Drove out to Tim & Cathy Kelley's place last night for Tim's retirement party. Didn't see a whole lot of faces that I could recognize; most had come to work at the school board after I left -- 18 years ago!
Larry Ann and Anne Griner came though, and so I spent a couple of hours yacking with them and with the Kelleys. Tim was playing music from the 60s and 70s, and when House of the Rising Sun came up, I suddenly felt comfortable.
I guess the underlying (but unspoken) theme of these retirement things is... surprise. We are surprised that our kids are becoming - have become - grown, we are surprised that we have grandchildren, we are surprised at facing mornings without a job to go to. We are surprised by the names of people we knew who have gone to their reward, by the growth of the metro area, by each others' gray hair and wrinkles and overweight.
We are surprised by That Old Devil, Time.
We remember our lives together as youngsters, which days don't seem so long ago. We remember drinking and driving, pranks and pratfalls, friends and enemies, softball, card games, concerts, political affiliations. We remember what each of us was driving, what pets we had, our first heady and uncertain steps into parenthood.
You do the math, and tote the years up, and you'd think we should feel decrepit. None of us do, not by a very long shot - yet we know that decrepitude is coming. We are tied to a railroad track, awaiting the 5:15, and it's already afternoon. The train schedule was unimportant to us early this morning, but it is much more on our minds now.
How did we come to this? I don't FEEL old!
How many middle-age-crazies do you get? Can I still bike the Blue Ridge? Quit and write that novel? Or should I just stay where I am, comfortable in the cozy little niche that I've cut out of life?
Do I do something uncomfortable and stupid while I still can? Or do I stay the course, saving up acorns for my decrepitude?
Such things occur to me after one of these retirement soirees. There will be other such gatherings in the near future -- Annie will retire next year, Cathy the year after that.
Maybe me, too. I can early-retire at 55.
Then what?
posted at: 13:19 | path: /dailies | permanent link to this entry