Monday morning

3 April 2017

— Britta’s mom’s daffodils, saved from the old house, now in full bloom!

Good Morning All,

My sister-in-law Esther and I were Skyping last night, as we usually do, to make sure we are both still among the quick. She was lamenting that her osteoporosis back pain and a recent bout of bronchitis left her doing damn near nothing yesterday. She listed several things she should have been doing, including working on a shawl she was knitting for a friend and a loaf of bread she should have been baking. She felt bad she’d done neither. 

Esther, let me tell you, was a whirling dervish in her prime. For ten or more years, in order for her to keep the house where her son Mikey grew up, she had two jobs, during the day as a psychiatric nurse at the Laughing Academy and then—after a quick supper—her night job as a district nurse, driving all over the county to visit the old, the infirm, and the shut-ins. She got more done in a day than a lot of people get done in a week. As such, today, not to be doing something with a purpose, something useful for someone else, can be difficult for her. 

I was never in her league energy-and-accomplishment-wise, having only the one job as a high school English teacher, but I was raised as an upstanding New Englander and like many of my fellow Yankees rated my day by what I managed to get done: classes taught, endless papers graded, encouraging chats with students discouraged by one thing or another, faculty meetings survived, getting out the annual literary Magazine Labyrinth, not to mention lawns mowed  and window sashes repainted, and in the wee hours or early mornings the occasional poem or short story written.

Being retired has at times been for both Esther and me a challenge. Old Dobbin out to pasture is not a concept we relish.  On any given day, it often transpires neither of us has anything we absolutely have to do. We are free in the positively best and absolute worst sense of the word. I could, if I wanted, fetch a couple of Mars bars and a box of Cheez-Its from my World War III cupboard and spend the entire day in bed, doing nothing but reading. God knows, I have done that on occasion. In fact, I spent most of yesterday doing exactly that, since it is my usual therapy for the day after the kids decamp.

I cannot speak for Esther, but I know that I look with considerable envy at family and friends who still have spouses and/or nearby family and friends. At the Peace Corps reunion last November, I looked with such unadulterated envy at the five married couples. None of them were free. They had daily obligations and commitments to their spouses. They had to do things for their loved ones. And, yes, okay, I did realize that at times they probably would not mind throwing a brick at their spouses, but only because they had no clue how lucky they were. I wanted to take them by the lapels, husbands and wives alike, and say, “Shut up and understand how undeservedly lucky you are!"

The  psychologist/philosopher Erich Fromm used to make the distinction between Freedom to and Freedom from. Early in grade eleven I’d run my students by that. I’d give them an option. 1. For the next ten years, you can be a CNN cultural journalist, going around the world to report on cultural sites. You have no family, no familial obligations whatsoever. Your nights are yours. You can pick up someone in a bar or stay in your hotel room and watch tv or read a book. You are in Fromm’s dichotomy: free to. You can make and must make your own decisions. 2. For the next ten years, you are basically a soccer mom or soccer dad. You love your husband/wife who loves you back. You have three kids. You get up at 5:00 every day to make sure you get everyone going. You shop. You do laundry. You help in the town library. You run your kids to sports, dance, piano. You are free from. The decisions are already made, and you need to hustle like crazy to keep up. 

So, I'd ask them, which do you choose? These are eleventh graders, remember. It may surprise you to learn that over the course two decades, it runs about fifty fifty.

Back to Esther and me. We are free to. I said to her last night, “For you and me, Esther-keys, it is sometimes tough getting used to this retirement business. Or non-business. You and I, neither of us, has to do anything.  We have, by golly, done out part. We have earned it. We can relax without guilt. 

To which she laughed and said, “Uh-huh, so that’s why you do that Day Book every morning.”

And of course I had to laugh, too. 

One of the fringe benefits of making it to seventy has to be a far deeper appreciation of the humor of human aspirations.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron