That proverbial clean slate.

Everything is going to change. No, this isn’t about the Charlie Kirk killing and the impending civil war I contend has already started. And no, it’s not a nod to the YA novel The Maze Runner when the Gladers find Teresa in the box, and she cryptically blurts out this line. This is about my life, my hobby, my blog. It’s going to change. It started to yesterday.

Almost a year ago, Susan and I sat with my father as he slowly died of heart failure. Each day, his condition worsened. The entirety of our last day with him, he was mostly incoherent. Around seven o’clock, with the outside light fading into night, with Susan and I preparing for our ninety-minute drive home, my father became suddenly lucid. We talked a bit about what comes next after we die. He affirmed that he lived a great and satisfying life. And he dropped this bomb: “I made a mistake. I made a mistake with the kids. Jeffrey…” He fell silent.

I tried to prompt him: “What mistake, Dad? What do you mean?” He fell asleep, and we drove home. My father died later that night. I never learned what mistake he made, but my mind has thrown together a variety of possibilities. Sounds like something out of a mystery novel, right?

Like most writers, I read. Not as much as I used to, but still, a fair amount. Besides news and op eds and blog posts, I primarily read novels. Many times, in the middle of a good book, I’ll think ‘this is a great plot, where do authors get these ideas?’ I’ve had a lifelong block against writing fiction. That doesn’t mean I’ve never done it, I have a handful of times, but it’s always a thinly veiled version of my own life. And while I’ve published two novella length memoirs, the almost fiction stories I’ve written are mostly flash and never longer than short. Certainly nothing that could be expanded into a book. Novel writing just wasn’t in my cards.

Until now.

I’m getting up there in years. OK, I’m about to turn sixty-three, not so old, but both of my brothers retired by my age. I’ve never felt ready. When I take an unstructured day off work, I tend to laze around all day, and at four in the afternoon, guilt drives me to lace up my shoes and run a few miles.

“Hey Jeff, what did you do on your day off?”

“Uh, went for a run?” I envisioned my future retirement just sitting on the couch all day poking at the CNN and New York Times websites.

Susan thinks I deserve to retire. “Well, you could write.” A lofty goal for someone who comes up with an essay topic every eight or nine days. But over the past year, that last exchange Susan and I had with my father has gelled into a surprisingly interesting plot and the skeletons of some engaging characters. It feels like a book length work of fiction. I plan to write a novel. I’ve even given it the working title of Half.*

No, I’m not retiring just yet, but I’m currently rearranging my life to work less hours. I plan to free-up four mornings each week to write my story. I’ve subscribed to a podcast series called Deep Dive, in which some of our best contemporary authors offer advice on how to approach this all-consuming task. I understand it will be difficult, frustrating and at times painful, but I also hope to have fun. I started writing yesterday. I was terrified and exhilarated, simultaneously thinking “I can do this! and “No I can’t!”  

So where does this leave us? I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll still feel the urge to write and read blogposts, but maybe I won’t. I don’t want to be one of those bloggers who simply disappears one day leaving everyone to wonder if I died. So, goodbye? I doubt it, but I hope to see you much less, because I’m supposed to be writing Half and not essays for WordPress. But ultimately, I’m going to write what feels right, so maybe I’m not going anywhere (this essay right here an obvious lesson in procrastination). Regardless, wish me the luck that I, in turn, wish each of you.  

Peace.

*Half will not be the title of a book I write. The story has filled out and morphed from when I started thinking of it as Half. But rather than continually changing the title of my project as it grows and matures, this name serves as a useful placeholder.   

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

Walking around the block, Susan and I pass the Columbia Gas family playing in their yard. The young couple, maybe late twenties, with two kids, an infant and a toddler, are one of the few families consistently outdoors. I know I should be able to supply a name rather than reference the work-truck parked in front of their house every evening, but that would take friendly banter, introductions, something we’re unlikely to do.

The mom holds the infant and calls her tiny terrier close. The dad pitches a wiffleball to his son. The kid, not yet three feet tall, takes a clean cut and sends the ball across his property and well into the next yard. It’s the sort of hit an adult would smack and then nod with satisfaction.

Susan, the more quick-witted of us, shouts “Wow, way to go!”

Me? I hesitate for a moment and then call out “Man, that kid’s gonna to be the next Ty Cobb.”

The dad cocks his head, mouth agape, looks at me but doesn’t respond.

Susan and I walk in silence for five seconds. She turns to face me, “Ty Cobb?”

~

What? It’s an apt reference, if a little dated. Cobb was a hitting machine. He holds a record twelve annual batting titles, had a .300 batting average in twenty-three consecutive seasons, a .400 average in three seasons, scored more five-hit games than any other player in history. The kid and his dad should be proud of the Cobb comparison.*

Of course, Cobb’s playing career spanned from 1906 to 1928, almost all of which happened more than a century ago. He died before I was even born. I think there’s a good chance the Columbia Gas dad never even heard of Ty Cobb.

I suddenly feel old. As a fitness focused adult for the past forty years, I did a good job cheating the effects of aging. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve become accustomed to wide-eyed people saying “What? You’re HOW old?” Their guesses always took eight to ten years off my age. Those days might be over. Last week at a fundraising event, a woman I talked with asked me when I plan to retire. At sixty-two, my retirement date could still be five years away.

Until just a couple of years ago, my youngest was still in high school. This connection mentally rooted me squarely in Generation X. All the other parents were X’ers, so I felt like one too. My obsessions with rock music and a steady diet of Seth MacFarlane cartoons no doubt helped. Now that Eli has graduated and moved out of the house, I’m starting to look and think like the boomer I’ve always been.

Since my boss retired eighteen months ago, I’m the only one left on my organization’s senior management team in his sixties. The others are ten to twenty years younger. I’m picking up a vibe, not from my peers, but from the dozen or so under-thirty employees scattered around my company. I think I’m being chronologically lumped in with the four or five retirees who work for us part-time as something interesting to do with their days. These employees have each been retired from their careers for years.

In my first professional job, my massive government contracting firm was broken down into divisions of five to seven hundred employees. The finances for my division were overseen by a kindly old man with a gaggle of twenty-something “girls” doing the actual work. Ed Bailey sat at his desk and dispensed 1950s truisms and wisdom all morning and then took an hour-long nap at his desk in the afternoon. Every time I walked into his office and found him upright but sound asleep, I thought, Jesus, retire already.

Am I now Ed Bailey? Maybe this is a common feeling for recent empty nesters, or more likely for people still working in their sixties. I can’t shake the sensation that I’m overstaying my welcome. I suspect this is mostly in my head, but increasingly, I feel out of touch with the cultural references that surround me. I sense the same discomfort directed towards me that I displayed around Ed Bailey forty years ago. I guess I can take comfort from the fact that I don’t yet fall asleep at my desk. At least I think I don’t.

* No, I’m not a Ty Cobb freak, and I don’t follow baseball at all. I had to look up all of those facts and stats on Wikipedia, making it even stranger that I latched onto Cobb as a comparison. Pete Rose would have made a lot more sense. At least he’s from my childhood.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels

全国人大常委正式表决通过了关于实施渐进式延迟法定退休年龄的决定