Linnetontheleaf

We live two blocks from our town’s high school here in suburban New Jersey, so even though our kids graduated long ago, I can’t help being aware of the beginning of the new school year. Troops of teens pass our house each morning and afternoon, reminding me of my own past, and that of my offspring, when the first day of school stirred such mingled excitement and anxiety. Red letter days like these often inspire me to review my own past and future, an exercise which seems especially apt now, since I recently began a signally new phase of my life — as a retiree! I find I can still barely type that word, it seems so strange and out of character! Me, a retiree? Impossible! From my teen summer jobs to my long career in finance (albeit on the very lowest rung), I have never not worked, and for the longest time could not conceive of quitting. Indeed, I waited until nearly 69 to depart the work force, and even then did so with considerable ambivalence.

I have a lot of observations about the experience, but here are two of the most salient. First, what’s the most noticeable change that’s taken place since I quit working? This: I no longer know what day of the week it is. Bizarre! I used to come to consciousness every morning with an automatic, heedless awareness of the day; now I have to stop and think about it. I guess it’s just not very important any more.

My second lesson of the last three months: I am myself the very worst boss I ever had. NOBODY was ever this demanding, nobody made such unrealistic demands or was less understanding of any dereliction. What did you accomplish this week? What do you have to show for yourself, to earn the air that you breathed? Did you get something done, help someone, make a difference, or at the very least have a special day or massively enjoyed yourself? If none of these questions can be answered positively, I suffer enormous regret — among the most uncomfortable of emotions, don’t you agree?

People tell me I’ll relax, but I’m not really sure that I want to. Like Tennyson’s Ulysses, I think: ‘how dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use!’ So I’ll continue to make those big demands of myself, and try valiantly to fulfill them.

for reminding me that I have a blog! (by billing me for it.) Sort of a blog anyway! Hopefully I’ll get busy writing again, now that I am actually retiring. (Finally ready, after years of ambivalence, and a major health crisis in my family which reminded me that time is not infinite). Scanning my last posts, I’m sad to see so many big hopes unfulfilled: Trumpism isn’t dead, dammit, and Uncle Joe hasn’t been able to accomplish as much as I’d hoped (due to our utter political dysfunction) — and now we face the same dangers, on steroids, this November. Few people read this brilliant blog, I realize, but all the voter campaigns (postcards, letters, texting) I’ve done in the past were very successful, so I’ll pick up where I left off and pray that sanity prevails this fall.

For the first time in 18 months, I am commuting to the city again — just temporarily, while I work on a special project for which I need to be on-site — and after so many months of commuting all the way from my bed to my desk, I don’t know how I ever did this on a daily basis! Most glaringly, it feels more tiring physically, although my step-counter tells me that I walk just as much in my at-home routine (where I take long walks daily) as I do commuting (walking .6/m to the station, and 1.1m uptown to the office) — but the psychic exertion of commuting is much greater. I must constantly monitor the time in order to make my trains; I must pack and lug my heavy office bag; and in Manhattan, there are constant obstacles and fellow pedestrians to dodge.

In many ways, of course, it all feels very familiar — though there are far fewer of us pounding the pavement now than pre-pandemic, and many of the businesses I pass on route are closed, their windows papered over and hung with OUT OF BUSINESS and FOR RENT signs. I think of the people who used to make the lunches I bought, who sold me fruit and bagels from carts on the street, and checked out my books at the shuttered NY Public Library branch, and they seem somehow precious, if now very distant. Their lives were upended far more than mine by the events of 2020-21, through no fault of their owAs I devote nearly three hours daily to a commute which has been unnecessary for the last year and a half, I find myself wondering how I have used that time during my days at home. What do I have to show for it? When we first ‘went out’ (as we seem to say), I was full of projects — I refinished our dining room table, and did the world’s best spring garden clean-up — but I didn’t sustain the additional effort as the lockdown, at first shocking and unprecedented, became our long-term reality. If this is how we’re living now, why must I frantically exploit it?

When I took a week off after breaking my jaw in 2020, I remember thinking the idle at-home week would be a good test of how I’d use my time in retirement — a notion which now seems preposterous! But I’d never been home for a whole week before, except when I had new babies, which was scarcely downtime! It was a complete novelty to have seven days yawning empty before me — no wonder I felt I had to make the most of them. (And I did — I revived this blog, I painted and made collages, I read, and I learned to make various smoothies, which were all I could eat with my jaw wired shut.)

