My mom retired earlier this year, and last week, they hosted a retirement party for her.

The party was attended by a bevy of people from my mom’s past: current coworkers, former bosses, former teammates working in different parts of the city, and even a bunch of people who had retired but came back for this celebration. Four of them spoke at the event, and spoke very highly of my mom. She was lauded and appreciated and applauded by everyone there. It was beautiful. (I was lucky enough to attend virtually — they set up a virtual link just for me — and it made me smile to see my mom light up with surprise when she saw me on the screen.)

So far, my mother has embraced retirement: she has dived deep into community work, has spent more time with her sisters and brother, has embarked on fun travels (she’s actually in Malta now as I type this), and has spent more time with my dad, who retired a couple of years ago. I can tell she still misses work, but she’s starting to get used to not being beholden to the office, and is starting to relish in having large amounts of time to herself.

I’ve started to think a lot about retirement as I’ve started to get older. I still have at least twenty years left in my career, but the spectre of retirement is now a lot more real than it ever was.

I worry, of course. I worry that we will have enough money to last us through our older age — I’ve been reading many horror stories about elder adults having to go back to work to sustain themselves in their later years — and I worry that I will feel rudderless when I no longer have work to worry about: I don’t really have many hobbies other than reading and writing, so I’m not sure how I will pass the time.

I know we’ll be okay, and that most of these worries are unfounded, but thinking about aging does make you reflect on how you want to live your last segment of your life: about how you will engage in the world, about what legacy you will leave behind, and about how you will be remembered.

My mom is embarking on this new journey with aplomb: she is excited for what is to come and taking advantage of what this new reality allows her. If her retirement party is any indication, she has made an impact on many people and continues to make an impact in all that she does now and will do from now on. Above all, she continues to be an excellent mother and amazing grandmother.

I hope to age gracefully like my mom, and to enter my retirement knowing that I have had a positive impact on others, and that there are still many adventures along the way. I’ve always looked to my mother for guidance, and in this case, I hope to live (and retire) through her example as well.

A poem

Three Songs at the End of Summer
Jane Kenyon

A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,
and like midwives and undertakers
possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned
to water-ski. They have, or they haven't.
Sounds of the instructor's megaphone
suffuse the hazy air. "Relax! Relax!"

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.

*

The cicada's dry monotony breaks
over me. The days are bright
and free, bright and free.

Then why did I cry today
for an hour, with my whole
body, the way babies cry?

*

A white, indifferent morning sky,
and a crow, hectoring from its nest
high in the hemlock, a nest as big
as a laundry basket....

In my childhood
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.

The damp dirt road gave off
this same complex organic scent.

I had the new books--words, numbers,
and operations with numbers I did not
comprehend--and crayons, unspoiled
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.

Spruce, inadequate, and alien
I stood at the side of the road.
It was the only life I had.

Some links

With increased financial precarity in later years, and pensions not being as stable as they once were, the question is worth asking: is retirement dead?

There’s an ordinariness to my everyday life that I’ve learned to love: I don’t need to have big events, travel, or massive change to be content, but instead am happy with the mundane routine I’ve built for myself. Ayushi Thakkar captures it well:

there’s a peculiar ache that follows us in adulthood — a subtle suspicion that we are meant for more than what our lives currently look like. not in the grand, ambitious way of youth, but in the smaller, more private sense. the longing doesn’t shout; it hums under the surface. a subtle discontent that blooms while doing the dishes or refreshing your email or noticing that your coffee tastes exactly the same as it did yesterday. we don’t talk about it much, but we all feel it: the question of whether the days we are living — these slow, repetitive, practical days — are enough. whether we’re squandering our time by living so ordinarily. […]

that’s the real lesson: meaning doesn’t announce itself in grand gestures or dramatic moments. it settles in the steady rhythm of ordinary days, in the gentle insistence of showing up for yourself again and again, even when it feels small or invisible. it lives in the grace of patience, the courage to feel without rushing to fix, and the quiet celebration of just being—flawed, unfinished, and entirely human. when we stop chasing something “more,” when we allow the ordinary to be enough, we discover that our lives have always held the meaning we were looking for. it just took slowing down enough to see it.

