Retirement

 

---

A few months ago, I ran into my old friend Violet. Violet retired from the University only a few years ago, after working there for over thirty years. She was one of those people who knew everyone, and knew how to do everything. She was smart, and quiet, and calm, and always seemed to be completely unfazed by everything.

So, after we exchanged a few pleasantries, she asked me: “What are you doing now?”

And I said: “I’m you.”

And we both laughed.

But it’s true. I’ve been there for over twenty-five years. I know everyone, and I know how to do everything. And, if I don’t, I know who to call. And I know their phone numbers by heart.

I have a funny little gadget on my office wall, which was given to me by a pension firm. It’s headed YEARS TO RETIREMENT, and it’s a big stupid dial, which you can turn from 2015 to 2040.

Naturally I have it set on 2040. I point it out to people from time to time, just for laughs.

Do you remember the Harry Potter character, the professor who’s actually a ghost? He was a regular professor once, but he died while teaching, and his ghost just kept teaching. So he’s still there.

I have a tiny fear that this is exactly what might happen to me.

When Violet first told me about her decision to retire, a few years ago, here’s what she said: “One day last week, I got up at 5:00 am because I wanted to work in the garden. And I was out there on my hands and knees, and I watched the sun come up, and I thought: I’d better start getting ready for work. And then I thought: I don’t have to do that if I don’t want to. And I made up my mind right there and then.”

Maybe someday, like Violet, I will pack it in, and turn in all the necessary paperwork, and go do some serious gardening and reading and writing.

But not just yet.

---

 

---

The worst (and best) places to visit

---

Partner and I argue over places to vacation and places to retire. Partner likes warmth and comfort (Key West, Palm Springs, the south of France); I like oddball places (Timbuktu, Nouakchott, Ouagadougou).

 

 

Where will we end up?  I’m sure we’ll compromise.  But in the meantime, here (from the Huffington Post’s travel section) is a list of the worst places to go.  And how to get there. (I’m sort of relieved that my three destinations of choice above aren’t among them.) 

 

 

Goodbye, Harare, Kinshasa, Port Moresby, Mogadishu.

 

 

But I have been to places like El Jadida, and Sliema, and Sfax.  None sounded very promising.  All of them were very nice.  Cheap, too, actually.

 

 

Sometimes you want a vacation a la Disney, with no problems and everything taken care of, nicey-nice. 

 

 

Sometimes you want something interesting.

 

 

I still want to see Nouakchott and Timbuktu.  A friend of mine in Tunisia said Nouakchott was the worst place she’d ever been.  Someone else said the same of Timbuktu.

 

 

Listen: I spent a couple of days in Settat, Morocco, back in the 1980s, during my Peace Corps training.  They sent me there just to see if I could handle it.  I handled it just fine.  The hotel doors didn’t have locks, so I just piled a bunch of stuff against the door.  And the café down the street had something called “ckae” on the menu; it was supposed to be “cake,” but evidently no one noticed the error. 

 

 

And I still had a good time.  

 

 

Of course, you have to worry about cholera and typhus and things like that. 

 

 

But at least I was seeing the world.

 

 

And it was glorious.

 

 

So let’s go to Timbuktu!  I can handle it.

---

 

Weekends

---

I have been with my current employer for almost twenty-four years. I have a “Time To Retirement” clock on my office wall, with the dial set to the year 2040. I will be eighty-three years old that year (well, eighty-two on New Year’s Day 2040, but let’s not split hairs).

 

When I started there, most of my coworkers were older than me. This has changed. A few years ago, I hired someone who was around twenty years old; I realized later that she was born while I was sitting behind that very same desk, or one just like it.

 

Dearie me!

 

 

Partner, like me, is no longer a spring chicken. We both think longingly of retirement. We look forward avidly to weekends and holidays and vacations, as foretastes of what life will be like when we don’t have to work anymore, if that day ever arrives.

 

So how do we spend our weekends?

 

• We sleep in.

• We refill our prescriptions.

• We refill our pill-minders (those cunning little plastic things that tell you when to take your pills, and how many).

• We argue about whether or not to see a movie.

• We see a movie.

• We shop for groceries (yogurt, rotisserie chicken, and sundries).

• We have a meal on the town sometimes.

• Once in a while we visit Partner’s sister and brother-in-law up in Massachusetts.

• Once in a very great while we go completely insane and go to Boston, or Manhattan, or Cape Cod.

  
  

 

The weekends are over far too soon.

 

And then it’s Monday all over again, and we have to plod back to the office.

 

If you ask me, the year 2040 can’t come soon enough.

 

---