Tag Archives: retirement

Noticing Season

This week began with a fantastic thunderstorm, with an especially gorgeous prelude of rumbling from the heavens, strong enough to awaken my son who was visiting from college. I excitedly went to the front porch to try to capture the majesty of the darkening sky amid the tall oak trees that line my street. A couple of hours later, my husband sent me this beautifully captured photo from his office overlooking a scene from our city awash in the storm and these words: “Enjoying my view in my descent.” Later our son remarked, “Dad is using that word alot these days – ‘descent.'” After 40 years of devoting himself to practicing law with a brief detour managing health care practices, the Dad my kids have seen suiting up for work day in and day out their entire lives is soon retiring (“descending”) and planning on finding ways to occupy himself from home. My hunch is, to everyone’s delight, we will all see much more of the guy who captures beautiful photos in the near future.

Suddenly, it hit me what season this is and many of the thoughts and feelings that have been roiling in my head and heart for months began to take shape. Each in our own way, my husband and I have spent the last 2 decades noticing things and anticipating a time when life slowed down long enough to make sense of what we’ve noticed. With retirement a mere several weeks on the horizon for Mike, that day is at last here. And because honoring my deepest desire to find time and space to write has always been a part of his plan (though I did not take notice of it until recently), I, too, have embarked on a sweet season of noticing. This time I hope to capture a little of what I notice before it slips back into oblivion.

Our story began with noticing, one early Fall morning in 1994, when each of us captured a poem written in chalk along the path of a lovely park we visited together. We mailed the poem to one another on the same day! Then life began and we got busy, absorbed in the work of making a living and a life for our children. I often felt frustrated at my limited ability to capture the things I noticed while raising our kids. I hope, in this season of noticing I feel beginning, I am able to recall the most poignant scenes and moments from their childhood.

Instead of writing while I was raising the children, I think I wound up just trying to live creatively and with an open heart. Oddly enough, this morning I came upon the perfect description:

The process of going deep within to access and then express the truth we find is the greatest of creative endeavors, whether it is formally recognized as art or not. Sharon Salzberg

My greatest hope is that my husband and I have raised 2 people who are unafraid to make time in their daily lives to notice and experience the fullness, richness and complexity embodied in all of the paths life’s journey will take them. Early in my High School education, I experienced a summer program at St. Louis University entitled, “The Academy of the Humanities.” I loved it. It was during this course that the instructor, Art Carle, introduced us to Socrates and his timeless wisdom, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” As I enter this season of noticing, with space to finally pour onto the page the memories that have made my life worth living, one thought keeps bubbling up to the surface: noticing is the purest form of loving.

Making space in my life for noticing not only invites creativity and playfulness, it sometimes inevitably will yield sadness. Author Susan Cain writes, “the mother of sadness is compassion.” To give someone the gift of being seen is to honor another’s humanity. Susan Cain argues in her book, “Bittersweet,” that the willingness to see sadness and be with another in this state leads to compassion, which can connect us all. Indeed, as my husband and I approach this season of noticing together, our thousands of shared memories raising 2 amazing children together can be very bittersweet. It hurts to think very long about that precious time being over and to notice my adult children entering their busiest seasons of life, just as their Dad and I are beginning to slow down and notice more. Like my own parents before me, my husband and I have become the “memory holders” for our children of their early lives. If we are blessed with grandchildren, I imagine we will enjoy sharing with them many colorful stories about their Mom and Dad growing up and these stories will serve as family glue, keeping us connected over time.

I am never more aware of time than when I visit my 90-year-old mother. This is my favorite photo of my parents from 24 summers ago. I was visiting home with my 4-month-old baby girl, and we all attended a wedding together. It was a very happy occasion, forever embedded in my memory bank. As the years go by, this moment increasingly feels like just a tiny “blip” on an expanding canvas of things to notice about life. But I won’t let that happen. When I look at this photo today, just shy of the ages my parents are in it, I am thankful for the life they gave me and the precious gift of this season of noticing. I recently visited my Mom who doesn’t remember or notice very much any longer. I carry sadness in my heart that never subsides, whether I see her in person or not. I was certain this last visit really had not made an impression on her, she seemed so out of it. And, by this stage of her life, those visits are more about me than her, if I am being honest. My sister told me something the day after I last saw Mom, however, that affirmed for me my Mom will always be the first holder of my heart and official “noticer” in my life. Mom told my sister after our visit, “I like Joan’s big smile.” That enormous and beautiful expression from my Mom is more than enough to sustain me for this new journey forward, into the noticing season.

