RETIREMENT BLUES...

 I could hardly wait to retire. 

I imagined having big chunks of time to do some of the "want to" kinds of projects I have either had to put off for YEARS or dabble in here and there with no signifigant progress.   And read....now there would be time to read.  But "retired life" didn't turn out that way at all.

First, I was retiring during the first six months of the COVID pandemic.  Not a lot of freedom to go here and there to have a reunion witih my friends from B.R.O.A.D.S.--my bookclub for almost 28 years--get reacquainted with my nieces, visit my own children, etc.  Limitations all over the place.

Second, I spent the school year attached to an early morning assignment to teach a religious education class to local high school students at 6 am.  Rise time was 4:15 a.m. to do exercises, get ready, and walk to the chapel for class each morning.  There was an enormous amount of pressure, preparation, and presentation to contend with.  Some of that was conducted as a ZOOM connection from home for about three months when the schools didn't even have classes in a building.

Third, I actually conducted a garage sale under the auspices of the whole neighborhood event.  Only I didn't get the help I requested to assist me in hauling EVERYTHING out of the basement to the garage.  Louis did clean the garage for me (something I had to do by myself the last time I got so brave to have a garage sale) but the rest I had to do on my own.  Hauling, lugging, dragging furniture and boxes up from the basement to set up in some sort of display fashion.  But I petered out.  Not everything I wanted to get rid of even made it to the garage.  I was exhausted!  And then without looking at any of the left overs a second time (good for you, Georgia!) I packed up the car and went straight to the thrift sore.  

Fourth, after planting the outside pots with seeds for the last few years, I decided to go back to bedding plants. They are so much prettier.  But, also more work and have to depend on the right kind of weather to get planted which at first was so wet I couldn't do anything.  Then it turned into a furnace overnight and it was too hot (for me) to spend a lot of time outside.  And...lest I forget the hail storm which decimated not only lots of newly planted flats of blossoms, but also several that were waiting to be planted which I had "safely" put next to the garage on the north side for shelter.  That is precisely the direction the storm came from and pelted those tender shoots until there was no salvaging them.  Plus, it took quite a while for the cushions on the outdoor furniture to dry out after the deluge of water during that monsoon we had.  When I finally got the patio put together, it has been too hot to even go out there and sit.  

Have to beat myself to a pulp to even do the very most BASIC housekeeping tasks.  Forget the big house cleaning jobs.  Not going to touch those AT ALL!

Oh, there's more.  I don't want to go anywhere.  I don't want to get into the car and drive even to the grocery store.  I have no one to talk to but myself for several hours of the day.  Quite a change from speaking with sometimes hundreds of people a day at my job.  

And the post-retirement list?  Not only am I not interested in jumping into a project here and there, I truly have NO desire to do so.  The picture box?  Who cares?  The recipe files?  Why bother.  The 2nd volume of  Visiting Teaching letters I wrote in the last ten years after the first compilation?  Who would be interested in reading them anyway?  The boxes and boxes down the basement that I pledged I would go through one carton at a time to sort, file, or trash?  Don't have the energy to even begin.

I think I have watched more TV during the last year than I have in my ENTIRE life.  It has made me lethargic.  As I always told my kids, "Lethary begets lethargy.  If you watch too much T.V., then you don't have the ambition to even get up and do something . Let alone get out of the chair and go to bed."  That turned out to be ME!  All the while I am sitting there watching some program, I am thinking what a waste of time.  I could have been ....well, productive.

I wander from room to room, not really doing anything at all.  I did start writing "to do" lists again to see if THAT would jump-start me.  Nada!  Some of those lists still have unchecked items on them.

Instead I go to bed at night practically dreading that I have to get up in the morning and start all over again....and know that I am not going to get anything accomplished.

What happened?  Not sure.  Did find out I have some kind of weary valve on my heart.  Took a stress test and a lung test, too. The results of which were both NORMAL. Then WHY do I feel so enervated? 

Along about the first of June I noticed that my shoulders and upper arms weren't functioning properly.  No range of motion like I have always been used to.  Couldn't even hook my bra strap or tuck in a shirt without excruciating pain.  There would have been no way I could have swung my suitcase up into  an overhead bin multiple times a day.  But....I thought  eventually that condition would ease.  Didn't. Then after waiting three weeks for an appointment with my PCP, found out that I have "frozen shoulder".  At least it's not inflammatory arthritis or something worse.  Anyway, that's the verdict for now until I see the specialist.

