Reveling in Retirement

I look back on my own grandparents from a child’s perspective.  Were they having fun?  I’m not so sure.  My grandmother had a nursery and taught all of so much about gardening, while my grandfather ‘slapped’ the cards on the table nightly until after midnight chain smoking without any obvious ill effects.  He finally gave them up at age 89.

My other grandparents sold the farm in Minnesota and moved to sunny Orlando, the City Beautiful, long before it became the ugly, overdeveloped metropolis it is now.  They struck me as nothing if not sedentary.  I remember my grandpa watching wrestling on TV, and my grandma crocheting doilies.  When they were cross with each other, the conversation flipped from English to Danish, rendering us clueless.

No one really traveled much.  Their social lives were pretty confined to their children and grandchildren.  I don’t remember them going to the movies, restaurants, plays, the opera.

The boomers are different.  We seem to have chosen an alternate path just like every other stage of life we’ve encountered.  We’re exercise-driven.  Thank God for artificial hips and knees!  Even though I came to the party late, I’m now a health nut and living in Florida provides me with year-round farmers’ markets.

Traveling has provided us with a wider world view, a clearer understanding and gratitude of the gifts we take so much for granted.  We’re not as dependent on our children as previous generations.  Most of us have spent decades in the work force and, hopefully, the returns have let us enjoy a slower way of life.

The greatest asset of retirement is the joy of reconnecting with ‘old’ friends.  Right now, my college roommate and her husband are hot tubbing at the house they are renting next door here in Venice.  He was actually raised in Venice where his father had the Rexall Drug Store downtown where TJ Carney’s Pub is now.  My roommate is from a town south of here and all of my closest friends at Florida State University were from this area.  Little did I know that I would settle here almost 50 years later.

Later this summer, I’m meeting four of my girlfriends from high school at Tybee Island, near Savannah.  Every other year, we gather at a southern beach to catch up on children, grandchildren and life in general.  The first time we did this in 2005, we didn’t stop talking for days on end and as we were departing, one smart aleck quipped, “We’ll do this again in two years, tell the same stories and no one will remember any of them!”

On Saturday, BH and I are traveling to Fort Myers for lunch to meet a couple that had a huge influence when I was a teacher/politician in Hartford, Connecticut.  In fact, Kevin and I married in their back yard.

I could go on and on about the friends I’ve been able to reconnect with, most of whom I haven’t seen for at least 30 years.  And, the amazing thing is that there is literally no distance in those years.  We are basically the same people we were then.  Yes, we’ve traveled the roller coaster of life and, of course, we all have gathered some baggage,  But, we respect each other, appreciate our differences, and celebrate our commonalities.

If only our politicians could board that same train….