On Cooking

Some mornings when I was working, I would open my eyes at 5:30 thinking, what am I going to have for dinner tonight. The fridge was empty, and I had no time that day to shop or prepare anything. 

I like to eat. I sit down at the table, which overlooks the backyard. I have set the table, with the silver (I gave away the stainless to people in Prattsville after Tropical Storm Irene) and a cloth napkin. I do read while I eat; I think you’re not supposed to, but I can’t resist.

James McGreevey, the former governor of New Jersey, told the New York Times that he doesn’t cook, he boils badly. That was so good to read, I cut out the whole article. 

In another Times article, Lois Smith Brady—the best “Vows” writer by far—interviewed seven women and three men, some of them couples, about how important cooking and eating together were/are to their relationships. “Going With Your Gut First, Then Your Heart,” is the title (October 16, 2011).

Really depressing. 

Women look in a guy’s refrigerator and if they see a six-pack of beer and a jar of mustard they hightail it. If a guy looked in my refrigerator—well, it would depend on the day of the week. Friday morning, he might find a bottle of low-salt V-8 and one hard-boiled egg. Maybe a crust of bread, a half-gallon of soymilk, and the ongoing package of oatmeal. 

By Saturday afternoon, the fridge status would be looking up, with greens, some fish, maybe a cooked meatloaf from the farmer’s market. Still not the horn of plenty, but I’ve learned from bitter experience not to risk waste by overstocking. A can of tuna makes lunch for three days; let’s not go overboard here. 

You’re wondering if Dan was green around the gills; if I haven’t already said it, Dan cooked. Fabulously. He had a great sense of food and combinations and timing. I shopped, chopped, and washed up, while he created and cooked. I cleared the newspapers from the table and set it. We sat down together. It was delicious.

In the meantime, whatever few cooking skills I had were atrophying annually, over 25 years. And cooking and eating for one is a whole different experience. To spend an hour preparing something and then eat it, alone, in 10 minutes and then spend half an hour cleaning up—what kind of time management is that? 

Yes, presumably you have leftovers, and I love leftovers. I don’t mind at all eating the same dinner three nights in a row; people all over the world eat the same thing every day. But when the nutritionist said why didn’t I make a beef stew, I thought, why don’t you make one and bring it over. 

In summer my kitchen closes. If food can’t be served cold, I don’t eat it. 

Probably the two aspects of cooking—loving it and being good at it—go together. After forty years, food shopping bores me and there’s still a risk I’ll burn the sauce. I could take a cooking course, but I don’t want to. The other night I knew I should make a spaghetti sauce. I could visualize the spaghetti sauce. I knew how yummy it would taste, how many nights it would last. But I didn’t want to make a spaghetti sauce. I wanted to eat a Kashi frozen dinner and finish the reading assignment for a church committee I serve on. So I did that, and I was happy. 

Isn’t it great when we can be free enough to do things like that, said L. 

Validation!  

But in the meantime, here are all these women offering this gift of love and nutrition, and over here is me, lacking something in my heart, in the way of a nourishing spirit. I tell myself that if I had someone to cook with, it would be fun, but I’m not convinced. 

At this rate I’ll never find a man, I said to K, who is married, and she said, Yeah, but do you want one? 

The Day after Valentine's Day

Notice that except for one, I haven’t told you my dreams. Part of this is simply because I don’t remember them; the other part is that it seems an imposition. 

That said, here is one short recent dream: 

Dan I have broken up. He is living in our apartment in New York City (which we moved out of five years before he died). 

I return there. Dan isn't home. I must pick up boxes of my things. There’s a strong feeling of emphasis in the dream on boxes of my things. Someone, a man, is with me; not a lover, it feels like my brother (who lives hours from NYC). 

In the apartment, I see a pretty hat—straw, with a brim and ribbons—and I wonder if Dan has bought it for me; any stylish, unusual clothes I own were gifts from Dan. But this hat isn't mine, and I realize it's not meant for me. 