We’re in the midst of a municipal election (less than a month until voting day), and I’ve been thinking about civics and who gets to participate in the decision-making of a city. I was interested in this piece about educating people — city councillors, city staff, citizens and residents — on how to run a city:

We ask residents to participate in municipal decisions without explaining where authority lies, what has already been decided or when their influence still matters. We ask councillors to govern complex institutions without preparing them to interrogate the systems they inherit. Meanwhile, public servants, working within specialized departments, are separated from the history and intent behind the rules they administer.

Municipal democracy, as we know it, depends on residents, councillors and staff understanding enough of the same system to question one another meaningfully. But, increasingly, they don’t.

Zoya started her piano classes this month and while I don’t expect her to take up piano as a calling, I never thought about the system of music education and how it is inherently flawed:

Parents say, “I don’t expect my child to become a concert pianist. I just want them to have music in their life.” Yet we educate them using a system whose implicit ideal is the concert pianist. […]

Our conventional system asks its graduates what recital pieces they have learned and what orchestra they qualified for. These are reasonable questions if the goal is to identify exceptional performers. But perhaps the more important questions are: can he open unfamiliar music and make sense of it? Can he sing in harmony, accompany a friend, improvise on a theme, and play a tune by ear? In short – is he equipped to creatively and socially make music without an adult telling him what to do? […]

The goal of music education should not be to push every child as far as possible toward individual virtuosity before they eventually stop. It should be to give them enough musical competence that – in their joy in music – they never want to. We want to produce not almost-professionals, but fully-realized amateurs, with a love for music and the skills to continue making it. When our children grow up, music should not be something they once studied but something they do, woven into the fabric of their everyday lives.

We’re strong fans of the public school system, so it was enlightening to read Hamilton Nolan’s polemic on why private schools are bad for society:

One reason that this straightforward truth is often marginalized is that our national dialogue over schooling tends to happen from the perspective of “What should you as a parent do for your child?” rather than from the perspective of “What is the best way to design an educational system in a democratic country?” There is a significant difference between these two questions. […]

If you allow the most wealthy and powerful segment of society to opt out of public services, those public services will get worse. The reason is simple: You have removed the incentive for the most influential people to use their influence to improve public services.

Reminds me of a previous post by Hamilton Nolan I’ve shared here before: everyone into the grinder:

One of the most direct ways to improve a flawed system is simply to end the ability of rich and powerful people to exclude themselves from it.

I would love to see Rosalía perform live. Anne Carson’s review of the Rosalía concert is sublime.

I learned a ton reading this article on how to choose good chocolate.

This review of the new book, Picky, has made me think a lot about picky eaters (and feeding children generally) and I’m probably going to get the book from the library.

Any Human Ever: over 100,000,000,000 people have ever lived — here you can map out the story of one of those people. Worth playing around with.

I still can’t fathom not saying “hello” when I answer the phone, but I’m old and crusty now and a stickler for habit.

What does the walk sign look like on your city streets? The walking person is a de facto standard, but how that person looks is different all around the world.

“Kids shape culture, and their drawings show what captures their attention.” KidTrends is a fun tool to explore what and how children draw over time.

I have a terrible habit of never leaving a book unfinished, even if I lose interest in it. It’s worth asking the question: do you actually have to finish that novel?

This article in Wired about a community of men sharing compromising photos of girls, and doxxing those girls, is absolutely frightening and makes me scared to raise a young girl in this culture. Horrific.

I will read anything by Ruby Tandoh and her exposé on how Saudi Arabia is trying to build a fine dining culture and court Michelin stars is fascinating.

The whole Ed Sheeran-Macklemore situation exposes just how ridiculous it is when celebrities “stay away from politics” because they are denying the fact that all acts are inherently political. Roxane Gay captures it all so well.

Weird is one of the most commonly used words in the English language, but its etymology and history is, well, weird.

“Spain proves that modernity has room for more than one kind of city, and that through vigorous public policy, people may choose which of them they want for themselves.” Spanish cities have largely avoided the suburban sprawl of North American municipalities; the reasons for this are many, but they show a path forward for new growing cities around the world.