that by the time I was ten or so, I was the one who would get up on Saturday mornings to put on the kettle.  

I would make a pot of tea – loose tea, of course, and after the tea had infused, I would pour the liquid through a strainer into a cup for each of my parents, who would sit up in bed to enjoy this service.  Let me hasten to add that I poured the tea into actual teacups. With saucers. Not the mugs that they, and I, later favored.  

 

                               

After serving my parents, I would pour a cup for myself, load it up with milk and sugar, and carry it into my room, where I would get back into bed with my tea and a book.  (The other constant in my young life.) 

In later years, my folks switched to tea bags, but those early days of preparing loose tea are etched in my memory.  And I can still see myself sitting up in bed, cup of tea in hand, happily reading Anne of Green Gables—with no electronics to spoil the pleasure of the moment. 

I have said that ours was a tea-drinking household, but my mother did keep a jar of instant coffee in the fridge, from which she would occasionally spoon out enough "coffee" (who knows what was in that stuff) to prepare herself a mid-morning cup.  My father, on the other hand, was a purist – I never saw coffee pass his lips.  On the rare occasions when we would go to a restaurant, he would send his tea back if the water wasn’t sufficiently hot, insisting that tea required boiling water in order to properly infuse.  And on very hot days, he would drink very hot tea, insisting it was the best way to cool down.  (No, I don't get it either.) 

For many years, I continued to desecrate my tea with milk and sugar, but sometime in my twenties, I gave up the additives and began to drink it black.  Over time,  I, of necessity, made other adjustments.  In my youth, I could drink tea until bedtime with no adverse effects.  I was maybe in my forties when I had to stop drinking tea after noon if I wanted to sleep at night.   And, eventually, I had to give up caffeine altogether in order to avoid tossing and turning away my nights.  

I wasn’t about to give up my tea, though.  I simply switched to decaf black.  (Here is a tip for the unwary – most restaurants do not carry decaf black tea, so bring along your own tea bags.  I don’t know about you, but herbal tea doesn’t cut it for me when I am wanting my cuppa.)**

Through all these changes, I never strayed.  Never had a fling with coffee.  Oh, sure, I tried it once or twice – didn’t like it and it tore up my stomach.   I do, however, love the smell of brewing coffee, so it is a bonus to have a husband who prepares a pot each morning. 

And here is another happy thing.  Most of my close friends are tea drinkers.  Is this a coincidence?  Americans drink three times as much coffee as tea—I looked it up.  How fortunate am I to have found my tribe?  Even those of my friends who are coffee drinkers will enjoy the occasional cup of tea with me.   Indeed, for my last decade birthday, I gave myself a tea party, and, to my knowledge, no one snuck in a flask of coffee – or whisky.

So, like the denizens of those British mysteries, I expect it will always be tea for me.  Tea with friends.  Tea for comfort.  Tea for warmth. Tea for its own sake.  

And you, dear reader, what is it that you have brought along from childhood to bring you comfort?

                                Photo by 童 彤 on Unsplash

**Another pet tea-drinker peeve:  Hotels and motel coffee machines where the tea water runs through the same hose as the coffee.  The only thing worse than coffee is tea that tastes like coffee.  

THE WEEK IN REVIEW (Or Please Don't Make Me Talk to a Robot)

Recently, a friend and I were having one of those idle conversations about what, if anything, we would do differently if we won the lottery.  I said I would fly first class and hire someone to come to my house and cook a couple of times a week.  My friend, wise woman that she is, said she would hire a personal assistant.

Of course.  Why hadn't I thought of that?  I immediately traded in my wish list for hers.  

Why do I need a personal assistant?  Well, here is what my last week looked like.

MONDAY:  

I called a plumber to fix the water pressure in our shower.

We had a new screen door installed.  (Made possible by my spending hours online last week looking for, and ordering, a screen door.)  

TUESDAY:  

The plumber came and fixed our shower.  