In the bedroom, on top of a bureau, I see notes from a child, or children. I’m mystified until I get it: he’s dating a woman with a child. I’m not unduly upset by this. I feel a sense of regret, a sense of being an outsider, but not grief. It feels like our breakup is either mutual or caused by me. I think, he always liked children, at least on a visiting basis. I think, this is what happens when you break up, you’d better get used to it. 

That’s it.

Question: Is someone, something, telling me that Dan has moved on? He has other interests now. And, by extension, so should I. 

L., who’s much more astute psychologically than I am, says it’s more that I am moving on. Collecting my things, moving out. 

The Niggling Matters List

Preparing for retirement (asking myself, what are you going to do with this time?), I made a Concepts List (write, read books) and also a Niggling Matters List.

Niggling Matters were smallish quality-of-life things that I hoped to improve as an RP. 

Rereading this list, I haven’t done very well. I’ll post it here anyway; fear of looking foolish has almost never stopped me. 

When I retire . . . 

I will not do laundry on Sunday.

When I do laundry, I will put it away as soon as it’s dry, and not use the laundry basket as a bureau drawer.

I will keep the upstairs neat even though no one sees it.

I will still wear a skirt sometimes, but not buy any new ones.

I will still get up at 5:30 a.m. 

I will write in the morning. No phone, no e-mail; not even any volunteer work. 

I will not let my e-mail inbox get over 100.

I will write one nice note to someone every day, even if it’s an e-mail.

I will brush Lulu once a week.

Lulu and I will take a special walk at least twice a week. 

I will go back to cooking dinner. 

In winter, I’ll have a hot breakfast every morning, after I’ve written to a stopping point.  

If the situation becomes such that I must let go the cleaning lady or eat nothing but chicken broth for a week, I will eat chicken broth for a week. 

* * *

Kind of sweet, isn’t it, in its hopeful organization. I was going to comment on each entry, but it was too depressing. I do get up at 5:30, but my e-mail inbox this morning is at 341, and that’s even with folders to file mail in and then never think about it again.

Later I discovered, with pleasure, niggling matters that hadn’t made it to the list. For example, I no longer pack my lunch at night. As a writer with an unremarkable income at best, I have always carried food—coffee in a thermos, lunch, snacks. For as long as I can remember I put my lunch together weeknights, because there wouldn’t be time before work in the morning. 

I hated packing my lunch at night. I don’t know why, I just did. I was happy the next day when I had my own food, and I would remind myself that on a global scale, this was a very minor problem, but I still gritted my teeth over it. 

Now I don’t have to think about lunch before noon. Amazing how such a minor change can improve quality of life. 

Outdoors, I have time to explore. Despite my terrible sense of direction, I am now never really lost—I’m just driving through new territory. This applies whether I’m seeking out the starting point of a Columbia Land Conservancy hike or shopping. 

The month after I left Bard College, the kitchen dispose-all gave up the ghost. It was not an appliance I would have asked for, but having overcome my fear of it, I’d got used to its reduction of smelly garbage. 

With a couple of phone calls I found a store that would sell me such an item, on a street, about a mile from my home, that I had never before traveled. I mean, I had trouble finding the street, and then trouble finding the store, which is so confident of its value that it doesn’t have a sign. Driving up and down the street, I discovered a collection of useful businesses, selling things that many of us would one day need. In the store, I met the Bob and Ray–type proprietors. We chatted, and they sold me a new dispose-all. 

But I hadn’t so much shopped as explored, and discovered. To paraphrase Alain de Botton in The Art of Travel, if we consider everything of potential interest, then objects and people release latent layers of value. 

More on loving what you do

Or, why I bailed out on a worthy cause I had my heart set on. 

In addition to write and read books, Literacy Connections, which helps adults with their reading skills, was right up there, #3 on my Concepts list for retirement. 

I’d wanted to be part of it for years, had watched sadly as they scheduled the required two-day training and the tutoring sessions during my workdays. As soon as I left Bard College, I kept an eye out for the next training, and when I saw it last April, I called immediately and showed up, one of a group of about eight women.

The training was well organized, carefully done. I began to get a better picture of the current client that LC assists. I had imagined myself sitting next to an adult while he or she read to me. I would help with new words, pronunciation, comprehension. This person wanted to read, that’s why s/he had signed up. We would have fun. 

