ARE YOU STILL SOMEBODY?

People have been asking me, “How do you like being retired?”
They’re just being friendly, not accusing. So, why is my first reaction …. “You talking to me?” like the belligerent Robert DeNiro character in “Taxi Driver.”

“Hey, Susan, how’s retirement” yells my friend George from across the street when I’m walking my dog in downtown Sebastopol.
And I’m slightly embarrassed, like he’s asked how’s the new prosthesis working out.

Retired. Me?
I rush to qualify: “Well, of course I haven’t exactly retired, you know,” I sputter. “I quit my newspaper job. But I’m not retired-retired.”
I mean, of course, I’m not playing golf, although nothing against those who do.

How’s it feel to be a lady of leisure, they ask. What leisure? Do not think of me as sitting around. I still wake up in the morning and make lists. I still carry my appointment book. I still have to make money.

Keeping busy, they say.
Filling your time? Do I look like I need time-filling?

I know why I’m so sensitive. It is because my generation basically recoils from the word retired. It makes you sound like what your father did when he quit working at his manufacturing plant and moved to a condo in Florida and tussled with all the other former executives over supervising the landscaping and swimming pool maintenance.

Retired is something you thought you wouldn’t be for a long time. But then you were surprised at turning gray. And turning 50. And 60. And have someone call you grandmother.

But retired sounds so final. Like you’re finished. Done. Wrapped up. Certainly, different.

Sara Davidson worries that retirement is “a precursor to boredom and death.”

What do you say when you no longer do what you did? Who are you when you longer are who you were?

The transition from being on the clock to off does not happen automatically.
It reminds me of the romantic get-away my husband and I planned one week summers ago. We put kids on various planes, found a house sitter to take care of the vegetable garden and feed the cat and rushed to Mexico for one week’s precious vacation . We fought for the first two days.

Baby Boomers, it is reported, have no intention of fully retiring. More than three-quarters of them plan to work long past the age their parents
got the gold watch. Part of this, I know, is because of the money.

The ads ask: can you afford retirement.
Are you kidding, I answer.

But I think we fear relinquishing the identity which comes with work.
Retirement is what normally happens at the end of your career. I still have a career. I just don’t do it for so much an hour certain days a week in an office. I am a stay-at-home writer. And I may eventually get involved in some good work. And take another French class. And do more yoga.

I bet as more Boomers advance into this period we will start to see a new competitive sport develop. Extreme retiring, we’ll call it. . I retired and became a masters swimmer. I retired and became a medical missionary. I took up the cello. I adopt feral cats.
Perfect Boomer business opportunity: Retirement boot camp.

Some of my friends compliment me on my new relatively relaxed life.
I’m more attentive says my friend Alison as we linger over lunch. “This is normally the time you’d be tapping your watch and saying ‘I have to get back to the office.’”
She tells me I look rested, even younger.

But as we start to leave the restaurant, she can’t resist, saying loudly,
“Wait. Now that you’re retired don’t you want to wrap up the bread in a napkin to take home.”

susan swartz
juicytomatoes.com