WordSisters

  • Thinking Retirement

    Elizabeth di Grazia's avatar

    Elizabeth di Grazia

    I have a date in mind. September 26, 2021. My 63rd birthday.

    “Dream about what you want to do after high school,” I tell Juan and Crystel. Jody and I have offered our children many options. Gap year. College. Work. Travel. Imagine it all. Don’t put any restrictions on your visions.

    I’m doing the same with retirement. Sometimes, I’ll have thoughts of staying in the workforce longer. I have a job I enjoy and leave satisfied, most days. After planning a trip to Japan for three weeks, I thought, well … maybe if I arrange a few more of these three-week vacations I could work longer. Then winter came.

    The first time I stepped into the bone chilling Minnesota cold at 5:30 am to go to the YMCA and then on to work, I changed my mind. There is a difference between having to leave your home for work and leaving home when you want. For one if I were retired, I’d let the air warm up.

    On numerous occasions, I’ve told Jody that I’m going to retire at 63. Just in case she forgets. Or thinks I’ve changed my mind. Since she is four years younger than me and has her own relationship with money, she will most likely work longer. I love her for that.

    The kids graduate June of 2021. You would think that I’d want to work longer to help them pay for college. Jody and I have already come up with the amount of financial help we’ll give them. The rest is ours.

    Some people add on to their house after their children leave high school, while others downsize.

    Jody and I won’t downsize. We are going to keep the house as much for Juan and Crystel as for any reason. I always liked the idea of selling the house and traveling until Juan told Crystel one day that Mama Beth and Mama Jody were going to kick them out and sell the house after they graduated high school. After my OMG moment, I realized that he was saying that he needed a home to come home to. I always thought they could travel wherever we are.

    The more Jody and I discussed retirement the more I realized that it didn’t make sense to be such involved parents and then when Juan and Crystel launch for college to no longer be present. In dreaming of their options maybe one of theirs is to live at home. Another OMG moment.

    Now when I think of retirement I’m counting the winters left. One more winter. The Groundhog said it will be an early spring. Juan and Crystel will be starting their senior year September of 2020. I’ll be starting my last year of work. The days will go fast.

    I’ve always said to people – get out of the workforce while you are still alive. Not everyone does. My parents and several siblings died young. This doesn’t mean that I will, but it lurks in my mind like a dirty swimming pool. I want many days of sitting in a chair with my eyes closed and my face to the sun. Our swimming pool sparkling.

    7 responses to “Thinking Retirement”

    1. Ann Coleman Avatar
      Ann Coleman

      I also think it’s best to retire when you’re still young enough to actually enjoy it!

      1. Elizabeth di Grazia Avatar
        Elizabeth di Grazia

        I agree, Ann. I had my knees replaced prior to retirement so I could enjoy hiking and biking and just plain being active.

    2. Eliza Waters Avatar
      Eliza Waters

      I admire your thinking ahead towards retirement. It is nice to call your own shots every day upon arising, a blank slate to fill at your whim.
      I lost both parents before the age of twenty, and I did miss having a family home to return to. I have two grown sons and I’ve come to the conclusion that adolescence lasts to 28 years (at least with these two). They still need us, but at a distance, kind of like back up, not to meddle, but be there as a resource. Beyond 28, almost magically, they became ‘ grown men’ confident in making their way in the world. Perhaps your two might be similar.

      1. Elizabeth di Grazia Avatar
        Elizabeth di Grazia

        Thank you for your wisdom. I’ve had to rethink having a family home to return to. In my family growing up the belief was that you were ‘out’ at age 18 and expected not to return. I’ll be doing it different with my children.

        1. Eliza Waters Avatar
          Eliza Waters

          It’s a different world, for sure, hopefully improved. ❤

    3. Bev Bachel Avatar
      Bev Bachel

      I haven’t started counting the number of winters I have left before retirement, partly because I’ve found ways to spend at least part of them in warmer climes, but your post made me realize it’s time to get serious about planning. Thanks for the nudge.

      1. Elizabeth di Grazia Avatar
        Elizabeth di Grazia

        I agree about the warmer climates, Bev. It shortens the winter’s cold.

  • Let the Hope Shine

    bevbachel's avatar

    bevbachel

    About a year ago, on the way to visit my 90-year old uncle in the hospital, I stopped at a coffee shop. While waiting for my mocha, I glanced at the shop’s bulletin board and saw a flyer from The Spread Sunshine Gang with the invitation to take what I needed: COURAGE, KINDNESS, HOPE, GRATITUDE, HUMOR, JOY or PEACE.

    I chose HOPE.

    When I got to the hospital, I passed it on to my aunt even though I knew she didn’t really need it because she—a lifelong Catholic—has her faith.

    But me? I’m always seeking reasons to hope.

