Previous month:
September 2013
Next month:
November 2013

October 2013

Lasting Memories

At the summer camp I attended, they always served roast beef for dinner on the last night.  I suspect they thought that when our parents asked us how the food was at camp, we would think of our “final banquet” and forget about the creamed chipped-beef-on-toast dinners that we hated.

And so it was with my job.  Now that I have been retired for two months, only the good things about it come to mind:  how much I loved working with the students, how smart and committed my colleagues were, how important the mission that inspired us is…

However, if I dig a bit deeper, there are some things I don’t miss at all.  I don’t miss writing performance evaluations or justifying my budgets.  There were some not-fun committees I served on, and there was the time when we had to cut back our staffs.   There are even one or two people I don’t miss.

Like camp, although it served an occasional chipped beef dinner, my job was a prime ribs experience.

 


Recalculating

If you have a GPS in your car, you know that when you don’t follow directions, you hear a menacing “Recalculating!” and that is not good news.

I have spent the last couple of weeks “recalculating” my life, and that hasn’t been good news either.  I have reluctantly accepted that my decision to be a 75-year old graduate student was a poor one.  I wrote earlier that I wanted to “taste the candy” by taking classes at the school where I had worked so long, and that seemed like reason enough to enroll. 

But the enormity of the change (from a more-than-full-time job where I was important to a graduate student where I wasn’t) in just 48 hours didn’t enter into my calculation.  I listened to my heart and ignored my head.

I was doing well in my classes.  But I didn’t feel like a student.  I felt like an administrator pretending to be a student.  And that didn’t feel good.  So last week, I withdrew.

My recalculation is a work in progress.  I am giving myself some breathing time.  I know that there is a right path for me toward a rich retirement in which I can give to others in gratitude for all the good things I have received.

I will take my time, but I will find it.

 


Jane Fonda Workout

Our guest room closet has three built-in drawers where we stash empty picture frames, old safari hats, computer cables, whatever. Feeling a need for a bit of relaxation the other evening, I searched there for some old meditation tapes.  (You remember tapes. They slide into a Walkman.) 

I found the meditation tapes, but more important, I discovered my old “Jane Fonda Workout” tape.  Years ago, my neighbors Val and Reggie and I had our own little Jane Fonda group.  Twice a week, we went to Val’s basement and worked out.  We bought leotards and tights to be authentic.  We exercised until we “felt the burn”.  We also did a lot of talking.  Back then, we thought we had invented the exercise-age version of the coffee klatsch. 

When Val moved away twenty-four years ago, Reggie and I didn’t have the heart to exercise without her, but I kept the tape, just in case.  I couldn’t resist checking to see if it still worked.  I slipped it into an old boom box. With the first notes of the theme music blasting, those exercises, those conversations, those leotards—it was like yesterday.


Cast Iron Skillet

One kitchen item I can’t live without is my 12-inch cast iron skillet.  Just writing those words, I can smell my mother’s famous spaghetti sauce simmering away in her cast iron skillet on a cold winter afternoon in Pittsburgh in the 1950’s. 

So when we took a post-surgery dinner to friends, and I wanted to make sautéed zucchini and tomatoes to go with the flank steak I had marinated, I called to make sure they owned such a skillet.  They didn’t.  So I brought ours.

Other friends brought the appetizers and dessert. They don’t own a cast iron skillet either.  But everyone gathered around the stove to watch me sauté the garlic, add the sliced zucchini and later some tomatoes, and top it all off with freshly grated parmesan cheese.  Browned to perfection, the dish was the hit of the evening.

Will the others rush out to buy a cast iron skillet?

I don’t think so. 

 

 

 


Mr. Clean

On Sunday morning, I took a luxuriously long shower.  I shaved my legs and clipped my toenails.  I slathered on various creams and lotions.  When I emerged from the bathroom at last, I had a vivid memory of my father after his ritual shower and shave.

Dad would open the bathroom door. Steam and the smell of Old Spice aftershave would precede him into the hall.  He would have a bath towel around his middle and a shaving towel wrapped sheik-like around his head.

