Lessons I Learned in My First Year of Retirement

One year.  It's been that long since I loaded my microwave and refrigerator into the back of my CRV and left my office at Virginia Highlands Community College for the last time.  One year! 

There is a commercial running on television now that shows pictures of people on their first day of retirement.  Now why didn't I think to take a picture?  My blog from December 18, 2010, is the closest thing I have to a picture:  remember the ice storm that knocked out our electricity on my first day of retirement?  Maybe I don't need a picture of that. 

The past year has been educational for me, leading me to explore my "discomfort" zone. 

Lesson 1:  My house will never be completely clean.  One year ago I had mighty plans for completing all those jobs that never seemed to get finished.  I gamely jumped into cleaning out the "attic", washing windows, cleaning carpets, and throwing out old clothes.  I made quite a bit of progress, as was evidenced by the many trips to the dumpster with items from my collection of cardboard boxes.  But the windows are dirty again, and the "attic", while it has much more open space, still needs to have things picked up off the floor.  If I didn't finish it in a year, I don't think it's ever going to be completely clean.

Lesson 2:  I don't have to dust every week. 

Lesson 3:  I don't like to travel.  It's wonderful that retired people go on cruises and have bucket lists of exotic places they want to visit.  I wish them well, but I lack the spontaneity gene, so I will never throw a few things into a bag to take off on an adventure.  My trips require exhausting amounts of planning, and I believe I've seen just about everything I wish to see on this planet. 

Lesson 4:  Snow isn't so bad if you never have to leave the house.  Instead of getting nose bleeds when the snow begins to stick to the roads, I just make a cup of apple-cinnamon tea, and turn on Walker, Texas Ranger. 

Lesson 5:  Chuck Norris is a very interesting person.

Lesson 6:  An incredible amount of socializing can be done at Food City, our local grocery store.  Once I spoke to someone at Wal-Mart in Marion, saw them a little later at the post office in Chilhowie, and wrapped up conversations with them at Food City.  I'm sure they thought I was stalking them.  The old-age circuit is completed every weekday morning, except on holidays.  I catch up with old friends in the bread aisle, find out all the news in the dairy aisle. 

Lesson 7:  You never know what will happen next, so stop trying to figure it out.  There is just no way of knowing all the wonderful things coming along in your life.  In the spring I worked with high school students to improve their college placement test scores, and now I work at preparing the bulletins for our Sunday services at church.  Both of these jobs would have been impossible for me if I hadn't been retired.  Snow storms and rainbows come along at the most unexpected times. 

Lesson 8:  You can grow as much in a weedy garden as you can in a neatly hoed garden.  The weather has more to do with a productive garden than hours of pulling up especially prolific indigenous plant life.  If you like the way a cultivated garden looks, it's good to get out the hoe and take it for a test drive.  It can be therapeutic. 

Lesson 9:  Paul Farris knows a thousand stories.  A few weeks ago, I told him he should write a book, and he said that yes, indeed, he maybe could fill one up.  During the summer months, Paul (my neighbor) runs over a few tomatoes to me or maybe some yellow squash.  Along with the vegetables or freshly-canned salsa, there are always a few stories to share.  Some are about fishing, some about Chilhowie in the forties, or some maybe about building houses.  He can tell a good story. 

Lesson 10:  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Even on days that I don't have to set the alarm, I'm usually awake by 6:30.  I've had very few days with absolutely nothing to do.  As a matter of fact, I don't think I've had any days with absolutely nothing to do.  There is always something that needs attention, and I have a mental list of things I want to do when I have the time.  I've never been bored in the last year. 

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.  Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.  1 Peter 5:6-7

No Hits, No Runs, No Errors

I've hit a slump, of sorts, in my retirement.  Maybe it's the heat; perhaps it's the drought drying out my soul.  If I were a baseball player, I'd still be in the rotation, but I'd be batting less than 200.

I'm staying busy, keeping my mind occupied.  I've made 11 quarts of dill pickles and nine pints of bread and butter pickles.  Next I will look to the making of chow-chow and probably the canning of a few tomatoes, but if you've read my blog previously, you'll know that the blogs have been sparse in recent weeks.  No blogs, no cooking, no reading.  Just a lot of sitting in the dugout.