As a dry run of retirement, my broken jaw week is far eclipsed by lockdown and our continuing months at home. And how has it gone? My automatic answer at first would have been ‘not well,’ since I felt I was wasting those three extra hours every day. But gradually, my thinking has changed. No, I haven’t gone soft or lazy — I’m actually saner now that I’m not compelled to make the absolute most of every free second. I’ve discovered my inner Type B personality!

I’m still nervous about retirement. Not so much the money — I have saved like a fiend for decades and am able to live pretty frugally — but about losing the purpose and structure which a job provides. But I feel a little better after learning these lockdown lessons.

I took my usual morning bird walk in the park today, but spring migration is off to sort of a slow start and the birds were oddly absent. One important piece of local bird news may be partly responsible — a bald eagle has been visiting us for the past month or so! The once-endangered raptor has come roaring back in recent years, and there are now a number of nesting pairs in New Jersey, but this is the first individual I’ve ever seen so close to home. That’s exciting! But I’m sure he scares our resident and migratory birds (although our common hawks are more dangerous to them than the mostly pescatarian eagle).

With few birds to look at, I walked on, deciding to see what else I could observe today. I always enjoy this exercise in mindfulness and this morning turned out to the full of especially engaging episodes. First among them, a dramatic morning sky — a band of dark cloud hung over the eastern horizon, its scalloped edges brilliantly gilded by the sun rising behind it. It was like something out of an old movie, when the voice of God would speak!

As I continued on, I passed a child care center which was just opening for the day. A few parents with tiny children stood waiting outside. When the door was opened by a young woman, the children shrieked with joy, and one rushed up and hugged her around her knees. How charming! I was reminded of how happy it made me, when my own children were small, to see the special loving relationships they were developing with others. I figured it stood them in good stead for the future (as indeed it has).

I turned a corner and walked up one of my favorite residential streets. It’s lined with small frame cottages, several of them brightly painted, most with inviting porches. Since I still had birds on my mind, my ears perked up when I heard unusual birdsong near me. Peeking around a leafy hedge onto one of the porches, I saw a big birdcage that had been placed outside, occupied by three brightly colored tropical birds. I believe that one was a green parrot or conure; the other two were cockatiels, with gray bodies and pale yellow heads. Yellow fan-like crests rose from atop their heads, and on their faces were orange cheek patches, as if someone had inexpertly applied blush. Listening more closely, I heard reggae music playing nearby, as if a radio had been left on to entertain the birds. (As denizens of the tropics, no doubt they enjoy this genre of music.) And appropriately, I caught a whiff of ganja, another Jamaican specialty. I thought that someone was having a very good morning!

And now I was too, with my trove of happy little sights. I headed home to start my quotidian work day feeling a bit buoyed by it all. May all our mornings begin with such diverting pleasures.

…was the last normal day of my life. On the evening of January 28, as I was walking home from the train in the dark, I fell and broke my jaw. That was a literal break with my life up until then, a traumatic event which changed me in ways I am still discovering. But that was not enough — at about the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived on our shores, and my region went into fearful lockdown six weeks later. One year of altered existence has passed. When it all began, none of us (except possibly Dr. Fauci!) had any idea how long it was going to last — I recall that I was floored when a colleague told me, early on, that her company wouldn’t return to the office until June 2020 at the earliest. We lived in crisis mode — let’s just get through this hour, this day, this week of this weird extraordinary time — until things get back to normal, surely very soon.

But of course, that didn’t happen — that STILL hasn’t happened. If you escaped the worst, the initial panic and dismay mostly abated. Months drifted by. Crisis became quotidian. I regret living so much of this time in a blind holding pattern, failing to grasp how long pandemic conditions would rule our lives. I don’t know how that realization would have changed things; maybe I’d have made resolutions, like you do at New Year’s. I just feel that I haven’t made make the most of the situation. Sure, I’ve taken long walks and watched birds, rearranged furniture, painted rooms, practiced drawing and ukulele, tried to curate special holiday celebrations with my family — but this is a longer journey than we ever dreamed we were on. Those of us lucky enough to have reached 2021 without too much loss or despair, let’s not miss the still available opportunity to become more mindful. Days like these will never come again — at least, let’s hope not!

PS I just got a message from the county scheduling my first COVID shot, so maybe these weird days really are finally drawing to a close.