    So, when I got home I signed up for the Spread Sunshine Gang’s newsletter. It now arrives in my inbox every few weeks, a welcome reminder that our Land of 10,000 Lakes is filled with people eager to share their goodness in creative ways and inspire others to do the same.  

    In addition to their coffee shop flyers, the group’s recent acts of kindness include hosting a holiday party for seniors, participating in a Polar Plunge to raise money for Special Olympics and decorating Loring Park with warm, colorful (and free-for-the-taking!) hats, scarves and mittens.

    Their “sunshine” has inspired me to spread my own. Here are three lessons I’ve learned along the way:

    Lesson No. 1: Small gestures can have a big impact. Take a smile, for instance. It costs me nothing to give yet can brighten a complete stranger’s day.

    Lesson No. 2: Kindness comes in all shapes and sizes. One day it may arrive as a bouquet of bright orange tulips. On another as a warm hug from a friend, an out-of-the-blue postcard from a relative or an unexpected compliment from a colleague.

    Lesson No. 3: Communicating love doesn’t require words. This afternoon, I’ll be visiting my uncle and aunt once again. He has recovered enough to be living back at home but spends most afternoons sitting beside my aunt at the assisted-living facility where she now lives after having suffered a stroke.

    She won’t be able to say more than a few words, but the way her eyes light up when she sees me fills the room with sunshine and my heart with hope.

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    5 responses to “Let the Hope Shine”

    1. Karen Avatar
      Karen

      Your message of hope reached out and touched my heart, thanks for sharing the beautiful essay.
      And thanks for reminding us of the importance of a small gesture. Love, kindness, and hope, three things we all need.

    2. Diane P Autey Avatar
      Diane P Autey

      I love the message, Bev, and you conveyed it so eloquently. I, too, will check out The Spread Sunshine Gang. Make it a great day!

    3. Laura Lee Scott Avatar
      Laura Lee Scott

      Such a beautiful, HOPE-FILLED essay, Bev! Thank you so much for sharing your perspective. We all have the power to make a positive difference in our communities and world. As you so well know, every kind word or deed has a ripple effect that helps to pour much-needed light into this otherwise very murky world. Thank you for making a difference, and keep letting your light shine!

      1. Bev Bachel Avatar
        Bev Bachel

        Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. Means a lot coming from a fellow writer and uplifter.

    4. Elizabeth di Grazia Avatar
      Elizabeth di Grazia

      Bev, enjoyed reading this. I love the ‘personal’ in it. “But me? I’m always seeking reasons to hope.” I’ll be checking out The Spread Sunshine Gang.

  • Je M’appelle Frisque

    cmkraack's avatar

    cmkraack

    My grandparents’ families came from places like Walhain-St. Paul, Incourt, Nievelles, Tourinne-St. Lambert, and Huldenberg in Walloon Brabant, Belgium. Impacted by the same potato famine that brought many Irish to the United States, the Belgians made their way to Wisconsin communities with names like Brussels, Tonet, Namur, Luxemburg, and Walhain. The homes they left had been clustered in an area about forty miles wide. The farm towns they carved out of tree-covered land, almost four thousand miles across an ocean and half a continent, were about the same distance apart.

    When I was a child I spoke some Walloon, a nearly forgotten language, with my Belgian-American great-grandmother and her friends as they quilted in our living room. We ate Belgian farm food like jut, a boiled cabbage side dish, stoemp, a mashed potato and cabbage dish, trippe, a bratwurst-type sausage, booyah, a chicken-based soup with many ingredients, and Belgian pie, a sweet dough tart filled with prunes and a cream cheese style top. Our Catholic church held a Kermis celebration in autumn. Beyond jokes about how much Belgians sweat or drank or were short, maybe stout, that’s about what I knew of our heritage. All the amazing accomplishments of the Belgians or their art or chocolates were from a different socio-economic part of the country.

    My mother’s cousin and my father’s cousin researched family trees. Through the Frisque genealogy I discovered that my family was related to many, many people in Luxemburg, Wisconsin, the small town where my father grew up and we lived through part of my childhood. The Nockaert family information uncovered that my mother was mostly Belgian although she believed she was German. Names, dates, locations, relations fill pages. That’s it. The Belgian Heritage Center in Namur, Wisconsin may provide information to further the cousins’ research.

    The histories of these people, who permanently left all they knew for 40 acres of land and a better future, are probably lost forever. But this summer we are going to visit Belgium, specifically Walloon Brabant, and trace what is left of our Cravillion, Frisque, Nockaert, and VanderKelen ancestors. They were all small farmers who left Belgium in the mid 1850s so there is probably little left of their lives beyond cemetery headstones.

    We have nothing physical from their lives in Belgium and little expectation of connecting with other great-great-great grandchildren of the original immigrants. But one can always hope.

    Genealogy

     

     

     

     

     

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