Staying Home

Your imagination is fueled by advertisements.  There you are photographing a rhino from a Land Rover or surrounded by smiling children in an African village.  Moonlight turns the sea to silver while, dressed in romantic finery, you stand with your loved one on a cruise ship deck. Perhaps you reside in a golfing community where you’re never lonely so long as you can drive, chip, and putt.  This and so much more can be yours if you’ve invested wisely and the checks don’t bounce. 

But chances are you’ll spend a good part of your retirement in your home.  It’s a circumstance to be planned for.  I slept on a cot in a tent in the Sahara, and it was a memorable experience, but in the long run I wouldn’t trade it for the comfort of my own bed. If I’m sleepless at 4:00 a.m., I can’t step into the starry dazzle of the desert night, but since I’m retired, the alarm won’t jangle in two short hours, and there’s a real pillow hidden behind the sofa, should I decide later on I need a nap.  Long experience has taught me how to make a cup of coffee and a dry martini exactly the way I like them.  The celebrated comforts of home are the product of many adjustments over a long, long time. My advice is to travel on occasion, but otherwise stay put. 

If you absolutely must move to a retirement home, remember an interior decorator puts looks ahead of comfort every time.  Ten shower heads provide more chances for things to go wrong, and one will bathe you just fine. Family photos cheer you better than objets d’art.  Stand firm against kitchen countertops that require special care or an island you have to walk around to do your work.  A plain stove will suit your needs, and professional BTUs might burn the soup.  Use the money you save to buy furniture and appliances that will hold up as long as you will.  

Tradesmen you know and restaurants where you’re known calm you in times of stress.  Plymouth, where I live, isn’t a town where you recognize everyone you meet, but I seldom go out without greeting someone by name.  In my home the love of surrounding objects isn’t crass materialism; each has a story and relates to a period in my life. Sometimes I’m comforted just by looking at the woodwork. 

Pots in which we cooked great food and dishes from which we ate it line the pantry shelves.  The artist from whom we bought a painting looks down from a wall.  Dust jackets of books that were ripped by my daughter when she was a two-year-old are missing from the half of the set she got to before I got to her.

The fireplace where a cheerful fire crackles once belonged to my Grandfather, and I remember when our dog Bowser, lying close to the flames, caught spark on his tail and howled.  Grandpa Talbot, fearing Bowser’s immolation on the braded rug, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him out into the snow, where he cooled his singed appendage and scratched to get back in.

Just outside is a Kwansan cherry tree my grandmother planted.  Actually she bossed while a group of men, including my father, dug the hole, inserted the sapling, filled the hole with water, chemical fertilizer, and manure and closed it up.  I was a small boy, but it was an occasion to remember. Like the tree, I was developing roots. 

Americans are a people with a tradition of moving on.  Some friends of mine, who lived in a house on the water in Falmouth, pulled up stakes and built a home in Arizona, where they’re surrounded by desert and have a mountain view. The pictures they showed me are lovely, but I’m not tempted.  Grandma’s cherry tree blossoms pink in the spring and turns burnt orange in the fall. In the winter it wears a mantle of snow. That’s plenty for me.