Happy new year, everyone. This is the first new year that really feels new to me, or at least it did until January 6, when things went dark again — but most of that fresh joy has now returned. When I think about getting vaccinated, and being free to socialize and travel again — when I see a beaming Kamala Harris take her oath of office — when I watch the profoundly normal Biden family affectionately congratulate their paterfamilias after his swearing-in — when I hear Anthony Fauci say that he is breathing a sigh of relief — well, I do too, Dr. Fauci, I do too. Am I standing taller and straighter now, without a heavy burden of worry weighing on my shoulders? I no longer awaken in the night and helplessly stress about what dismaying news the morning will bring. When I open the NYT, I need no longer brace myself for the latest manifestation of incivility, ignorance or naked self-interest. Now that sane, mature, experienced professional adults have arrived to govern, experiences like these are reported everywhere; the Times ran a story about how people are sleeping better, and enjoying improved bandwidth to devote to family, work and personal projects.

I was struck by this vivid example of 2021’s ch-ch-changes yesterday when I set out on my long daily walk. For the past weeks, especially since the election and the Stop the Steal campaign which followed, I had been playing political podcasts while I walked — pundits preaching to the choir about Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors, psychopathology and mere boorishness. Yesterday, on autopilot, I clicked through my choices and realized THERE WEREN’T ANY. Yes, he will be impeached (probably not convicted, but that is stain enough), but he is rapidly receding into irrelevance. (Good reason to hope so anyway, though given his narcissism and the passion of his remaining supporters, he may be able to slither back into the limelight.) So as I walked yesterday, I listened to British gardening podcasts — do you have any idea of how long a galanthophile (yes she actually used that term — lover of snowdrops) can rhapsodize about these tiny flowers? How utterly delightful! And what an enormous treasure trove of material for future walks.

Today, however, I didn’t play anything at all. When I stepped outside, I heard an unfamiliar bird call, so I kept quiet and concentrated, hoping to hear the call again in order to identify it. The bird went silent, but I found I enjoyed just roving in my own mind, for a change — for the first time in months, it felt safe to be alone with my thoughts. No self-affirming or purely distracting messages were needed to keep darkness at bay.

I even stopped playing my nightly porch music recently. At first I wondered at this — was I lazy, worn out after the chaos of the past months? Or maybe depressed, with no more windmills at which to tilt? No, I gradually realized, this is peace, the peace of victory. No longer am I a tiny lone voice trying to shout above the cataract, nor are we the scrappy resistance yapping at the heels of the powerful. We ARE the powerful, we ARE the mighty stream.

I recently allowed my mind to roam over beloved holiday traditions and memories which won’t be possible this year — unwise reflections when one is psychically fragile. Unsurprisingly, I was soon so melancholy that I had to draw back as if from a precipice over which I was tempted to hurl myself. Instead, I proposed to my obstinate mind, let’s review the silver linings elements of 2020. Was anything better this year than ever before? Yes, we had more family time than we’ve had since the children were small, and I treasured that. But the price, the price! Unemployment and utter inability to even seek work, on the part of the younger members of this household — and indeed this is true for much of their generation. The pandemic placed a huge obstacle in the path of recent graduates and young people just embarking on careers, setting them back months or years on their journey to independence. 2020 has brought many sorrows, but this toll on the young people in my own life has been keenest for me.

And yet, the other side of this very coin was a tremendous, unhoped-for blessing — the weeks we were able to enjoy together. How ironic! …that this malevolent force, so destructive in one sphere, was also the author of great joy. Perhaps this is true of many elements of our lives, but it’s rare to see it so starkly exemplified. I doubt I’ve ever ‘looked on the bright side’ in anything but sardonic irony; now I have cause to do so in earnest.

On March 31, I wrote about my ‘odd evening ritual’ of playing Woody Guthrie’s THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND every night at 7:30PM from my front porch, or walking down the block carrying my smart speaker. More than seven months later, I am still playing a song almost every night, changing and curating my choices according to current events. For instance, for weeks after George Floyd’s killing, I played Leontyne Price’s thrilling rendition of LIFT EVERY VOICE. I’ve also rediscovered a bunch of inspiring music that expressed the optimism of the presidential contest — Cat Stevens’ THE PEACE TRAIN, two rousing songs by Allen Toussaint — YES WE CAN CAN and WE THE PEOPLE, and two more from Curtis Mayfield — MOVE ON UP and PEOPLE GET READY. John Lennon’s POWER TO THE PEOPLE isn’t a musical masterpiece, but the message certainly seemed right over the past few weeks. Bob Dylan’s THE TIMES THEY ARE A’CHANGIN’ has been another favorite, although I have often ruefully thought, listening, that things have not changed nearly enough since Bob recorded it in 1963.

