Going on a Play Date!

Retirement!  Thirty-one days in.  My first month is completed.  My first pension check, deposited A  letter from the Superintendent thanking me for my years of service, received.  Then a newsletter comes in the mail.  This prompts me to think about my news which I will share with you. 

I went home to England to visit my family, two days after the last day of school.  I returned at the beginning of July with a case of Covid.  Ugg.  So that’s the first week accounted for.

The rest of July passes in a hazy daze.  It feels very uncomfortable doing this “nothing” lark.  It’s like trying to squeeze your foot into a too small shoe; possible but certainly not something you’d walk in!  Clearly I need some structure to my days, before I completely forget what day it is - retirement does feel like one long weekend.

I nap a lot.  Like, two hours after I get up, I’m back for a solid hour’s nap followed by lunch, a walk and a two hour power nap complete with drool.  I feel a bone-deep weariness seeping out of my pores.  I literally cannot keep my eyes open.  Am I sleeping my life away?   My dad, an experienced retiree and napper, assures me that I have not entered the Twilight Zone of Sloth, my body is telling me to rest and recover from years of toil.  “You’re being too tough on yourself, take a breather and give yourself time to recover.”    

Then there’s The Drift. The aimless “drifting” haphazardly through the day.  “You need a routine,” my brain screams at me.  So I attempt to put some structure into my day.  

My beginning of the year teaching tricks to organize a group of 24 kids into something resembling keen and obedient scholars comes to my rescue: “The Schedule Indoctoration”.  Here’s how it works.   You start at the beginning of the first day, then each day, each week, dig deeper into the day to organize it to your specifications.  Somewhere around January, it will all be in place and the children will comply with anything I ask of them, in most cases.  I’m thinking that just like the kids, I need to get out my inner drill sergeant and boot-camp my way back into a routine.  Like the kids, I will resist.  It will take time but time is what I’ve got.

This idea of Time has become a fascinating idea to ponder.  My concept of time is linear and has been shaped by the needs of work, family and balancing it all.  Trying to fit in all the to-dos has had me on the fast track for decades. I like to play little multitask games to kick things up a notch.  How many tasks can one human do all at the same time?  Let’s find out.  Actually, the answer is zero, because nothing gets finished and you develop a severe case of ADHD along with memory loss.  Multitasking is not for me.

And there’s the monotony of the daily grind - the blood-born pathogen training, the reading lessons for groups tomorrow, dinner to sort out, the dishes, a load of laundry so we have clean underwear for tomorrow, walking the dog thereby getting some exercise and fresh air before falling into bed into a dreamless sleep.  Rinse and repeat every day after day.  You can understand that inactivity is making me feel a little lost.  I do not know how to sit quietly with my own thoughts and do “nothing.”

The problem is, I don’t know how to be playful.  I don’t have the muscle memory for such things.   Play is serious.  Play is absolute.  Play is something for kids.  I don’t have time to play.  Friends offering advice about retirement tell me, “You get to do all the things you want to do.  You get to play.”  Play is the game that retirement offers in abundance. I just don’t know how to do it.

“Play is complete absorption in something that doesn’t matter to the external world but which matters completely to you,” says Katherine May in her book, Enchantment.  (p.137).  She goes on to describe what happens when adults lose their sense of play.  It will, “die if you don't nurture it….when you turn away from play.  The most beautiful reaches of your attention degrade within you, leaving behind a residue of bitterness and frustration.  In playfulness your adult self is not nurtured, but strangled.  P 43

Ironically, in the classroom I fought for play time for my kids, for a spot in the day when they can do absolutely anything they want to or nothing at all.  I would scrape out 35 minutes at the end of the day, when their brain cells were fried, their bodies wiggling and their attention span non-existent.   It’s play time!  

Sometimes I felt guilty that I wasn’t spending that time with their bums in seats but as I watched them at play I realized that this was the only time in the day when they got to be children in a safe place where playtime is important - a release from the schedule, from the pencil and paper and for all those tasks they did just to please me.  And it was the only time that I really saw what they were capable of.  Where their strengths lay.  Because they were doing what they were interested in and doing it with intention.

I hope the kids never lose their playfulness and I hope that I can find mine again.  This could work out to be a second childhood in which I can create and redefine and discover, knowing that I am doing important work and do not wish to be disturbed.  Go to bed late, sleep in, tap away on the computer, play in the dirt with the dog as companion, read the pile of books that I’ve intended to read, take mum and dad out for an ice cream, and make those medical appointments that I have put off because I hate doing subplans.  I’ve got the time.  I don’t really need a to-do list and I don’t need a schedule beyond eating and sleeping.  I’m allowed to play.  

Life as a retiree is looking pretty good.