S.T.R.U.C.T.U.R.E.

Structure starts with a tether. If you're writing, there is grammar and syntax, sentences and paragraphs. If you're building, there's the foundation. If you're on a road trip, it's the prearranged visits and the map. (I don't use a GPS. My father helped map the southwest Pacific during WWII, and he trained me early.)

So what in the world is the tether for this thing called retirement? The other day the local public radio station had a 'day sponsor message': "To our wonderful son and daughter and our amazing grandchildren...we love retirement, but what we both miss most is...structure."

Uh-huh, yup, that's right, I agree. I knew when I retired (there, I said it) that this Structure thing would be THE knottiest problem I'd deal with. While I moan about appointments and tasks and meetings, I am like a four-day old helium-filled balloon without them. Trailing my string, I waft along at half mast, flowing with whatever air movements come along, aimlessly changing directions and enthusiasms.

On paper, the last four months don't look bad. In October there was that trip to Mississippi to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. November took me to South Carolina for Thanksgiving with family. In December I moved, then had guests for Christmas Day dinner; January found me in Atlanta after their snow. In a week I drive east to New England to see family and the friends I've been unable to see because of vacation-day constraints. March will be consumed with preparation for April's trip back to Alaska for the Second Summer at Camp Denali.

The individual days between those trips look slightly less purposeful. The Common Ground work (that community organization group) has proved more difficult to pick up than I thought it would; the reading schedule for the church project of reading the entire Bible in a year leaps ahead of my actual reading. Enthusiasm redirects itself. The fun of a cooking marathon shifts to the delight of new yarn colors and textures. But then hauling out the sewing machine takes the foreground until that stack of ideas calls for inclusion in another chapter of The Book. It seems as if I can't stick with anything--although why would you want to stick with just knitting when you could cook or write or sew? Could it be that I just roll with all these things for a while?

Maybe Wanderlust is the tether for a while. Maybe these are the daily activities--one now, then another later--that fill the time between trips. Perhaps in the first year of retirement you fill your calendar with those big things you couldn't do when you worked full time, and you fill in with the other little things. Suddenly the amount of money spent, post graduate school, on second-hand paperbacks snicks into place. (Helps if you remember that I received my B.A. three months before I qualified for AARP membership.)

Hmmm. Just maybe I'm not doing so badly after all. Except with getting the end of paragraph returns in "compose" to show up in the published post....

Hauntings

Each year about this time, those ghosts of Christmas Past start floating around in my head. The things you could have done better, the things you wish had never happened, and the anticipation that always manifested as pressure instead of joy.

This year's spectres are different. For one, I'm not working full time (Look, everyone, look. See how Lee avoids saying 'retired.'). That automatically creates a smaller scale to preparations. No, the chief difference is these haints are retirement related. I see my father, who retired from the Department of Commerce, moved with Fern--his second wife--to Florida, and gradually fell apart. He didn't last ten years. Then my mother shows up. She lasted longer, her disintegration complicated by alcoholism. What I see is her apartments, all three of them, looking roughly as though she lived in rooms the movers never unpacked.

Now, remember, I just moved downstairs to save a bit of money (views cost--rather, lack of them doesn't), and for a couple of days I moved through my rooms by sidling around boxes, climbing over the vacuum cleaner. Locking the door and going for a walk seemed a pretty good way of dealing with the mess! Ignoring the kitchen seemed a pretty good way of handling the fact that, aside from the dishwasher, my first since 1997, it sucked. Much smaller and with less storage than my kitchen up on the seventh floor where the views were good, there was no way I could deal with this kitchen. O.M.G., I've become my parents!

Not.

With determination, I rolled up my sleeves and attacked that useless kitchen. I decided that I'd just put things away, starting with the most important items, until I ran out of room. Then I found two little wall jogs and installed shelves. Crock pot, yogurt maker, electric fry pan, blender, food processor went on top of the cupboards. The plates left over, that extra set of bowls, and most of the coffee mug collection went to the Resale shop at church. Then I did the same thing with the linen closet. How many sets of towels does a person need? Next came the wall art...not gonna rehang the faded prints, other pieces seemed not to reflect what I wanted to put on the walls now.

In short, I weeded. Stealing a page from one of those HGTV organizing shows, I made three piles: Keep, Discard, Donate. Closet, bookshelf, dresser drawers, even the spice rack. Most of those herbs and spices lose their oomph after about a year, and besides, many were purchased years ago for use in exotic dishes (I'm still wondering about the unopened bottle of Fish Sauce in the pantry--why did I buy it?). It is kind of fun to be ruthless with your extra possessions. And it has the salubrious effect of making you industrious.

OK. Becoming my mother? Only the good parts remain, like sense of humor, laughter, things like that.

