Recently, one of my friends confessed to me that she was
having trouble adjusting to her husband’s retirement.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “I really love the man. But
being with him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is…well, driving me crazy!”
I had to chuckle, mainly because her words made me think
back to 2006, when my husband first retired.
That day, my life, as I’d known it, changed
dramatically.
Back in the good old days, when my husband still worked, I’d
roll out of bed around 11 a.m., grab a bowl of cereal and watch deep,
meaningful TV shows like soap operas or “The Price is Right.”
But my husband’s retirement changed all of that.
Instead of watching Erica Kane marrying her 23rd
husband on “All my Children,” I had to suffer through such gems as “The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre Part II” and at least six Steven Seagal movies where everyone
was beaten up, karate-chopped or shot within the first 10 minutes, and 112 cars
ended up crashing into everything from fire hydrants to hot-dog stands.
When my husband wasn’t watching TV, he was napping. In the
first two days of his retirement, he took 11 naps. I’d never had to be quiet for so long in my life. I didn’t dare vacuum because it would wake
him. I didn’t dare play with the dogs
because it would wake him. I even got
stomach pains while stifling belches because I was afraid they might wake him.
It was torture. Every hour or so, I had
to dash out back into the woods and make noise, just to get it out of my
system.
When my husband still was working, he went to bed at 11
o’clock sharp every night. I, being a
night owl, would then have my private time to write on my novel, answer my
email, write in my journal or enjoy my favorite late-night TV.
But because my husband was taking so many naps during the
day, he was wide awake at 11 o’clock.
So he would sit up with me…and talk.
And then he would talk some more.
And when he wasn’t talking, he was singing…or humming…or shaking his
prescription bottles (full of pills) as if they were maracas…to accompany
himself while he was singing or humming.
Needless to say, the only creative thing I managed to write
when he sat up with me every night was, “Note to self: Hide prescription bottles!”
It was nice when, before my husband retired, he was
interested in hobbies. When we first
were married, he collected coins. He
would sit for hours, a magnifying glass in hand, checking the dates and mint
marks on coins and then listing their conditions. All I had to do was hand him a coffee can full of loose change
and tell him I thought I’d seen an Indian-head penny in there, and he’d be
quiet for hours.
Then he decided he wanted to build furniture, so he set up a
woodworking shop out back in the shed.
Except for the distant noise of saws buzzing and occasional hammering
(and occasional cursing when he accidentally hammered a body part), I never
knew he was around.
Unfortunately, he built a coffee table with one leg shorter
than the others and kept hacking off the legs to make them even…until he ended
up with a lap tray. That’s when his interest in building furniture abruptly
ended.
He then developed an interest in model trains. Even though
we had no place to set them up, he bought enough trains, buildings, fake trees
and rocks, vehicles and accessories to fill a storage unit the size of an
airplane hangar. He never even took them out of their boxes.
“Now that you’re retired,” I said to him after he’d been
retired for about a month, “you finally can make all of those models for your
train layouts. In fact, I think the
first one you should tackle is that roller-coaster kit I bought for you.”
The reason why I suggested that particular kit was because it
contained about 18 million pieces of wood-like plastic that had to be
assembled. The end result was supposed to be an actual working roller coaster
that looked similar to the old coaster at Canobie Lake Park. As far as I could
figure, it would take him about three years to finish it.
His heavy sigh told me he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about
my suggestion. “Where am I supposed to build it?” he asked. “The only space I
have is on the kitchen table, and where will we eat if I have a half-built
roller coaster sitting on it? I can
just see it all now. I’ll ask you pass
the ketchup and you’ll accidentally hit the coaster and turn it into a pile of
kindling.”
“Then pick something smaller,” I said. “How about that
little trailer-park kit?”
Again, he sighed. “What I really need is a finished basement
or a hobby room where I can make the stuff and leave it there without worrying
about it being disturbed. No, I’m not
going to touch any of my train kits till I have a good place to work on them.”
So three years later, when we built our current house, I
made sure there was a big hobby room for him, where he not only could build the
models for his trains, but also could set them up in a complete train layout.
When we finally moved in, however, I noticed he barely paid
attention to his new, much-anticipated hobby room.
“Aren’t you going to go use your room?” I asked him one
night, as he sat whistling “It’s a Small World” of Disney fame, for the 75th
time, while I was trying to compose an email to a book editor.
“Nah,” he said. “I’m really not interested in trains any more.
I think I’ll sell all of them on eBay, and maybe take up playing the trumpet
again. I used to play one when I was a kid, you know.”
Believe me, I really can empathize with my friend.
But I also want to tell her that even though she may not
believe it now, no matter how crazy her husband currently is driving her, after
he’s gone, she’ll really miss him and all of those little things he did that
annoyed her.
And I’m speaking from experience.
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| Historical Romance Trilogy set in 1600s New England. Download the first book for free! Click here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/384106 |
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