My picture was askew. We discussed instead examples of anonymous clients with no reading skills. Some could identify words, some could identify letters but not words, some didn’t really know the alphabet. 

Some had only minimal interest in acquiring these skills. They’d got along OK till now, then maybe bumped up against the need for a GED, a high school equivalency degree, in order to get a job. 

In short, I would be not a tutor but a teacher, of students who had not previously seen the value of reading. I know people who went to graduate school to become reading specialists, but in the meantime, kinesthetic was the word of the day; our lessons needed to be kinesthetic, in order to interest our students. No sitting and listening—the spotlight would be on me, the teacher, as I moved around, charmed my student, drew out him or her with new exercises and activities each week. 

I’m probably the least kinesthetic person you’ve ever met, I said to four classmates as we ate our lunches at a picnic table outside the library. They reassured me, reminding me that the LC office, right here at the Hudson library, was full of instructional materials and staffed by people who would help me develop lessons. 

At the end of the day we had an assignment for the next, final training session: choose a student from the list of anonymous examples and develop a lesson plan for a one-hour tutoring session for that student. We had been given numerous handouts, and we were encouraged to come into the office as needed for advice and more materials. 

I don’t think I can do this, I said to my classmates as we parted in front of the library. Again, they reassured me—support was there, I would develop the skills, I could do this. 

In the next 24 hours I, who have a tendency to leap into things, thought about this harder than I’d ever thought about anything. 

I had wanted to do this for years. But I have no training as a teacher. I’ve taught a few writing workshops to adults, usually in libraries. The workshops were free, but the students were motivated, library patrons who wanted to go beyond reading to telling stories themselves. 

I had wanted to do this for years. But I could see myself spending hours each week in the LC office developing a lesson plan for a one-hour tutorial and then as soon as that was over, coming back into the office to develop the next plan. I wouldn’t be a writer, or an editor, or a retired person. I would be a reading teacher. 

Schoolmarm

I had wanted to do this for years. One of my earliest school memories is sitting in a circle of little kids, reading out loud for the teacher. This was decades before Sesame Street and early reading readiness. Probably Dick and Jane and Spot were our subject matter, and I read carefully during my turn until I had to pause for a second at a new word (help!): see + s . . . sees! (Whew.) I read it and went on, but the teacher stopped me for a learning moment: Did you see what Debby did? See + s = sees. The other kids probably hated me, but it was my first professional compliment, and I’ve never forgotten it. 

Didn’t I want to pass along that pride, that pleasure? 

A few years later, in fifth grade, I was assigned to help a big tough kid with his reading. Perhaps not the smartest assignment for a shy, bookish girl; the big kid bossed me around and his reading didn’t improve. These days I’m not afraid of bullies, but my interest in people is as an observer.

Not as a teacher. 

In the end, it was visualizing the disappearance of all those hours—days—into becoming a teacher that precluded my career at Literacy Connections. I called the office and brought back the materials. The trainer was polite; better to withdraw now, she said, than after I’d been trained and assigned a student. 

Kinesthetic

If you have the time and the interest, it’s a really worthy cause. 

On Retirement III

“You’re retired! You should love what you do.”

That’s what the coordinator for the snack bar volunteers at the AMTRAK station in Hudson told me.

An acquaintance roped me into becoming a snack bar volunteer late last fall, right after I retired from Bard College. She needed someone to cover for her while she went off to Florida for six months. I figured it was a worthy cause, I’d enjoy the interaction with the public, and who knows whom I might meet   . . .

I did enjoy the public interaction, but that was the only thing about the gig that I liked, and during my hours there was seldom any public to interact with. In the meantime, my trainer, the lady on her way to Florida, was a grump, and I counted the money wrong the first time I did it by myself because I have some skills in communication but none in arithmetic.

Further, the Florida lady’s time slot was alternate Sunday evenings, which led to the self-discovery that I did not want to give up a Sunday evening to, basically, commerce. If I’m not seeing friends of a Sunday, then I’m home chilling with the dog, immersed in the Times, gearing up for the coming week, that kind of thing.

