Slow Lane - Retirement Reflections #2

Today while searching through my stash of new and partially used gift-wrap, gift bags, and tissue paper, I came upon a gift bag that was wan and wrinkled beyond usefulness. I don’t remember its history, whether I received it and saved it to re-gift, or whether I purchased it, but never discovered its occasion. I just remember keeping it, for many years, and seeing it every time I look through my supply.

It was originally one of those gift bags you order from the fund raisers for your co-workers’ kids’ schools or sports teams, because they are the least expensive item you can find, and you want to buy something, since your kid will probably have a fund raiser, too. These gift bags look really nice in the catalogue, but when your order comes in, you find out they are shaped like brown lunch bags, and the paper is – well, paper thin, not substantial like a real gift bag. They look as cheap as the price you paid for them. Serves you right. That would be “serves me right,” actually.

This one particular sad looking bag called out to me today, with its rust, gold, maroon and faded blue flowers, suspended on a dark chocolate background. It called out, not to be used. It just called out. The original design purported to be a tapestry of sorts – something like those screens you do cross-stitching on. It was pretty, but not very cheerful. The flowers seem to droop, or perhaps they were imprinted onto the master up-side down. Yes, I think that’s it, now that I turn the bag around.

Well, I knew I’d never put a gift in this bag. So I folded it lovingly, and placed it tenderly into my almost full trashcan. The gift bag seemed to solicit this sort of respect in its final hours. I found a comfy space for it between a collapsed packages-of-oatmeal box and the fliers that make their way weekly into my mailbox. You know the ones, from redplum.com “Coupons, Promo Codes, and Savings Tips – Find a Good Deal More.” Those.

Then, I started thinking about this item, how I’d kept it all these years, how it was in its own way a part of my family-of-origin’s frugal tradition of saving wrapping paper to be used a second, third, and fourth time, although it probably didn’t come from Mother, Daddy, or Margaret. And even though I know I won’t use it, I’ve grown attached to it. And, for goodness sake, I’ve now memorialized it in writing. How could I throw it away? So I’ve retrieved it from its sentence of doom, and here it sits beside me, as I am writing about it. What do I do with it now?

And what – you ask – makes this blog post fit into the retirement category? Well, ever since retirement was just a glimmer in my eye, I knew one of my first tasks would be related to my cluttered apartment. I call it: Clean Out and Clean Up, Search and Destroy, Organize and Arrange. Now that I am in my sixth week of retirement, I realize I have not started the daunting assignment I blithely said I’d take my first month to complete. My question is, how will I ever get rid of anything, if this silly little gift bag is any indication of My Propensities To Keep Stuff?

Stay tuned.

Life in the Slow Lane - Reflections from Retirement (Installment #1)

One of the most astonishing aberrations of retirement is my suspension of belief in the days of the week. Today, for instance, seems like a Saturday. I’m not sure why. It is Friday in the real world, but my brain keeps saying “Saturday.” Actually, I can make it whatever day I want, so long as I don’t tell anyone. Or if I do tell, I’ll need also to suspend my reactions to repercussive remarks from reality-based relatives (and friends) (but using friends breaks that lovely alliterative streak I had going there).

I think today may present itself as Saturday because most of the other days of this week, I’ve arranged encounters with the outside world, lots of them. In other words, I've been busy, in the Fast Lane sense of the word. And today, I do have a task to be completed: preparing a crock pot supper for Celebrate Recovery leadership before the CR meeting tonight, making it Friday in the real world, by the way, Brain. However, today I deviated from my Retirement-Based-Schedule-of-Sorts. I didn’t take my morning walk. I didn’t have my daily Quiet Time prior to entering my day. I haven’t even showered or changed out of my PJs yet. And though it’s almost noon, I just realized I never took my oatmeal breakfast out of the microwave to eat it, and I’ve been up since 7:45.

I did prepare gobs of fresh green beans already, now bubbling their way to tastiness in the crockpot. And I was in the process of washing the red potatoes when this day kept saying "Saturday, Saturday, Saturday." I suspended the potato preparation to write for posterity what I had been writing in my head, lest it go the way of many of my best works – into Oblivion, because I never wrote them down.

And for those of you who are tracking my TV addiction thing, no, I haven’t had the TV on today. But I did finish reading the last 70 pages of Wally Lamb’s novel The Hour I First Believed. I even uttered anguished cries aloud at the most unexpected plot turn. “No, no, no! You can’t let that happen!” And then I wept quietly most of the way to the very end, savoring the well-crafted, character-changing outcomes and the successful tying up of all sub-plot strings. A slow, introspective, leisurely Saturday sort of activity.

Though I have completed five weeks of retirement, the pace and content of my days still surprise me. Several busy days followed by a day of comparative inactivity apparently shifts me back into a workweek mentality. So if it’s okay with you, I’ll just go ahead and make this Saturday. Well, actually, that won’t work, because if it’s Saturday, I should have just finished watching the Gahanna Fourth of July Parade, and I should be busily making deviled eggs for my granddaughter’s third birthday party at 5:00. Hummmm.

When people ask me how my retirement is going, I’ve been saying, “It’s a mystery.” Yup, it sure is.