Having Time for Happiness

Just the thought of retirement made me nervous. I have always liked work, and imagining a future of purposeless indulgence, an all-expenses-paid cruise to nowhere, was certainly not appealing. While my marathon-running age-mates would continue to run and the lifelong tennis players would become pickleball champs, what would I do with my time?

Models for retirement were limited. I watched a friend’s father, who couldn’t wait to retire, lay down one card after another, for hours on end, playing solitaire. Then there were the bench-sitters. Were they a modern version of Otis Redding, “Sittin’ on the dock of the bay,” but with no guitar and no lyrics? My parents amused themselves with travel and bought a place in Puerto Rico where the weather was warm and the oranges delicious. But then my father got in a fight with Freddie, another retiree, whose second floor addition blocked my parent’s view of the ocean. Finally, the snowbirds all moved back to Florida where the healthcare was better.

How to spend our remaining time and money becomes an issue for us of a certain age. My friend Estie occupies considerably more time cleaning her house than I do, but then generously welcomes me for dust mite and spider-free visits. Rebecca, who always loved opera, now has time for more listening and learning about this longtime passion. Although I would like to become a music buff or devotee, to start so far behind makes catching up impossible. But attending an opera simulcast? A new world opens slowly, sitting there with a friend.

For me, retirement activities fall into three categories. There are the things I like doing because they make me feel more like a better, happier version of my same self. Then there are the things I always thought I should or would like to do, but never had time for. Finally, there are the surprises.

I am a word person. Poems, story, narrative, the sounds of language in both unconscious and deliberate speech, even word games — now there is time to attend more fully, more consciously, to language. It’s such a turn that retirement invites. I find myself moving like a guest in a Japanese bathhouse, from one pool to another, showering naked in Rilke sonnets and smiling as the podcaster Jonathan Goldstein reels out a tale. I work with local historians and family genealogists to make sense of connections: How did a new generation either break away from or amplify the experiences of their forbears? How did they talk about change?

Without guilt, I scramble down informational rabbit holes; I see in the Washington Post that Miriam Adelson is a Trump mega-donor. A google search indicates that she was married to the billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who couldn’t stop playing and winning the money game, even in old age. When he clearly didn’t need more money, what kept him focused on accruing even more wealth? Another google search: What made him switch from a Democratic to a Republican donor? And his children? What sense did he make of losing two kids to addiction? So very happy to be me rather than him, I conclude.

Turning to that second category: I view retirement as an opportunity to be generous, even profligate with my time. When Leslie calls wanting to visit a museum mid-week, I agree, even if the exhibit is nothing I would choose on my own. When my town threatens to sell the community center, I am happy to dust off my grantwriting skills and offer help. When a neighbor breaks her arm, I bop over to make meals that can be frozen. I have time to share. Sharing time is a priority.

My third category— the surprises— is by far the best. With little planning, with no expectations, there they are. We happened to be around the week our grandson’s language pivoted from a wobbly distraction to a celebration of agency. “Again,” he calls after I sing a song he approves of. “Again.” “Again.” Without worry about getting up for work the next day, I lay in the wet grass in late August, humming the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” to myself as I wait patiently for a possible shooting star.

I feel so much luckier—by chance and choice—than I ever expected to be at this point in life. Last week I spoke with a deferential young man about his and my own interest in Paterson, NJ. He alerted me to some images created by a photographer born a few years before me —and added, “I think he is still with us.”

Gladly, I am still very much with us — with myself and my readers and my friends. “If I had a billion dollars,” I tell my 9-year-old grandson who thinks a lot about money, “I would not be doing anything different.” He looks shocked. “It’s true,” I say to him.

“Really?”

“Yes.“