Finally, the snack bar supports the Hudson Day Care Center, which is a worthy cause, but it’s not my worthy cause. I have several such causes; I need to focus on them.

The grumpy lady was tootling down to Florida by the time I figured all this out. I prepared to call to the coordinator of volunteers, a woman I barely knew. I made some notes, saying some of the above in a kinder way. Nervous, guilty, I dialed; I had resigned from jobs before, knowing my employer would survive; I could do this.

I barely got through #1 on my list before the coordinator interrupted me.

You’re retired! she said. You should love what you do.

Well, I said. Yes.

She had the staffing challenge and my guilt problem solved in less than five minutes. I loved her. I would have done anything for her. But I didn’t have to.

Do I now love everything I do? No. Oneathesedays, when I have a free moment, I will print out that phrase in a nice big font and hang it above my desk. Still, I’m getting there, learning to say no, to worthy causes and even to part-time jobs I don’t have time for.

Should I turn down any job? Who do I think I am?

The other night we got a couple of inches of snow, nuisance snow because it comes with all the shoveling and slippery roads but none of the fun. For freelancers, I’m learning, there are nuisance jobs, perfectly commendable work that pays, not much, and still requires focused attention, good writing, and research, as if it paid a lot. I could fill a five-day workweek with little jobs and then scramble, shifting things around nights and weekends, when a big job came in.

I really could do this.

But I wouldn’t love it.

All this is code for saying that I’m going out of the press-release writing business.

Next: Why I bailed out on a worthy cause that I loved.

Now winter comes slowly . . . *

Atop the tree

Every year I tell myself that I’ll take down the Christmas tree by Martin Luther King Day. Setting a goal doesn’t mean I succeed; more than once the tree has come down on St. Patrick’s Day, despite the silent disapproval I feel from the cleaning lady (how lazy can she get) and from Dan, the firefighter’s son.

Neither of them understands how I feel about the Christmas tree. It’s a plant, a living thing, and each Christmas I declare that year’s tree the most beautiful I’ve ever had. I water it and become fond of it. Dark January mornings, its red chili pepper lights warm me. In Claverack, where I lived on one floor, the tree glowed next to the desk where I wrote before sunrise.  

To discard the tree into the cold seems cruel, to cut its branches off and use them to cover the garden, as I know I should, feels barbaric. 

This year, I steeled myself. Although this tree is so special, with its long, soft needles, one of only a half-dozen like this that the tree farm grew, I don’t want to be a sentimental old lady, so on a bright, frigid Sunday, a few hours before the annual Martin Luther King service in Hudson, I got the boxes down from the attic and put on Sting’s If on a Winter’s Night. I would just take the ornaments off; I’d leave the lights on, the tree up for a few days more. I’ve heard Winter’s Night called solemn and gloomy, but it suited me perfectly. 

My tree is never taller than I am, so that I can handle it by myself, and I can tell you the provenance of every ornament I put on it. This year I had particular affection for them as I decorated the tree (to Bach’s cheerful Adventskantaten), probably because I’ve been writing this blog, thinking more about Dan. Each ornament carries a memory, and the Christmases I remember are those I spent with Dan. 

As New Yorkers, we were automatically considered the itinerant relatives, but we always had our own tree, and I remember one year in particular when a combination of car trouble and bad weather kept us in the city. With our across-the-hall neighbor V. we created a delicious Christmas Eve dinner. Our downstairs neighbor G. joined the three of us for Midnight Mass at the Episcopal church around the corner. The three of them groused about the service, but I loved it, and I still feel that we all loved that serendipitous Christmas. 

Dan and I had to make up the time later with family, but family was fun too—watching the younger generation grow, our parents still active, years of cross-country skiing together (that freezing afternoon at Hildene) . . . 

No. Joy only, no regret. 

If the ornaments make me sad, I should give them away, get new ones. 

I won’t do that. 

Bambi stays out all year

These days I spend Christmas as we did that one happy year in New York—meals with friends, special services at church. What’s missing is Dan; this is becoming tiresome, Sweetie, I said to him in December, not easier but harder each year to make my own Christmas. A. travels at Christmas now, determined not to be home, but I’m not there yet, with still enough here to keep me by my tree. 