Dad's ghost? That's taking some more time. Someone told me, just after I moved to Alaska, that unless you had a plan in place to be involved in some winter activity, you'd really be socked by the winter's length. That activity could be skiing or symphony concert, but the key was to have planned, scheduled activity on the horizon. So far, with the move and all, I haven't gotten out to my Wednesdays at Habitat. But I have been working my part time job on Thursdays, attending choir rehearsals on Mondays, showing up to support ordinance changes surrounding foreclosure in the city. The summer will find me back in Alaska; much of the first four months of the year will have me preparing. I'm working on it.

These strategies are not necessarily news. It's the action that keeps those retirement books coming. I spend a lot of time worrying about what to do, thinking about it, asking and trying to answer questions in my head. It would be easier, those books say, if I'd just step up to the plate and swing, but I'd bet good money that the on-deck circle is littered with worry and thought and questions. (Can we spell self justification?)

Self forgiveness would be a better thing to spell. The process of forming my retirement is, well, processing. For me, time and quiet are needed, required, to absorb change. With Christmas only a few days off, I've gotten the apartment to within a day of where I want it to be. I'll cook a dinner on Saturday for guests, we'll converse and laugh around the table, and the day will be full.

It's a good start.

OK, so now what?

"Retiring" last April was not difficult. Already drawing social security, I mostly just quit my part time job to slope off to Alaska for the summer to toil at a wilderness lodge. Still, using the word "retired" embarrassed me in a vague way. After all I would still be working. Why did I feel as if I needed to apologize? A small voice inside--the voice that's wiser than the walking-around me--verbally elbowed me. "Duh. Look under Hint! You live in a world that identifies you by your job."



So the summer is over now. I'm back from Alaska; I'm back from the week-long volunteer trip to the Gulf Coast. Now what? Financially, I'm OK. I'm not rolling in money, but I can live on a combination of Social Security, 403(b), and (very) occasional employment. And careful budgeting. No, what's got me stalled is what this "retirement" is going to look like. In addition to the re-entry shock of returning to an urban environment after four months spent off the grid at the end of a 90-mile long dirt road, I'm faced with the fact that my schedule and task list is no longer set by an employer. For, golly, the last 26 years, I've shown up on time, I've done the work, and I've gone home. All of a sudden (another "Duh!" moment, here) I've got to decide what the schedule looks like, what my task list will be.



Advice abounds. Friends recommend books the titles of which I've forgotten in their proliferation. Other friends say, "Just do what you like doing, and the shape of your days will evolve." Yeah, well, what I really like doing is reading crime novels and eating M&M's. The only evolution there is the speed with which my sitzmark will expand.



You can only whine and fret so long before your friends quit talking to you. You have to do the planning, and the best way to do it is to start small. (You realize this is the small, wiser-than-me voice talking, right?) If you read my other blog, the one from the summer, you'll remember that I live to make lists. Shoot, by now you're probably shouting at me "make a bleeping list!"



So I started. Remembering the financial part I mentioned earlier, I redid my budget, this time figuring percentages:

• Apartment rent. Totally too high. Solution? In two weeks, I move down to the third floor to a cheaper apartment. Still steep-ish, but I'm not prepared to move away from this particular corner of urban Milwaukee because I love the proximity to movies, bookstores, and OK, the restaurants, which leads me to item #2 on the percentage list.
• Yes, Starbucks is right there, a block away; yes, the restaurant that lets me sit and read over, and after, a meal is a mere 20-minute walk from my kitchen. But unless I redefine my visits to be "treats" instead of substitutes for my own culinary efforts...well, difficulty lurks. Solution? I bought a bag of my favorite Star$$ Pike Place Roast Decaf, and I. Ground. The. Beans. Right. Away. No excuses. Make the coffee the night before, set the timer on the coffee maker. And I bought a yogurt maker. Now I have my very own home-made lowfat unsweetened yogurt at breakfast. Yes, I'm still working on lunchtime choices. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Moving to the meat of the matter, The Schedule (these are already solutions, which sounds remarkable pro-activer for the hand-wringing me):

• Having told my former employer I'm available for part-part-time work, I have Thursday afternoons in November taken care of. It's minimum wage, but I don't do much. It's income, it's activity out of the house with folks I know and like, and--most importantly--it's work. A job description. Defined tasks.
• "Retired" means free time. Habitat for Humanity needs help as the weather chills down and the work goes inside. Wednesday the local Presbyterians gather to build; someone is there to point me toward what they need. This, too, is activity out of the house with folks I know and like, and--most importantly--it's service. Defined tasks focused on someone/something other than me.
• But "retired" can also make your brain itch. To scratch it, I've gone back to involvement with Common Ground, the community activist organization I did some writing for last year. The newly reorganized Communications Team meets this Friday.

Well! That's my start on "retirement." Not what I imagine the remainder of my life will look like, but right now it works. And it still leaves me time to knit, to sew...and to read crime novels although I'm not eating M&M's right now. Fitness is high on that list.

Maybe if I mix in some pecans....