RETIREMENT AND WOMEN
Women approach retirement in one of two ways: with hope and anticipation or with dread and despair. I've known women who pushed the employment envelope well into their seventies and even eighties, because they feared that not getting up every morning, not punching a clock or not having planned-out tasks to do would signal the knelling of church bells tolling their end. I've always been busy, one woman told me, and if I stopwell, what would I do with all that extra time? On the other hand, I've also known women who woke up with the larks the day after their retirement parties and launched into lives they never would have dreamed of.
An aunt of mine was the latter kind of woman. Her husband died when she was in her mid-fifties, and she found herself facing a mountain of bills that necessitated her working ten years longer than she intended. She woke up one morning and just decided she was 'done'. Over the next five years we received a deluge of postcards from exotic portsEgypt, Israel, France, India, Chinaher house filled up with letters from friends with foreign names and mementos of faraway places. Hale up to the last few days of her earthly existence, she summed up her travels from her hospital bed: I saw the world while I was still in it. It's really something, the world.
What does retirement mean to women?
Once we matriculate into college, or start a career, or enter marriage, most women leap into the fast lane of life. As children move away, as we run out of 'lifetime' education courses to take, as we find ourselves relegated to the role of 'non-essential advisor' at work, we realize that retirement looms ahead. Deciding whether withdrawing from a moneymaking, responsibility-laden existence into a more relaxed mode means defeat or opportunity is the question each woman needs to ask herself. What does it mean, not to be needed? Does she go to pieces, or does she view this as a chance to see herself in an entirely new way, doing things she never thought she ever would?
I approached encroaching retirement with a little apprehension. What would it be like, not to get up at six, slouch into the bathroom for the morning's ablutions, fight time's impingement with puff and paint, dress as if I loved corporate attire, and fight the commuter's war for standing space and a hand-hold on a germy strap in the subway? How would it be, to do without the badly-made office coffee that I paid a dollar a day for the dubious pleasure of drinking, to miss the mega-pile of 'To-Do-Yesterday' projects stacked atop my 'In' box? How would I survive without Megan and Mr. Frank's vitriolic comments about the incompetence of everyone who worked on the last assignment, and how they anticipated I would do much better? What could possibly replace dragging myself onto the 'down' escalator well past when I expected to already be at home soaking in a warm Epsom salts bath? How could I give up nibbling at mystery leftovers from the back of the fridge, because I didn't feel like putting together the elaborate dinner I'd imagined in some unrealistic dream? And what could possibly replace dropping into bed half-dressed and too tired to sleep?
My day came. I wore my best blue velveteen pantsuit with the stamped-on silver leaves to my luncheon. I was expecting a dinner, but nobody wanted to drive home that late; after all, they had to get up the next day. So it was lunch at Applebee's and not dinner at La Fontaine. Gold watches are pass now, I learned. I got two tickets to Chicago the Musical and the earrings they purchased for Mona's birthday; she'd quit and not shown up for her own party.
The next morning I awakened at the appointed hour and watched, bemused, as my husband prepared for work. Don't get up, he said, as I pulled up on one elbow, so I didn't. For the first heady days I re-discovered the joys of childhood summers: watching The Price Is Right and the soaps, the court shows and HGTV. Then I got lonely. All of my potential lunch companions were at the office, sipping bad coffee and choking down cafeteria sandwiches. I took up Lindt chocolate and supreme pizzas. I gained twelve pounds.
This could not go on.
I'm not sure whose idea it was that I should go to visit my cousin in Argentina, but there I was, listening to the engines whine as the jumbo-jet leapt into the sky. I learned to tango and ride the 'subte' from one end of the sprawling city to the other. I visited the infirm in hospitals and little children in day cares. I started learning Spanish, and I didn't come home until I could carry on a real conversation.
Then I decided it might be fun to get my PhD, so I found a university and launched with great enthusiasm into a program, which I completed. That meant new business cards with my new honorific, and that meant circulating where I could hand cards out. By now, my husband, observing what a ball I was having, had put in for his departure, so I had a traveling companion.
And travel we did! There was a cruise, and then we started heaping miles on our Subaru, visiting all of those folks coast to coast that told us, Next time you're in the neighborhood, stop by! We are seeing the world while we are still in it.
It's really something, the world!