We realized the screen door wouldn't open to its full arc.  I texted the person who had installed the screen door to see if he could fix it.   

WEDNESDAY: 

I attempted to use Venmo to do a good deed. I didn't have sufficient information about the person I was trying to send money to, so I had to exchange emails with someone who had the info.

I saw I had received a bunch of text messages and realized my phone was not dinging to notify me.  I went into settings and tried to fix this a couple of different ways.  No success

THURSDAY:  

I called Apple to get help with retrieving my Word documents from the cloud.**  (This was in follow-up to another call to Apple a couple of weeks ago seeking help with my very-slow computer.  The person who I talked with that time called my six-year-old computer "vintage," and said he would try to help.  He walked me through taking things off the computer and putting them back on.  The next day, I discovered my documents were stuck in the cloud. It took me a while to get up the energy to call back . . .).

During this second call to Apple, a nice woman hastened to be of help when I told her I would rather stab myself in the forehead with a fork than call Microsoft.  And by hastened, I mean she spent two hours with me, after which I believed my problem was solved.

FRIDAY:  

My occasional yard helper was supposed to come, but our street was being repaved, and after we texted back and forth about how he could reach the house, we had to reschedule.

A technician came in the late afternoon (after I had waited all day) to fix our internet connection.  (This was in follow-up to our losing the connection three times in the last month.  He came after I had many interactions--I won't call them conversations--with a robot over the course of many calls to our internet provider, trying to reach a human being.)  I didn't catch the technician's name. I will call him Ralph.  He looked like a Ralph.  We had a conversation that went something like this:

Ralph (after fiddling with the box outside our house for over an hour and climbing a pole in order to fiddle with another box):  Your DSL lines are too fast for the distance from the something, something.

 

Me:  Huh?

 

Ralph:  I can’t slow them down without an order, and I can’t ask for an order.  The customer has to do that.

 

Me (voice rising in panic):  So, I have to call CenturyLink? Please, don't make me call CenturyLink. Please, don't make me talk to a robot.  

Ralph (sympathetically):  Something, something about what he would try next.

Ralph (a while later):  You shouldn't have to call CenturyLink.   I just have to drive to (fill in the blank, I didn't understand where) to check the line.  It should be fine.  

Me (restraining self from grabbing his sleeve):  Wait.  What if you leave and it still isn't working?

Ralph (in a don't-you-worry-little-lady voice):  I'll be able to tell from the other end.  I'll come back if it isn't working.  

Me (muttering to self as Ralph left):  Please don't make me talk to a robot.

By some miraculous twist of fate, the connection held and I have not seen Ralph since.

(Also on Friday - The person who installed the screen door came by and loosened something.  It still isn't right.)

SATURDAY:  

I started a blog post about Ralph and the robot. As is my habit, I saved it in a word document, with the intention of transferring it onto the blog when I was finished.

SUNDAY (today):  

I tried to make a Skype call to my cousin in Scotland.  I discovered that Skype had disappeared from my computer.  I was unable to reinstall it.   

I looked for the blog post I had started.  It was nowhere to be found. Apparently, the help from Apple has led to new documents being stored in a place that I am unable to find or access.  (My brother and sister-in-law will be visiting this week.  She is good with computers.  I am hoping she will be able to help me.  Are you reading this, Janice?)

I went to my niece's house to pick something up, and, while I was there, asked her to help me with my text notifications, which she kindly did at lightening speed.   (Bless the young people.)

I rewrote this blog post.  Believe it or not, I left some things out . . .

So, yes, a personal assistant (preferably human) would be nice.  I am thinking maybe I could pool my resources with a bunch of friends, and we could take turns using such an angel to de-stress ours days.

Want in?

                            Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

** I used to think the cloud was literally a cloud.  I thought the information was floating around above our heads somewhere.  I was disappointed to learn the cloud was actually a warehouse full of computers somewhere in central Oregon.