October 20, 2026
Dear friends, after years of encouragement from those that know me best, I’ve decided to try to write a longer piece that could turn into something. I first want to try it out here on you. So, if the direction of this post interests you, or if you have any thoughts and ideas to add, I would love to hear from you!
A RETIREMENT RECKONING
Nearly four years into retirement and I am beginning to see what this phase of life is about for me. Or perhaps I should say, what it has the potential to be, because only now have I begun to understand. Autumn has been particularly stunning this year. Every so often, when driving through the Maine countryside, I have been moved to tears by a landscape that seems to cry out “Just look, look at me! Take me in and allow me to touch your soul!” For that is what it has been doing, touching and soothing me way down deep. As I smile, it seems as if She (She? Mother Nature perhaps?) smiles back at me, knowing that I am finally ready for the lessons she has been trying to teach me all my life. But oh, how hard it has been to get this stubborn soul ready.
It’s not that I hadn’t been thinking about what retirement means for the last few years. After all, I have always been the girl with a plan – getting ready for the next challenge/achievement in life, usually of the academic kind. School is always where I felt in my element. I learned early on how to establish a goal and work step by step to accomplish it. Initially, I approached retirement in the same way.
The goal was not retirement itself, but something I could turn retirement into. I started to explore new names for it. The images of retirement in our culture, leisure, travel, play, were not very attractive to me. As the oldest girl in a family of five children, I confess that playing has never been something I was ever especially good at. It, too, had to have a purpose. If I played school with my dolls, it was in order to learn something. My creativity consisted in building May altars for the Virgin Mary in order to pray. I wrote little poems to put in a book. I still remember “my little bunny with the wiggly nose, whose tail would follow wherever it goes.” Sadly, my third-grade teacher absconded with my book of verse.
From a very young age, I was reared to have a bigger purpose. It’s no surprise then that the first name I came up with for retirement was “repurposing”. It was then I began to read everything I could get my hands on about retirement and aging. My new “purpose” began to take shape…
To be continued…