He would announce:  “I am the cleanest person in this house.  Who wants to kiss me?”It’s been forty-one years since Dad died.  

I still miss him.


Six Week Report

It’s been six weeks since I retired.   With a bit of help from William Bridges’ book, Transitions, I now understand why it has been hard for me.  According to Bridges, transitions are difficult, no matter how sure you are that they are the right move.  Leaving a job you like (even for a better one) is an adjustment.  Going back to school is also an adjustment. And what did I do?  Both at once. 

I was talking about this with a former colleague.  Recently, Scott and his young family moved to a new house.  As he tells it, they can practically see their old house from the new one.  Yet his little kids had trouble sleeping after they moved. For them it was a transition. And transitions are confusing.

I have no doubt that it was time for me to leave my job.  I have no doubt that I am lucky to be able to use my retirement to stretch my mind.

But now I get it that it is not as easy as I thought it would be.

 

 

 


Problem/Solution

I’m giving a speech in my next Arts of Communication class. Our assignment is to pose a problem and offer a solution. I decided to talk about how our non-stop attachment to our cell phones, iPads, and Kindles is bad for us. 

Although we can’t eliminate the problem, I will offer some suggestions for managing it.

I was thinking that I might take my own advice.  But that was before Tuesday’s Boston Red Sox playoff game.  Our son Jeremy, a huge Sox fan, was watching the game in Maryland with our grandsons.  He suggested we watch “together” using Face-time on our iPads so that we could talk about the game as if all of us were in the same family room.

So there I was—iPad propped on my lap, talking with Jeremy and the boys on their couch, the game on our TV set and theirs, and my cell phone chirping away on the coffee table announcing emails.

So much for following my own advice.

 


Make-up Exam

When I was a child, my mother’s bedroom bureau featured a mirrored tray containing perfume bottles of all shapes and sizes.  My father never had to worry about a Valentine’s Day gift—perfume was the default. I loved pulling out the stoppers on the bottles of Chanel #5, Shalimar, Joy, White Shoulders and more, imagining myself as a perfumed beauty with dark flowing hair, clad in a low-cut gown.

Alas, I married a man who hates perfume.  And he’s pretty anti-makeup too.  He tells me that when he sees heavily eye-shadowed eyes, he is tempted to place a thumb on each eyelid and rub it out. 

All this was fine with me when my skin was young and smooth and the only dark spots on my face were a side effect of my birth-control pills.  But there came a time when, after my summer tan faded, my winter pallor required a little help—shall we say a tinted moisturizer and some blush?

Eventually the tinted moisturizer became as much a year-round necessity as the bright red lipstick that is my trademark.  But I use eye shadow sparingly.

For obvious reasons.

 


Time to Party

Last weekend we went to a wonderful party given by close friends.  The reason for the party, as the invitation said, was “Just Because…” 

About seventy people gathered in a beautifully-restored old mansion.  The youngest attendee was minus three months, the oldest 80-plus. I’d say we knew about 50 percent of the guests.

The host and hostess encouraged us to talk to people we didn’t know, and we did.  But we also caught up with old friends.  Most of our generation is retired, but they are all doing really interesting things.  One, a retired doctor, had just sung eight solo lines in his first opera (having sung in the chorus for years).  Another, a retired dentist is now a sculptor giving his first gallery show next month.

We should give parties to celebrate “Just Because” we can.

 

Last weekend we went to a wonderful party given by close friends.  The reason for the party, as the invitation said, was “Just Because…” 

 

About seventy people gathered in a beautifully-restored old mansion.  The youngest attendee was minus three months, the oldest 80-plus. I’d say we knew about 50 percent of the guests.

 

The host and hostess encouraged us to talk to people we didn’t know, and we did.  But we also caught up with old friends.  Most of our generation is retired, but they are all doing really interesting things.  One, a retired doctor, had just sung eight solo lines in his first opera (having sung in the chorus for years).  Another, a retired dentist is now a sculptor giving his first gallery show next month.

 

We should give parties to celebrate “just because” we can.