A Tribute to the Non-Retired
You’ve probably heard some retirees claim that they are busier than they were when they were working. There may be more than a bit of hyperbole in that statement, but despite the luxury of daytime naps and peeks at the occasional Cubs day games, life does sometimes seem to unfold at a dizzying rate. I’m sure some of that is attributable to the ways in which so many things, from thinking to walking, take more time for us, while the world continues to spin at its usual rate.
Just keeping the ship afloat requires a surprising amount of time and effort. We seem to need to shop more frequently to keep the larder stocked – Trader Joe’s, Jewel, Costco, an occasional trip to the neighborhood grocery store that carries an alluring variety of Indian items. Even when there were four of us, I don’t remember shopping more than once a week, but now we’re eating three meals at home every single day, which means an unending cycle of cooking and clean-up.
I’ve written before about the number of doctor’s visits that can clog the calendar, each of which consumes a large chunk of time scheduling and carrying out. Contrast that with earlier years when we might see the doctor once a year for checkups. That also means standing in line at Walgreen’s to fill prescriptions and present our arms for jabs. And how much time do I spend at my desk paying bills, ordering things online and making calls to arrange repairs, to question invoices, to make travel arrangements.
It may not be the same for other retirees, but we haven’t actually stopped doing things that others might label “work.” Here I am at the computer, banging away at this week’s blog posting. Rosellen is preparing for and teaching the memoir writing class she oversees every Tuesday. There’s the volunteer work we’ve signed up for, driving people to doctors’ appointments and visiting a family where the husband is caring for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted wife, rather than relegating her to a nursing home. And, of course, in this season there are our plots in the community garden, which demand at least 3 loving working visits a week.
And there are the theater evenings, dictated by subscriptions to four different theaters, and requiring rushed dinners on those 15 or 16 scheduled nights of the year, as well as the dinners with friends and the monthly gatherings with our Jewish group whose members are also the mainstays of our social lives. We haven’t even mentioned the time devoted to long phone and zoom conversations with our daughters and their families that we can’t get enough of.
We’re enormously grateful for all this busyness which continues to constitute a fulfilling life at a time when so many of our peers are either gone, incapacitated or isolated. We’re enjoying it while we still can.
But if you look back at the title of this piece, my intention is to sing the praises of the not-yet- retired who are doing much of what we’ve described, at the same time that they are working at physically or psychologically demanding full-time jobs AND raising children. That was us once upon a time. We can’t remember how we managed to keep all those balls in the air while continuing to be civil, even loving, to each other as well as to friends and colleagues. It was stressful at times, but in retrospect it was also fun, although that was not a word we would have used to describe the borderline chaotic state we and so many others like us accepted as the norm for decades.
Of course, we had a larger reservoir of energy than we do now and our bodies were being more cooperative than they are now, but still we tip our hats to who we were and what we were able to do in that past life and to all those around us who are still living this endurance trial. We loved it and miss its craziness, but we are also loving the slightly less crazy life that is ours today.