So...RETIREMENT?  Not at all what I expected.  It's lonely some days.  And I do wonder if I have stepped over the line into "OLD age".  That'd be just MY luck after killing myself off for years staying active waiting for a rest!  Talk about retirement blues. I've got them!

But just to be fair...let's blame it on COVID for wrecking my life!  Maybe when that spectre gets better,  I'll get better.  HAHAHA!

                                                 

PATRIOTISM

 

                                                                 

I always thought I was a patriotic person. 

I loved to see the American flag flying on flagpoles all over our small town.  I had on display in my bedroom a miniature silk flag which had been a present from the crew when my family went on a cruise ship to Hawaii in 1951.  I could recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  I could sing “The Star Spangled Banner”, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, and “America the Beautiful”.   I loved to hear stories about the early colonists and their fight in the Revolutionary War to become a free nation.  I was particularly keen on the details about Francis Scott Key penning the words to “The Star Spangled Banner” after he saw the American flag still waving over Fort McHenry following an attack by the British one night during the War of 1812.  I was fascinated with the beautiful bursts of fireworks to celebrate July 4^th every year.  I had been to some historic places where American history was recounted and exhibited.  I was proud to be an American!

But…I had no idea what patriotism was until our little family moved to Virginia in 1979.  There we lived in the cradle of some of America’s most important history.  Every weekend, and usually one evening during the week, we would put the kids into the car and go to one of those famous historical sites.  One weekend about the middle of November we went to the Yorktown Victory center which had been built for the Nation’s Bicentennial in 1976.  In 1979 it was still an interactive exhibit with different displays recounting the varied contributions of countless men and women of many nationalities and races to America’s six-year struggle for freedom.

At the Victory Center we saw and heard the printer at the Tidewater Gazette as he discussed the vivid reports of the explosive situation in Boston.  Just a few steps away, a changing diorama recreated the tempestuous events of Boston in 1773 , the year of the “Tea Party”.

Then we entered an authentically reproduced copy of Washington’s campaign tent where the military events of the revolution unfolded before us in another life-sized diorama.  Following that, there were six other displays in chronological order as we walked down Liberty Street including a 12-foot tall reproduction of the Declaration of Independence.

The concluding display was a series of glass cases with historic artifacts and treasured objects on loan from private and state collections in America and other countries.  When the interactive button at each was pushed, there was a recording of what significance those objects had which led to the American victory on the nearby battlefield of Yorktown.

The very last glass case displayed simple objects like tin cups, buttons, utensils, and other personal items found on the battlefields themselves.  When I pushed the button to hear the background for this display, I was instantly brought to tears as a narrator read excerpts from letters by the soldiers themselves written home to families—mothers, and other loved ones—about  the deprivations of this war and what they encountered in battle.  There were words of pride and determination to prevail, but there were also yearnings for home and fear of the unknown.

Here, perhaps for the first time in my own personal life, the realities of hardship and sacrifice of the Revolutionary war were tangible things.  Freedom had not been free.  It had been hard won by young soldiers, and by everyone else who believed in the principles of freedom and liberty.

Perhaps my feelings that day were a bit more tender than normal because just five days before, a picture of two Iranians carrying garbage out of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the hostage crisis in that country flashed across TV screens all over the world.  And the garbage receptacle they were using?  It was the American flag!  I remember feeling assaulted personally and as a nation that day. 

So, when I saw re-creations at the Victory Center of the prices paid for that freedom and liberty in the United States, I was humbled and very grateful for that gift!  I later wrote in the family journal that our visit to Yorktown would remain one of the most moving experiences of my life.  It remains so to this day….

That day in November 1979, I learned that patriotism is a blend of knowledge, devotion, and loyalty.  Patriotism is vital to keeping the free FREE.  One writer said, “Patriotism brings citizens together in a common cause and builds stronger, more cohesive communities that unite a nation.”

In April 2021 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, President Dallin H. Oaks taught, “God has given His children moral agency—the power to decide and to act. The most desirable condition for the exercise of that agency is maximum freedom for men and women to act according to their individual choices.”

Take away agency and there is no freedom, no liberty.  And most definitely, they are NOT free.  These virtues need to be maintained with vigilance and accountability.

The survival and success of freedom and liberty are up to us.  I invite you—and me, too—to cultivate our personal patriotism in order to protect and defend the United States and to teach our children of the responsibility we each have to do that, as well.