Life After Retirement

It’s been two years now since I turned in my key and my parking sticker. Two years since I lugged home 100’s of papers, dead trees littering every surface of my house(as an English Professor at a community college). What is life like from this vantage point?

I have no regrets. My neck, which was collapsing under the strain of teaching, is better. I go to yoga more regularly. I took a hike up to Mt. Tam two weeks ago. I’m ordering a walking stick(which my husband already got) so we will be two elders climbing a mountain that is only across the bridge. Jim is gray. I have finally decided not to dye my hair anymore. I am gray, too. I don’t want toxins leaking into my scalp and because I have dry and flaky skin, I’m sure there are lots of little places where the dark brown dye can burrow. I want my brain to be clear. Sometimes I do the AARP brain games and find, afterwards, that I feel better. Last night, I rode my stationary bicycle and watched Spiderman and was able to go at a fast pace for 40 minutes. I have time for these things, though I am still a bit clueless about my Iphone but promised by children that I will look at the utube videos about how to figure this all out. I haven’t done that yet. But I just took a video of my 15 year old dog after she took a bath. She raced through the house like a puppy dog and then leapt up on our maroon couch as swift as SpiderMan, leaping between buildings. She didn’t break a leg, thank the higher spirits. She amazes me. I learned how to take a video and even send it. Step by step. Brain cell by brain cell.

I still go to the SF Writer’s Grotto(an amazing writing collective) two days a week and write. I have three projects in the hopper—a non-fiction book proposal, a new memoir and a novel I hope to finish at a retreat next fall. Words still spill out of me: still an urgency to not only write but to publish. A curse, perhaps, this still urgent need to write—to get my writing out into the world?

At night, I often have time to watch a T.V. show—lately PBS mysteries-- with my husband, our dog sometimes sitting between us, her eyes now glazing over a bit, blindness beginning. “We’ll love you to the end, blind, deaf, infirm,” I whisper into her ears. She lets her head rest more firmly, then, on my lap. I feel the bony outline of her chin and stroke her head.
I remember when my mother told me her eyesight was going. “You can get books on tape,” I said rather blithely. Why did I not say more? Comfort her? I had so much to learn, and still do, about love.

I still teach—mentoring writers—helping them get their stories out, and for some of them to get their stories out into the world. I’ve been on memoir panels this year, one at the Center for Independent Living—where I saw people with no arms or legs who have built incredible lives: photographers, writers, office workers. There is no dearth of stories out there. Courage abounds everywhere. I have more time to see their courage.

So with my husband now 70—we’re thinking about what adventures we want to take. Perhaps I’ll teach less next year(we’re doing airbnb at our house—a steady stream of wonderful guests from across the globe that will allow me more time to write). We want to go to Europe—visit our ancestral homes in England. Perhaps I will go to Vilna sometime(my younger daughter says she wants to go, too) and see my Jewish ancestral home. For now, though, we are sticking with our dog, Penny, petting her, telling her it’s okay when she sometimes goes down the hallway back and forth from the T.V. area to our bedroom and doesn’t know which way to face. A pet on the head is a reminder that we’re here. She sits by the heater now, as it’s winter. I love to see the warm wind blow across her white fur. I love to look at her apricot markings. These two years away from full-time work have allowed me that: to look more deeply.