Retirement isn’t for everyone

Road trip, moving me from Iowa to California - we just liked to be together.

I read an article in the NYT about recent retirees and how retirement has caused stress in their marriages. Much seemed to be about how one partner now had more time and was bothering the other partner who continued to work, or realizing how much they didn’t agree on basics like money, or the surfacing of buried regrets and resentments from earlier years. It sounded to me like chickens coming home to roost after years of a not-very-good marriage kept afloat by living on two separate tracks. (Chickens, float, tracks - I am the queen of mixed metaphors.)

And I know about that kind of marriage - I spent 15 years in one. But I had a good marriage with Randy - he was truly my best friend, the one I wanted to do things with. The typical bumps we encountered over the years had smoothed out and we were ever happier as the years went on.

And I’m sorry for those people, but really, what I wouldn’t give to be in their shoes.