It’s Saturday morning (literally) and I’m three days into my retirement. The sky is slightly overcast. I can hear the big dog that lives next door barking inside his home. (The neighbors are away for the 4th of July weekend.) My cuckoo clock is doing its thing and my fish need feeding. Life is normal, but feels different. It’s not just the weekend, it’s the rest of my life.
Three days ago, I was staying with friends to avoid the 50-minute commute to work, but a lot had changed. I had been working from home the past 16 months due to the pandemic and my friends were renting a small house just outside of town because their house burned down during the last fire season. What remained the same was the warmth of our friendship and the inevitable familiarness of my workspace after all those months away.
On the final morning of my employment, I awoke thinking: today my life is completely complete. The air is fresh and cool, riding a little breeze as it reaches me through an open window overlooking a vineyard. It’s quiet; the birds haven’t started greeting the morning. It’s peaceful and I am at peace. Deeply. Eternity feels captured in this one moment, then in the next. Breathing in and out, I am full –of joy, of satisfaction for a work life I can be proud of.
My friend lends me a necklace to wear, one of her few surviving pieces of jewelry from the fire. Purchased during a safari trip to Africa, it's a pendant with a spiral-etched coin. How fitting, I think: a symbol of abundance and gratitude!
We make celebration that day: a zoom call with congratulatory well-wishers, an outdoor lunch at a nearby favorite restaurant, hugs (we are all fully vaccinated) and a few tears. I gift my flourishing orchid to a co-worker who faithfully tended it during my pandemic absence. I am gifted with chocolates, a bottle of sparkling wine, a future massage at a high-end spa, and a begonia started from a co-worker’s plant that I had admired well over a year ago. Colleagues laughingly predict my future with the retirees experiential adage Every day is Saturday. Yes, we are work compatriots, but it feels more like family.
So, on this first Saturday of my retirement, I hold close to my heart three quotes. The first reminds me not to become overwhelmed at the length of days stretching out in front of me.
Focus on the step in front of you, not the whole staircase. ~Author Unknown
The second quote will encourage me as I continue my search for affordable senior housing in the current environment of scarcity.
When you have exhausted all the possibilities, remember this: you haven’t. ~Thomas Edison
And the third quote stands as a reminder of how I have always faced life’s challenges, even when the odds seem stacked against me.
Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here, we might as well dance. ~Author Unknown
(Edited from Celine)
Dear Patricia, Congratulations on day number four of your new chapter in life, July 4th, INDEPENDENCE Day, FREEDOM, POTENTIAL, fireworks, Joy, family and friends - the ABUNDANCE is all around. I am happy to read you are mulling over this word, this concept, and you Will come to Peace with it. Money is not Abundance, it is a piece of paper, an illusion - the world we live in is the Abundance, everything around us - wow, look at your garden, what Abundant Beauty, look at the ducks paddling in their world, abundant with food, water and Love. Abundance also lives within our Hearts, the fountain of All That Is. Look at the night sky, it sparkles…