*Thomas Betterton

On Retirement II

Thinking about retirement again, what I thought would happen vs. what has happened so far:

I write more, but not enough (see November 21, 2011 post).

I read more books, (cf. 11/21/11), at the expense of newspapers and magazines. On December 28, 2011, Terry Gross (Fresh Air) reran her October interview with David Carr, who writes for the New York Times. By the time Fresh Air comes on in the evening I am fatigued with a day of words and in need of music, but Carr is an interesting man, so I listened, and what I took from him was that if you work in media you can’t just “put it out,” you have to “consume” it, too. Those were his words, "put out," and "consume." I dislike calling people consumers, but I know what he means: in essence, if you write, you have to read. Everything.

A wise poet pointed out years ago that I was making a futile attempt to live the entire spectrum of my life each individual day: writing, work, exercise, reading, music, friends, etc. Yup, that’s me, decades later the only change is to add "dog" to the list. (The poet mostly wrote, taught to earn a living, ignored family, never exercised, and became a household name.)

Third on my Retirement Concepts list was freelance editing. Planning my retirement from Bard College, I knew I would need some live income, and I do, but I had no idea how often, and how completely, freelance editing could and would take over my life. I have been pretty successful on this front, to the detriment of my writing. 

What to do? I am extremely fortunate that a handful of businesses and institutions want me to help them with their written materials. Note handful; if I were truly supporting myself with freelance work, I would be dining on chicken broth and falling behind on my property taxes. 

I know freelancers who live just this side of welfare. I earn enough to live comfortably in Hudson, N.Y. I don’t earn enough to travel a lot, but that’s OK, I didn’t retire to travel, I retired not to go to work every day. 

But I do go to work, almost every day. I have deadlines, which make me nervous. When the alarm rings at 5:30 a.m. I may worry about how much I have to do that day. 

Still, I work at home now, which is a huge benefit, and I get outdoors more, which makes me happy. I noticed that immediately, the first weeks after I left Bard, when I did voter canvassing in Hudson. The November days were overcast, cold, and blustery; I walked around with the election materials for hours at a time, seldom encountering anyone who was glad to see me, and I was so happy. 

What a life!

Then came December, and January, with so much snow that my kind young neighbor put himself and his single-digit daughters to work helping me clear my twelve-foot “driveway.” But I didn’t have to worry about it, about clearing snow and getting to work on time, and I was so happy. If I were to do a “best of” my months of retirement so far, it would be January 2011, when most days I wrote my blog and then went snowshoeing. What a life!

These days, I am unable to turn down almost all work that is offered to me. 

It’s the fear of scarcity. I am a team of one. Make a mistake and there’s no Dan to roll his eyes and pay off the credit card, no Mom to make a quick loan. Yes, I have savings, but that’s toward a new car, or to tide me over during ill health. 

Next: “You’re retired. You should love what you do.”

Happy New Year

Every New Year’s Day I visit the cemetery at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, New York, where Dan’s ashes are buried. It’s a perfect way to start the year. 

The cemetery is small, about two-dozen wooden markers in a grove of pines that soar to the sky—utterly beautiful and completely peaceful. How happy I was to discover it when I was planning Dan’s funeral—the most wonderful place I had been in months. You can hear, in the distance, the sound of traffic on Route 28, and that’s perfect too; Buddhists are very much part of this world.

This year I brought Lulu, our basenji; she’s a little distracting, but she needed an excursion, Dan brought our dogs everywhere with him, and Lulu proved good company. 

First we greeted Dan. Some new clear shellac-type substance had been applied to the top of his wooden marker. “I think you were splitting a little up at the top here, sweetie,” I said, giving the marker a pat. Usually I find it hard to talk to Dan because I figure he knows what I’m thinking, but I like Lulu to hear my voice.

I admired, as always, the letters, hand-printed in bold black ink, on his marker: his birth date, July 11, with all its straight lines, his death date, August 28, with the roundness of the g and the 2 and the 8. And I thanked someone, up there or down here, that the calligrapher planned the letters    D A N I E L  Z I N K U S   to fit perfectly across the narrow marker, and likewise the dates below them, not running short of space and crushing the year at the edge, as happened on another marker. 