When a Single Rainbow Will Do (but you get a Double)

I am a big “marker of events” – when I recognize they are happening, that is. I say this because it is pretty easy to fail to notice something significant at first. We have to make a commitment to “notice” the important people and things in our lives. Otherwise, it’s just too easy to remain mired in the ordinary details of day to day life, reminding oneself “I will celebrate that victory later.” Sobriety has given me a sense of urgency to recognize who and what matters the most in this moment. It’s a beautiful gift I try to cultivate daily.

Yesterday was not an ordinary day for my husband. Yesterday, he said out loud the words he has quietly prepared for the past 45 years. “I’m planning to retire soon,” he told his colleagues. For this man – once completely blindsided by betrayal and financial disaster – to calmly walk in a decade later and announce his forthcoming retirement – is noteworthy and significant, indeed.

If you only recently met my family, it would be easy to believe we have always been lucky and lived well. Both are true, of course, relative to the rest of the world. Our well-being has not come without a cost, and a hefty one to my husband and our marriage. My husband is a very careful and thoughtful man – he likes to weigh every possible alternative for several months while thinking about any big change or financial decision. Planning and preparing are his superpowers. 17 years ago, several unforeseen circumstances began aligning to set in motion a decade of financial and personal turmoil no planning or preparing could have prevented. That’s why yesterday is one of the sweetest, happiest days we have ever known. We’re happy our misfortune also came with many morsels of wisdom to share with others.

When the recession of 2008 began, our family was nestled into a life we intentionally chose, “untethered” by the headaches of a big city law firm. We were living on 34 acres an hour outside of Wichita, Kansas. We thought we were comfortably situated for the rest of our children’s upbringing (they both had middle and high school in the immediate future). Mike left his big law firm practice and started managing his friend’s medical practice, less than a mile away from our home. Our lives were perfect. Until everything began to unravel.

One by one, each facet of our carefully and intentionally chosen life began to crumble. It felt like Mercury was in Retrograde for 10 years! We promised ourselves to stick together, no matter how hard things got (and they got really, really hard). We also promised to share our story to help others one day. People who know our story marvel over the fact we were able to stay married and raise two exceptional human beings. Honestly, ignorance and the ability to block out most of the terrifying details and just live one day at a time is what saved us. Mike is also a really smart man with a tireless work ethic. That saved us, also! I’m just going to highlight a few of the pressures squeezing the joy out of our lives that we survived. If you are experiencing 1 or more of these, my heart goes out to you. Please remember my family is living proof that things can change and you will ultimately be able to achieve your goals.

Business partnership/friendship When the thing you uprooted your family and moved 200 miles for stops going well and becomes something you did not expect. I watched my husband navigate a deeply painful and uncertain period with dignity and in virtual silence (so contrary to my personal style!). The difficult lessons changed enormously the way we saw the world and trusted in relationships but made yesterday’s retirement announcement much sweeter. Mike would say he got there quietly, working diligently and intentionally. If I’m being truthful, I would say our family got through this with a lot of embracing the unknown. I often asked God for an open heart and mind to allow the lessons and gifts from the pain to reveal themselves. And they did.

Homeowners Association Litigation When the majority of your time in a place is tarnished by ugly feelings between neighbors, it can become hard to live in the moment and enjoy something beautiful while you have it. And we did have something magical, if only for awhile. We wanted to give our children a carefree childhood with lots of land to have adventures on. Our neighbors believed some of that land should belong to them. So they made life uncomfortable for many years. We tried to ignore them, which mostly worked. But there were many times the ugliness bubbled over and I thought our whole lives would forever be consumed by ridiculous fighting. Since that chapter is long closed, I have the happy moments as memories to keep me warm and their petty grievances have faded. That’s a true gift of time. We both agree every time the subject comes up and we ask ourselves, “Would we do it all over again?”. Yes, we both would 100% do it all over. In spite of the horrible neighbors (a story that has been hinted at in the past and I will surely write about again in the future).

Side Business Disaster It wasn’t a great idea to purchase a gas station and hire a virtual stranger to manage it. We had more than enough on our plate raising our children, fighting the neighbors and dealing with a business partnership that was riddled with drama. For some reason, our fate was to deal with this additional stress at a time when we were already beyond our ability to handle the other stressors.

Now, 13 years after all the aforementioned challenges and setbacks, we can both truly say it has been a wondrous journey, filled with unexpected joys, blessings and friendships. We’re proud we didn’t let the myriad little things turn us away from each other or our family. It feels fantastic to have been able to build a life we enjoy from the pieces we picked up that had once been shattered. The double rainbow pictured was only visible for about 5 minutes on a recent trip to the beach. We might have easily missed it, but we did not. And that perfectly encapsulates how I feel about this moment in life: I would have been happy with just one, but upon closer examination, I noticed I was given two! What a blessing it is to notice, isn’t it?

Looking forward