Retirement Day

My retirement plan currently consists of a small rowboat with no oars, pushed into the center of a large lake by my relations with me in it - grumpy-faced with arms crossed - to great fanfare.

In my imagination there is a marching band, too, though likely it will be someone younger cousin or nephew/niece poorly playing a lone trombone. The air is warm, but quickly turning to a crisp autumn chill as golfers on a nearby green take in their last putts before the weather turns. Overhead, gray clouds gather, prematurely ushering in nightfall. It's good weather for this.

That day I will awaken late, at a quarter past nine, and putter around the house briefly considering, then thinking the better of brewing some coffee. I've got it all planned. I am roughly seventy years old, my severe resolve to go through with this retirement unsoftened by the wisdom of anything older. I've run my course. Looking over the news that morning merely confirms my decision. The invitations have been sent. It's time.

There will be no health care, no Social Security, no reaping the reward of a working life - these will and do exist, but not for me - you shoot a horse that can no longer work. Broken but unbowed I will be escorted to the dock, sitting comfortably in the back of a sedan driven by a younger friend and accompanied by my partner (or wife if we bothered to get married) riding in the passenger seat. They will talk to each other, telling stories about me, believing that I can't hear a word of what they are saying. But due to that strange acoustic quality in the back seats of automobiles, I can hear all of it in stunning clarity, yet they can't make out a word of mine.

I allow myself the luxury of a frown.

As we arrive, the crowds have gathered. I am dressed warmly in a Carhartt jacket and pants, with New Balance sneakers and some sort of a hat I can pull down over the tops of my ears. Other than a small, half-eaten package of menthol cough drops, I am to be given no provisions. As I dismount the car, decades of well-wishers, friends, lovers, co-workers and adversaries alike all line my route to the small dock. In lieu of rose petals, they pelt me with dandelion heads. The trombonist plays a vague rendition of Stars and Stripes Forever.

The lake is nothing terribly daunting, but not anything one might go wading across. Small retirement communities and individual summer homes of the well-to-do dominate the coastline. This could be a glacial lake, formed eons ago at the end of the Younger Dryas period some 12,000 years prior, or this could be an enormous man-made drainage pond. Looking out across it, I haven't decided. This is where I grew up, where I belong, among the woods and the hills and the boulders being knocked over and developed into townhouses and quaint shopping centers. I step down into the boat by sitting on the edge of the dock, with my feet on its floor, and easing myself in onto the aft thwart.

The boat is a small wooden rowboat of classic construction, a sturdy Whitehall-style craft with good overall beam and moderate freeboard. The oak crosspieces are polished smooth but are otherwise unadorned or upholstered for seating, while the bronze oarlocks are purely ornamental at this stage.

I examine the craft with a cruel, seafaring eye and signal my approval.

The trombone dies off. Everyone gathers around. Family members cradle the various cats I've had over the years, holding their arms up and waving their paws at me. The cats and I find this to be a gesture of rather shallow inevitability. It occurs to me that people expect me to say something. But I don't say anything.

This is the longest part of the process: drifting slowly away from the dock toward the center of the lake. It has begun to drizzle. Most of my entourage has already turned to go, their voices now nothing more than happy whispers to each other as they walk back to their cars. A few linger, a surprising few - this brief revelation passes quickly.

I am left with myself. I am sitting in a rowboat with no oars, cast out into the center of a very large lake with no provisions and no hope of return. I have no amusements, no distractions, no books I plan on reading or projects I am obliged to complete. No burdens.

I look at the surface of the water over the side of the boat. The clear liquid trembles and ripples with the wind and the water droplets falling down upon it and into it, replenishing it. The beauty and simplicity there, just witnessing the elements play upon one another, wind and water, and around me the whole of the earth. I wait like this, each second staring in wonder at this small square foot of lake before me.

I wait, and time passes.