by Joe Kennedy
Four years ago, I prepared for my imminent retirement by doing what I’d always done: I panicked.
My financial advisor assured me that, with a little downsizing, I would be able to live on the proceeds from my retirement funds. “You don’t need to work,” he said, looking me squarely in the eye, the way a no-nonsense parent might look at a dim child.
“Downsize? I asked . . . “How so?”
“Your kids are grown,” he said. “Sell the house. Buy a condo.”
Immediately my mind slammed shut. Houses don’t grow on trees, I thought. This was our home, the place we moved to seven months after Sharon, the wife, mother and peerless captain of our family, died at age 48. It was our home. It could be the place that the kids would return to when I was in my dotage, a refuge for us through the unpredictable years ahead. It was the worthy successor to the classic old Catawba Valley Farmhouse where they grew up. It was modern, and conveniently located near their schools, and stores, and friends.
Surely they would want me to hold on to it. The truth was I couldn’t imagine the house without them. The truth was, I did not want to imagine them without me.
Then there was the dark threat of idleness. Many people would welcome a buyout even from a job they’d loved, when they were in good health and only 59 years old.
I felt terror in my heart. How would I fill my time? How would I give back, help others and repay society for all that it had given me?
Not once did I consider things that might bring me pleasure: solitary, early morning fishing on the James, the Maury and the New rivers; languid off-season weeks at a Carolina beach. Long car trips to beautiful places in New England and the West. Visits with friends in Texas, Wisconsin and L.A., and siblings in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and D.C.
I never consulted with my brother John, who kicked off his retirement with a long trip to the North, with visits to his children and grandchildren, contemporaries he’d worked with and younger folks he had hired. Or my sister Anne, who retired-with her husband to a Philadelphia suburb and bought a condo in Annapolis, where they keep their boat. Or, again, John, happily living on a golf course, playing several rounds a week and active socially, as well as in his church.
Even my father, from whom I inherited my hyperactivity, managed, against all odds, to fill the early years of his retirement, at age 60 (in 1966), with day trips to mid-Atlantic attractions, cringing, I am sure, as my Uncle Ross tore across landscape in his green Dodge, with my father’s sister, Aunt Katherine, keeping up a lively commentary, while my mother dug it all from the back seat.
Ross Prevost and my father, John Eugene Kennedy, were ambitious young men who went to work with the U.S. Customs Service in the early 20th century and became friends, and, when Ross married Katherine, brothers-in-law.
Each spent more than 40 years in the customs service. Ross became chief appraiser for the Port of Baltimore, my father the assistant collector. Each, with his wife, supported four children through college and had copious grandchildren. My parents won that bout, with 20 grandchildren, most of whom they did not live long enough to know.
As I write this story, I see a fundamental difference in our lives. My parents and my relatives lived through hard times, and prevailed. Their lives were pageants.
I had it easier, thought smaller and wound up with a stroke. I oversimplify, of course. My kids are fine people, educated, on track and fun-loving. My daughter hates it when I say they raised themselves. The truth is we raised each other.
Maybe that responsibility turned me timid, fearful to be away from them if something bad were to happen. This may sound odd, but I’m fine with that.
They’re in the big city now. On Sunday, Michael told me by phone how much fun he had playing softball, spearing line drives while playing third base, the “Hot Corner.”
This evening, Katherine texted me while on her way to Wolf Trap for a concert by Steve Miller, an old rock and roller.
They are happy and finding their way beautifully through the world.
For me, life could be no better.
