Almost There

After years of retirement planning, the day has indeed arrived—almost. I’ve recently become a part-timer, working just three days each week in the outpatient physical therapy clinic, plus one Saturday per month at the acute-care hospital. Though I may be just semi-retired, the load already feels a whole lot lighter.

How so? For starters, I’m focusing less on gaining more from my job. Oh, I’m still keen to treat patients. That’s what drew me to physical therapy in the first place. But I’m stepping back from the sundry other jobs that have attached themselves to me. Instead, I’ll nudge the younger folks toward new responsibilities as I concentrate on giving my best to a shorter schedule.

How short? I’ve trimmed my three workdays to eight hours each, with afternoons free for other pursuits. My brief week of short days feels like a perpetual weekend, with its mix of work and play.

There are trade-offs, of course. Shorter hours leave me with less earned income. In exchange, I get more disposable time. How to spend it? 

Home provides plenty of projects. My list is long, from a bedroom and bath renovation inside to demolishing and resurrecting storage buildings outside. Though I enjoy both the planning and the labor, I’ll probably employ a hybrid of do-it-yourself and hired help. Other tasks–like breaking up the concrete footing and floor of the old chicken house I tore down two years ago–I’ll have to tackle myself. There is little room for equipment, and manual laborers are scarce.

My garden beckons as well, especially the vegetables. From the peas I plant in January to the tomatoes of summer, I have vegetables in the garden and on the table every month of the year. That’s not a boast, just the product of my passion for nurturing plants to grow and yield fruit, and my family’s appetite for their taste. 

My wife reminds me, however, that work shouldn’t consume all our retirement time. She’s ready for some leisure, especially travel. Alas, there’s a hitch to her plans. Our mothers are closing in on the century mark. Each continues to live in her home, which we fully endorse, but require help from us. As a result, our wandering is tethered by familial responsibility.

Between family pulling one hand and the lure of play the other, where’s the balance as my wife and I seek to find fun together? We’ve found part of the answer close to home.

For the last couple of decades, my wife and I have sacrificed our shared time to donate to busy, separate schedules. We are ready to reclaim that time, beginning with sunrise walks on my days off work. The exercise is moderate, but the conversation supplies substantial emotional nourishment. I’m reminded of the “windshield time” of a long drive together. 

For real food, we’re venturing farther afield. We both love a good barbeque joint, but our standard meal is heavy on lighter fare. Since quality restaurants are scarce in small-town Georgia, especially those that serve the kind of fresh ingredients we prefer, we’re prepared to drive. After polling friends, we compiled a list of restaurants to check out in the surrounding communities. We’ve heard of married couples scheduling “date nights” to get a break from home life, but we have never indulged–until now.

If our local plans sound unambitious, then so will our travel itinerary. Yes, we’re now just partly-employed, with a lot more free time to devote to one of my wife’s loves. But as I indicated above, we feel bound to stay near home. We figure a five to six hour drive is the limit of our leash. Rather than sit home and sulk, we’re determined to ferret-out enough fun within this perimeter to keep us busy until our circumstances change.

Our first area of focus is the locale where our daughter attends college. Her school sits atop a mountain overlooking the small city where my wife found her first physical therapy job. We’ve moved a few hours away, but make annual return trips. We’ve sampled nearly every attraction on offer there, but our current plan puts us on the hunt for different game. 

Our new strategy calls for frequent, short trips to create an extended, intermittent vacation. Our main base is a cozy Airbnb with enough amenities to feel like a second home. It lies in a quiet neighborhood, 15 walking minutes from an ice cream shop and a few restaurants, and a short drive from dozens of others. 

But its best feature is proximity to miles of hiking trails. A five-minute stroll puts us on a trail up the mountain. From there, we can choose to loop back to our start in an hour or two, or make a day of it. We can even wander over to the college campus for a chat with our daughter. 

For my daughter’s Easter break from classes, we traveled to our new spot to keep her on site to prepare for final exams. We did most of the hiking while she did all of the studying, but one morning the three of us drove across town for a few hours’ scrambling over boulders beside a cascading stream. I won’t say the walk was on par with the wilder trails we’ve trod, but on the trip back to our lodging we stopped to dig into a decent Mediterranean lunch. This style of hiking has its appeal.

Our new lifestyle may be termed “retirement-lite” by folks who have permanently replaced their work schedules with weekday tee times and travel plans, but it fits us well. It affords me a measure of the work that soothes my psyche, while providing my wife with temporary relief from her travel itch. And it gives us both more of the element that has been missing from our lives for too long–time with each other.