The appearance of my flower beds has distressed me for quite a while now, so my plans are to clean and refurbish them.  As soon as the heat dissipates, I'll go at it full force, but for now, the yard work is restricted to cooler morning hours.  My first task is to dig up, stem, root, and branch, a patch of lemon balm that has reproduced itself until the planet earth is in danger of falling out of orbit because of the additional weight. 

Smyth County clay clod
beside a root.

I live right smack dab in the middle of numerous farms, but I, for the life of me, do not know how people grow anything around here.  The soil of Smyth County is a solid clay that, when dried in temperatures over 90 degrees for a period of two-three weeks, takes on a quaint brick-like quality.  I've been using a shovel to dig out the roots, but I'm thinking I could do better at this, if I had an old-fashioned mattock to crack open the ground.

This morning when I had worked my way back under the cherry tree, I dug up the plant tag for the original lemon balm plants.  This tag has been under that tree for nearly 20 years, another piece of proof that plastic never decomposes.  It calls lemon balm a perennial, but I can tell you that it is not a perennial.  It's a weed.

I'm over half-way finished digging up the lemon balm.

"Fresh, lemon-mint fragrance," the tag reads.  "Use fresh in teas, summer drinks."  Oh, yeah.  I'm always having mint tea from this patch of flotsam.  The tag goes on to tell how to grow lemon balm, but it doesn't say how to get rid of the stuff after it's taken on the characteristics of Frankenstein. 

I once had some bee balm in this bed, a fragrant, minty plant with a red flower that attracts humming birds and butterflies.  But it died out.  The lemon balm probably killed it in its sleep. 

When I dig up a root, I pull at it, tug on it, yank it up, bringing out the tentacles (with new sprouts on it, no less) with big bricks of dried clay attached to it.  It's impossible to remove every cell of every root, and I know that even one molecule of lemon balm root left behind will no doubt spring to life with its fresh, lemon-mint fragrance.  Not to worry.  I have a jug of Roundup in the garage.

What a Pretty Picture

In his novel, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway ended the story with a conversation between Jake, a war veteran, and a woman, Brett.  They obviously cared for each other, but circumstances made a relationship between them impossible. 

"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic.  He raised his baton.  The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said.  "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

The end.

We all carry pretty pictures in our minds.  Without them there would be little incentive to move forward and to try different things.  Imagine the red, juicy tomatoes when you set out a spindling little plant.  Think of how fulfilling it would be to stay by the bedside of a hospital patient and kindly help him to recover.  Thoughts drift to that beautiful wedding that, I'm told, every young girl dreams of:  the flowers, the dress, the music, and, oh yes, the groom, the perfect man, a drop-dead handsome, rich gentleman who worships you and whom your mother adores.  The mind-pictures keep us going.

In the next few days, I will reach the dodgy mile-post of having been retired for six months.  Even though I didn't have "plans" for my retirement, I had a picture of what it would be like.  Each day would start with a healthy breakfast with extra coffee and time to read the entire paper.  After a brisk walk to the background music of "The Happy Wanderer", I return to my wonderfully organized and clean house where I occupy my time with cooking amazingly tasty lunches and dinners, painting masterful landscapes, and strolling through a yard full of show-quality roses and irises.

"Isn't it pretty to think so?"

If you read some of my earliest blogs, you'll know that retirement was off to a rocky start with an ice storm and power outage.  Our heat pump has been broken since February, making the unusual June heat wave a sweaty one at our house.  There is usually a repairman of some sort either coming or going around here, and I've been working way too hard, still trying to get that organized, cleaned up feeling in the house.  When I hit the shower after a day in this hot weather, I usually smell like Spic & Span and sweat.

While the flowers have been beautiful this year, more bounteous this year than I remember them being for many years, the yard has taken on an overgrown look.  I need a machete to take that stroll through the flowers, and it's just too dang hot to clear out the flower beds for that English garden look. 

Happy thoughts are wonderful, encouraging, nourishing things, but life, you see, is not perfect.  The tomtatoes get the blight; that nursing career turns out to be stressful, and the patients cantankerous; the musicians don't show up for the wedding, and the groom is just a normal guy. 

Six months of retirement hasn't been perfect; sometimes it's exciting, and sometimes it's discouraging.  Turns out retirement is just life with extra benefits.  It's no longer a pretty picture I think about; it's the real thing, and it's good.