At first I was a little nervous about disturbing the peace. But now strollers and passers-by and dog-walkers wave and acknowledge me, and often make affirming remarks: ‘were you playing Cat Stevens last night?’ or ‘I’ve been listening to LIFT EVERY VOICE too!’ These small connections make me hopeful that my nightly musical offerings are heard and appreciated. Choosing them has been an enriching experience for me too.

On my kitchen wall hangs a charming picture of my mother, dressed to the nines, sitting at the table in our Memphis kitchen circa 1960, serving slices of lemon meringue pie to my brother and me. I’m holding my plate with a big loving grin on my adorable five-year-old face, and we’re all smiling warmly — if a bit artificially — at one another, over my mother’s magnificent culinary creation.

Many folks will be too young to remember this, but at one time regional newspapers ran a weekly column spotlighting a specialty dish prepared by a local homemaker. It was a minor honor to come to the attention of the editors of these pieces, and I’m sure my mother, who would have been about 40 at the time, was pleased to be selected. She was in fact a wonderful cook, with a real passion for food and curiosity about cuisine, which was not necessarily common in those days of fish sticks and jello. She even had an advanced degree in nutritional science and worked for a time as a hospital dietician.

But the funny thing about this newspaper piece is that lemon meringue pie was NOT her specialty! In fact, she said that she never conquered meringue; despite her culinary skill, hers would always ‘weep.’ But evidently the Memphis Commercial Appeal editor wanted a piece about lemon meringue pie that week, dammit, and my mother was assigned to make it regardless! We WERE a happy family, and my mother WAS a good cook, but beyond that, the piece was totally fabricated. Even the items arranged on the countertop in the background are make-believe — a silver tea service, a stylish hammered aluminum ice bucket. These would never have been out on a daily basis, but were probably chosen and deployed by the photographer for the photo op.

I find all this simultaneously amusing and distressing. My mother laughed it off, though I’m sure it rankled not to be allowed to flaunt her authentic talents rather than the ersatz ones demanded by the paper. Certainly it was typical of the time period, when married women couldn’t get credit cards in their own names or serve on juries in some states. Enforced meringue-making really isn’t that big a step from handmaid bonnets.

I can’t help but relate this to Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s incredible body of work on gender rights, and the insult to that effort represented by Trump’s nomination of Amy Barrett to RBG’s seat. After decades of progress, are we now to be driven backwards? — towards a society in which women’s true gifts, natures and ambitions are of no interest; indeed are openly repressed? The America some yearn to ‘recreate’ never really existed for vast numbers of Americans — it was a myth, just like my mother’s meringue.

Most of the time, we don’t appreciate growing older. I recall a few exceptions — such as noticing my agonizing self-consciousness fading as I passed my teens, or my migraines and allergies waning after several decades of suffering. Now, in the great plague of 2020, I am experiencing the most powerful example ever. I feel so very lucky that I am reaching the twilight of my career and indeed my life. (I’m 65.) I have had my run — I enjoyed the wild run of my misspent youth (just pre-AIDS), I was able to work without interruption for over 40 years, and to travel widely and freely. I was able to revel in concerts and movies and shows and parties for over six decades, and I raised my children without having to teach them algebra (which wouldn’t have gone well).

As it is, despite these manifold blessings, I feel pretty cheated right now, with the cancellation of so many activities which impart sweetness to life. But how would I feel if I were 20? Massively depressed, I’m sure! I totally get it, college kids, when you just have to go to a party or have casual sex — although of course I wish you wouldn’t, not right now.

But in 2020, it’s a relief and a blessing to be so old that these impulses have atrophied. I’m glad I’m not just starting out, with a furious hunger for the world and for experience, with everything shut down and inaccessible. I’m glad I’m not under to the gun to get a career into high gear, with so many roadblocks in my path. I’m glad I’m old enough to be more or less contented in my own company, and to have burned off most of the intense moods of youth.

My sympathies are with you, young people everywhere. I hope you get your turn at the action before you’re too mature to enjoy it!