Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Wave jumper



Back in my late twenties, I made my first visit to warm ocean beaches, visiting my friend L in Kauai.  Previously I had never been enamored of the tropical climate, which I associated with cockroaches the size of your thumb and sunburn.  But on that visit I discovered the enchantment of warm plumeria-scented breezes and blood-warm salt waters.  L was tired: she had a 3-month old and a 3-year old, and her then-husband was working two jobs.  So, I explored the rim of the island on my own, visiting Salt Pond for the sunset and family atmosphere, Poipu for the waves, and Lumahai and Tunnel beaches for the snorkeling.  We went on some family hiking and driving excursions, too, but it was the beaches that called to me, and ever after I was hooked on the tropics.  (They still have cockroaches the size of your thumb, but....I can compromise.)

I'm thinking about that experience, because I recently visited my mother at her new home in Ormond Beach, Florida. The air is very, very damp, and the sun is a strong baking presence always, but when you are in the ocean or the pool you become absorbed by the submersion of self in water. I find myself thinking of the womb:  is this what it was like?  No, because, in addition to the weightlessness and the cradling, there is the hissing heartbeat of the waves, and the flickering reflection of light and sky.  Mom is a short elevator ride away. I spend a couple of hours each day enjoying the waters, and a couple more on her balcony, watching the pelicans soar past in their pointy/bulbous-billed squadrons, swift and silent.

The Florida beach is nowhere near as beautiful as the ones in Kauai:  the palm treesare lined up like soldiers along the roads, and the condos and hotels are high-rise ugly, with very little landscaping.  The lush vegetation of the tropics is lacking, and so are the sweet scents of flowering vines, which are unhappily replaced with the odor of sunscreen.  And, the lithe brown local children are supplanted by white vacationing blobs and hobbling retirees. But, it doesn't matter. I stand, thigh-high in the warm pea-green water, sideways to the ocean, watching the light scatter along the broken wavelets, watching the sea build up into larger and larger swells until the waves finally break and I leap with them.

.
Buoyed by the green waves,
I put feet down to jump high
For the seventh one

In Kauai the waves often broke over my head, sometimes taking my glasses with them, sometimes filling my nose and stopping my breath.  I didn't have the chutzpah to swim out beyond the breakers, nor did I usually have the boogie board. So, I was not body surfing properly, and I was feeling the immense power of the ocean.  In Florida, it was a calmer affair.  I could float in the shallow water, bobbing up and down and back and forth with the surge of the ocean, and there was little fear of undertows or big waves.  I lost time, thought, even joy.  I just was.

Always the trend-setter

The NYT just published an article about women in their 50s giving up their careers to care for parents and grand-kids. Of course, what it means is they are ceasing to work during their most productive years, and when they reach their 80's, they will not have the income to care for themselves. The loss figure is around $325K. For me, it's probably more. I was making $60k a year before I moved to Albuquerque, and $34K after that. Multiply by 10, and you have between $340K and $600K that I am losing, not to mention the loss in retirement income.

While I'm getting paid to do this care-giving, and I am trying to put away some savings, it is interesting to realize that I'm still following the trends. First, I had the problems with my mortgage. Then, I got to experience the reality of Obamacare. Now, I'm facing facts: like many women my age, I've abandoned my work-life trajectory. This has very real repercussions for my retirement and end-of-life.

Actually, this trend is not just affecting women. Many people seem to be just tossing aside their career paths and trying something new. Part of it's the economy and reduction in public service jobs, but I think some of it is lack of job satisfaction. J describes several of her writerly friends who have packed in their secure jobs and moved on. C mentioned a gent who found religion and divorced (not necessarily in that order), and now the Lord is telling him to move to Italy. Several library folk in Portland have jumped ship, not retiring, but finding at-home or contract work. None of them say it, but I'm convinced that they are just tired of the bureaucracy and incompetence. That comes with any job, but is especially noticeable in the public sector, I think.

The article gave me pause. I've already been thinking of my situation, but this is the first that I've really done the math. Up to now, I've mainly been thinking about my psychological well-being, not my financial well-being. When I started this gig, I set a budget for savings, paying off marital and house debts, health, and travel. I was fine with the concept that it'll take 5 years to pay off debts and build up savings, but I hadn't really projected my long-term income. I was in hunker-down emotional-healing mode, and I've been living beyond my means for so long, I was just happy to be saving anything. However, that has changed. In a recent letter to friends, I said, The real issue is that I need to figure out and prepare for my next work. E will be 99 in July, and she is still going strong, but I can't do this for the next 10 years, and I don't think I want to be a caregiver for a corporation. Emotionally, I seem to have come back to myself: the last 9 months have been healing and supportive. And physically I'm doing well, exercising and eating a diabetes-preventive diet. So it's time to buckle down to it, now that I'm no longer PTSD.

Yes, and it's time to recognize that my income and my budget need to be reworked.

It's difficult to give up the travel, though, and I'm doing it on the cheap. For example, this month Mom's birthday present to me was a trip to see her in Florida. It had been 18 months since I last saw her, and she's 85 now, so it's really necessary. And one of the plus features was that my brother L and his wife X drove 900 miles to see us. I haven't seen her in several years.

During the visit, X talked sternly to me about jobs (you are still young, you have plenty of time to walk on the beach and sit around later) and about men (next time you marry, make sure he has a job), and about health (you should try kayaking!) She's basically right, but I do like this lifestyle. It's going to be difficult to go back to a 40 hour work week, and I'm not sure I want to. On the other hand, what I actually have is a 115-hour work week: it makes it difficult to do my extra-curricular stuff. So, going back to a regular hourly job might be an advantage.

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, clearly. And now I've added in concerns about end-of-life issues. E and Mom are very lucky in their situations. I will not be so lucky. I don't have a child to take care of me, and my pension is not going to be enough to support an independent lifestyle when I am frail. I need to spend the next 10-20 years preparing for that. It's time to stop lolly-gagging here on my mountain. Or, it will be soon.

I need to set a new trend. Do you think I can publish my iPhone pix and Facebook haiku? It's about all I've produced since I started this gig. Sigh.