On turning 70 and looking for wisdom

A decade ago I published my Top 10 on turning 60. Most of the items on my list are truer now than ever. Septuagenarians are much less likely than sexagenarians to die young, for example.

Still, I'm finding it hard to come up with a new Top 10 list. I don't much care for the biblical description of this decade: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away"(Psalm 90:10).

Some of my friends have already flown.

It's not that I want to relive my 60s. I'm glad to be done with the Great Recession, heart surgery (I hope), retiring, figuring out Social Security and Medicare, moving 750 miles from my home and friends of 33 years, saying goodbye to two sweet dogs, remodeling my new old house, and learning how not to get lost in a state none of whose roads are straight. Good things came out of that tumultuous decade, however: I like my new neighborhood, friends, and small dog, and I'm happy that many of my longtime friends have come to visit.

It would be nice to think that my 70s will be a more peaceful decade than my 60s, but I hear that's highly unlikely. Another recession, most economists say, is just around the corner. Good health may or may not last the decade. Social Security and Medicare are under attack. The house needs a new roof. We'll probably want to move again before 2028. Still, new friendships are likely to increase and deepen, and my new dog, who just turned two, will probably last awhile.

The psalmist advises numbering our days, "that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom" (Psalm 90:12). The Social Security Life Expectancy Calculator numbers my remaining days at 17.4 years, though retirement planners advise making savings last to age 100 or 105, just in case. So what wisdom should I apply to the next 15, 25, 35 years? I'd love to hear your ideas, especially if you've lived even longer than I have.

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Liminal Living vs The Impossible Dream

[A. Casolani, 16th century]

We are househunting.

Will our new place be a relatively new condo with no exterior maintenance, plenty of storage, an open floor plan, lots of bathrooms, and no stairs?

Will it be a city rowhouse that is older than we are, has arches and built-in cabinets and red oak plank floors, and is walking distance from a university, bookstores, and libraries?

Whatever we dream of, will our retirement income be sufficient for both the house and, say, groceries?

And will we still be able to live in it when we're crippled, incontinent, and demented?

I've been asking myself that last question with every house I inspect, which is probably why I've been getting more and more depressed. Medieval folk kept cheerfulness at bay by contemplating skulls. An afternoon of looking at potential retirement homes, I've found, also works.

Last week I blogged about our liminal lodging - the apartment we've rented for a few months to tide us over until we find our, um, final resting place. (Snap out of it, LaVonne!) This morning I had one of those blindingly obvious insights that you sensible people have understood all along: Life itself is liminal.

As I mentioned last week, it's good to put a threshold between one phase of life and another. Living in our  rented apartment is allowing us to do that. But I'm deluding myself if I think our next house is going to be permanent - just as suitable to our life in 30 years, when we're 95 and 96, as it is to our life today. I'm glad I figured that out, because I'm not all that excited by houses that would presumably appeal to nonagenarians.

In my search for the permanently perfect place, I've been driving my realtor to distraction ("I keep getting mixed messages from you," she says, and then five minutes later she says, "But you have such specific requirements"). Bless her, she persists in spite of me. She's even cheerful, or at least pleasantly resigned.

However, she did tell me about a friend of hers who made himself miserable for years because he wanted so badly to give up smoking and thereby live forever, and he simply couldn't do it. At age 42, having stopped to help a stranded motorist, he was struck and killed by a drunk driver.

The threshold : making space for the new

[Our former living room]

It has been three months since I posted on Lively Dust or wrote a book review. I was not ill. I did not die. But I did exchange one life for another, and that took all the energy I could muster.

This is a picture of the living room of the house I lived in for nearly 26 years. When I moved into that house, the floor was covered with a dog-stained gray carpet and the walls were light blue. The fireplace was surrounded with shiny gray bathroom tiles. My daughters were 15 and 17.

When I moved out 17 days ago, the floor was hardwood, the walls were Benjamin Moore's Manchester Tan, and the fireplace was surrounded with marble tiles and a hand-crafted oak mantle. My grandchildren are 15, 17, almost 19--and two-and-a-half.

Benedictines use the word threshold a lot. They say it's a good idea not to plunge directly from one experience into another, but rather to pause, recollect, and gather strength before moving on. A threshhold allows each situation to be what it is. It gives a person space to take a deep breath and let go.

We are now living in a threshold apartment while we look for a more permanent place.

In our liminal lodging we don't have a lot of space, but that's OK because we don't have a lot of things either. (Well, a few miles away there's a book-packed storage unit with our lock on it. We don't plan to stay on the threshold forever.) We gave away and threw out a lot of stuff before leaving Illinois. To our surprise, we have also given away and thrown out a lot of stuff after arriving in Maryland. Downsizing is easier when you have no place to put things.

As it turns out, we still have more than we need. Under what scary circumstances would two people need three bathrooms?

I am not a pack rat--I can and do throw things away. I am not a shopaholic, I do not collect things, and I fancy that I live simply. In 65 years of living, 46 years of marriage, and 26 years of being in one house, however, I still managed to accumulate thousands of pounds of unnecessary stuff. How?

• By hanging on to things I didn't really want. Did I wear that orange sweater in 2013? Yes, once. Did I enjoy wearing it? Not at all. Do I plan to wear it in 2014? No. Out, out, orange sweater!
• By buying something new without tossing whatever old thing it was supposed to replace. Do I need several dozen mismatched drinks glasses, the unbroken remnants of long-forgotten sets? Only if I plan to invite 30 people for cocktails. Out, out, old glasses!

  

  [Our threshold living room]

• By buying a specialized item when I already owned a general item that served the same purpose. Do I need an apple corer, a mandolin, and a food processor when I already have knives? Well, maybe need is too strong a word, but I do enjoy using them...

Right. Even we downsizers don't have to toss everything that isn't strictly necessary. Some non-utilitarian things--my framed French posters, for instance--seem even more important as the old inexorably recedes.

It feels wonderfully light, though, to be free of so much unwanted stuff as we stand on the threshold, looking back at the cherished old and ahead to the exciting new.

J. Alfred Prufrock contemplates retirement

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.
 T.S. Eliot 

Wednesday is my husband's last day at the office.
We've been looking forward to this next phase of our lives for a long time. For some 25 years we've been sending a large percentage of our modest incomes to retirement accounts. We joke that our retirement plan is to live on so little that we won't miss it when it's gone.

For the last several months we've been crunching the numbers. When exactly should he retire? Would a reallocation of our retirement resources make them last longer? Which of our two highly professional, fee-based, but disagreeing financial advisers should we follow? When should we take Social Security? When can we start getting Medicare benefits? Which work-based health-insurance plan should we sign up for in order to stay covered until Medicare kicks in? Which of the many Medicare supplemental insurance plans is best? Which of the many insurance companies offering such plans is most likely to stay solvent and keep its rates low? Which Medicare Part D prescription drug plan will best suit our needs?

We've also been looking at lifestyle questions. Should we stay in the place that has been home for 25 years, or should we move to be closer to family? We know about living too far from our kids - 1100 miles from one daughter's family, 800 miles from the other's - but is it possible to live too close? If we move, how do we find good realtors, here and there? What do we need to do to get our place ready to sell? We already live in a townhouse - should we downsize even further? When thinking about a place to live, what factors are most important to us? Will we need a place without stairs?

And then there's the question everybody asks: What will you do in retirement?

"First," my husband says, "I'm going to clean the garage." I hope he's not joking.