We made a circuit of the cemetery, Lulu sniffing, me impressed again at how young these deceased tend to be. Yes, there are some elders, but so many have birthdates much more recent than Dan’s. I wonder about this, if Buddhism in general and this cemetery in particular appeal to a younger person. 

We came upon only one 2011 funeral, a woman in her early 60s, and I greeted her. The large flat stone that covers her urn in the ground was empty, which is unusual, so I arranged three small pinecones on it in a way I hoped she would find attractive. You don’t bring flowers to a Buddhist cemetery, but stones, or, here, pinecones, pine twigs, all sorts of beautiful natural things.

I stopped by the marker for Matt, our neighbor from Snydertown Road in Claverack. He attended Dan’s funeral here and was so impressed by it that when he died a few years later his wife asked that he be buried here. She only told me afterward; they’re Scots, a quiet, private couple, and I imagine the Buddhists won over by her complete lack of guile. 

This New Year’s Day I had something specific to ask Dan: “My horoscope today says ‘A short trip that ends in time spent with someone you respect will help you get a better handle on where you should put your time and effort over the next 12 months.’” 

Dan would begin by telling me not to waste time reading newspaper horoscopes, “but really, sweetie, if you have any ideas, let me know.”

I don’t stay long. When I find myself thinking about his illness, not his life, I remind myself that if I have to leave him, this is so much better a place than the hospital, where for all those days, almost ninety of them, I left him. He loved the woods, he loved the world beyond the woods, he loved the Buddhists. With luck and love I found him this place. 

Happy New Year, Dan.

How to Read While Walking the Dog

When I try to describe this blog, I tell people first that it’s not self-help—I don’t want them to think that I can actually help them, like send them to some agency and their troubles will be assuaged. 

But here’s some self-help I can’t resist sharing. 

Late last spring I realized that I would be much more patient with the sniffing of Lulu, my basenji, on our walks if I read while she sniffed. For years I had spent her sniffing in an effort to be aware of my surroundings, but we take two or three walks a day, including a mile-long walk, and I needed something new. 

Footnote: Lulu and I do take walks in the woods—we’re regulars on the Columbia Land Conservancy circuit—and special walks, in the cemetery, for instance, so I can read the gravestones while she sniffs. Upon our arrival in Hudson we tried to explore the city on foot, but we discovered that each block is home to at least one Enemy Dog defending its turf in a way that made me nervous. Lulu has a Napoleon complex, and it’s up to me to keep her safe. 

I would love to walk down Warren Street looking in the shop windows and talking to people while Lulu sniffed, but Warren Street, with its noise and its people to talk to, makes Lulu nervous. Most days, then, we take our long walk on Union Street, with its occasional lawns, lots of hedges, and piles of leaves that may hide dead things. 

On Union Street one afternoon for the one-thousandth time, I was trying to make myself aware of the light and the sounds of the day and the season, while really what I wanted was to speed walk down to the river, but I left my job to take care of this dog, so some compromise was needed here, not texting or talking on my cell phone, but a compromise that worked for me. 

A book. 

I needed a book, a small book with a strong story line that I could read a paragraph at a time. I’m not talking about reading while actually walking, that’s too silly, but my reading during her sniffing. And no, I don’t need an iPod. This past Thanksgiving, as Lulu and I walked, the silence of Union Street suggested rest, a city momentarily at peace. On this mild day windows were open and I heard a child’s voice, and later, snatches of Spanish, and on the way home, a speakerphone conversation in the lilt of the islands. I know you wouldn’t want me to give that up.

Enter Stephen King. When I retired last fall D. kindly gave me How Fiction Works by James Wood and On Writing by Stephen King. Wood doesn’t allow for keeping half an eye on the dog, who has inserted her snout up to her eyes into some vegetative matter, but I figured King would write a narrative, whatever his subject. His book was a thick mass-market paperback, promising hours of happy dog walks. 

Now when I think back to last summer, with the searing heat that led Lulu and me to walk our mile early in the morning, I flash back to the street in a waking city. The Meyers Contracting crew is assembling as Lulu sniffs and I read the generous, wise, witty advice of Stephen King. I read the book from the first page to the last, no skipping around. I didn’t think I would care about his early life, but I did. His few examples from his own books still underwhelmed me, but the guy does know how to inspire. I wish I had read his book-writing process years ago; I’ve been doing it all wrong. But it’s not too late to change. 

Then summer was waning and I had finished On Writing. I had to move on. Wolf Whistle worked—a wild novel by Lewis Nordan centered around the death of Emmett Till. I had meant to read it for years—had packed and unpacked it twice as I moved. Now Lulu gave me the time. Lately, I keep up on my issues of One Story, a literary magazine that sends out one short story at a time. Good stories, well told, and at 5 x 7 inches, the perfect size for dog walking.

That’s it—that’s my advice for today. Enrich your life while walking your dog!

*Verse: Rupert Brooke.
  Image: Nancie Dunn, nanciedunncards.com

On Retirement I

A year ago I retired from the Publications Office at Bard College. C, a retired teacher, says she dislikes the word, with its dictionary definition of withdraw, retreat, recede, and I know what she means; my retiree friends and I have, rather, transitioned into a new life, one we looked forward to and planned for, a life at least as busy as the previous one. 

By using retire I am trying to face up to the word, as I tried to face up to the word widow. I guess I could say I left Bard College, but that’s vague, did I drive away or stick out my thumb? Or that I quit Bard, or resigned, but to me those words imply at least a huff, if not anger. I wasn’t angry, even though the punch line of my retirement was: 

If you ask me to choose between my job and my dog, I’m going to choose the dog. 

Obviously, not everyone has that option; I was, and am, extremely fortunate. 

Lulu Salarygirl

For years I was encouraged to bring the dog to work; then the college policy changed and dogs were forbidden on campus.  Bringing Lulu to work had allowed me to keep her. If, when Dan died, I had been employed almost anywhere else in the world, where you couldn’t bring your dog to work, I would have found her another home. Basenjis need a lot of exercise, and Lulu was particularly lively puppyhead. 

Lulu was helpful at the office, carrying my mittens 

Now it was too late for that. We were sidekicks. Banned from the office, she howled when I left in the morning. We managed that summer with a loyal midday dog sitter and long evening walks, but I couldn’t face coming home every night through the long dark winter to a wired dog.

That is, I had been planning to retire from Bard in June 2011 in any case, so I crunched the numbers yet again to see if I could bow out early. I typed up a list of my assets, which barely filled one page, and walked down the street to the office of my financial adviser (see "A New List," November 4, 2011). 

Again, R’s consideration of my financial status was practical and to the point. He looked at the one sheet of paper and said, OK, you can do it, with neither wild enthusiasm nor dark despair. What about the annuity TIAA-CREF was pitching? I asked. Should I do that? He looked at the ceiling for about four seconds and then said, No, don’t bother, you don’t have enough. With nothing more to discuss, we shook hands and I skipped home.

I have a friend who assesses her life annually, on New Year's Day. She and other friends consider each move carefully, as Dan did, basing it on hours of research. More often I make a decision based on gut feeling and then run with it, hurtling along without a lot of time to think. I’m going to try to develop here, before your eyes, and review and assess the last year.

Preparing for retirement, I made two lists, Concepts and Niggling Matters. I’ll start with Concepts:

Write. I do write more. I should write even more, and so I resolve, but even when I lived on nothing years ago, and wrote for three hours a day, I never felt like I had done enough. Still, I have a novel started . . .

Read books. This meant “don’t get so bogged down with newspapers and magazines,” read books. I am doing that, at the expense of magazines, and, less so, newspapers. Time is finite, I’m healthy, the chores are all mine. In fact, I came up with a way to read while I walk Lulu; more on that later. 

There are three more concepts—freelance editing, Literacy Connections, and yard work—but I’ll close this post here. I don’t ask you to read more than 700 words at a time, and I have a lot more to say.

Images: Ta-Da !!!! by Mary Engelbreit, maryengelbreit.com
             Lulu Salarygirl by Jamie Ficker