“What do you plan to do when you retire?”

“What do you plan to do when you retire?” This question has been asked of me at least a hundred times over the past year. I have struggled with the answer, not because I don’t have any plans, rather, because I don’t know quite where to start. “Whatever the hell I want” doesn’t sound like a mature, thoughtful response, although it does sum up my feelings nicely. The truth is closer to something like—“a million things.” What follows are just a few of the things on my to-do list.

- Paint the mailbox post. For this job, my wife gave me the perfect Christmas present:

- Vacuum the house. This may seem a somewhat pedestrian job in the grand scheme of things, but for the last seven days we have had three golden retrievers loose in this house, so the job of vacuuming up after them is crucial stuff at the moment. Around here I’m the vacuuming expert.

- Spend a long weekend with my boys in Cooperstown, NY at the baseball hall of fame.

- Perfect my uncanny ability to irritate the heck out of Sherri Matthews with Dad Jokes at the worst possible moment.

- Expand my volunteer schedule at Hope Church.

- Lose ten pounds.

- Sharpen my cooking skills.

- Start playing golf again.

- Clean out the garage.

- Clean out the attic.

- Spend a week in the Caymans.

- Replace the lamp post light in the front yard.

- Write a sixth novel.

- Spend more time promoting the one that’s actually been published.

- Continue educating myself concerning the proper grand parenting protocols of the 21st century.

- Buy a new phone and a new iPad—my two are ancient.

- Plan more weekend getaways.

- Find ways to encourage others.

- Follow more of my spontaneous impulses—after I run them by Pam first.

- Become more generous.

- Write letters.

- Try to do something I’ve never done before at least once a month.

- Visit Italy and the Greek Islands.

- Never allow anyone to talk me in to going to the Holy Land.

- Be available for my kids anytime they need me.

- Eventually move to a house with a first floor master bedroom.

- Attend a baseball game at every Major League ballpark in the United States. (I’ve been to eleven so far).

- Be supportive of anyone still working in difficult and important jobs.

- No matter what happens with my health in the future, never stop eating this…

Our Three Christmas Celebrations

It’s been a while since last we visited together at The Tempest, ten days to be exact. Like the rest of you, I’ve been busy. I’ve had a house full since Saturday, all of my kids and three Golden Retrievers. Our celebration of Christmas took three full days which ended last night with all of us collapsing on the floor in a pool of exhaustion. Here’s a recap of all the action…

Christmas Eve served as our family Christmas. The six of us spent the morning unwrapping presents aided in no small way by Kaitlin and Jon’s beast of a dog—Jackson, who delighted in ripping to shreds all of the discarded wrapping paper. Meanwhile, Patrick and Sarah’s pup—Frisco, spent most of the morning trying to wedge himself between his people on a loveseat designed for only two humans. Lucy, as the eldest and only female, was having none of the nonsense and quickly retreated upstairs to the serenity of her own company. We all took a break around 11:00 for breakfast, a special Dunnevant family tradition consisting of bacon, scrambled eggs and orange-glazed cinnamon rolls. Off to the side is a fruit cup, the one unenthusiastic concession to proper nutrition. After the feast we reassembled in the family room to find out what Santa left us in our stockings. It turns out that all six of us wound up on the “nice list” which was probably a clerical error by the old guy’s back office, but no harm, no foul. We spent the afternoon enjoying each other’s company, then headed over to my sister Paula’s house for her Christmas Eve dinner—steaks, smashed potatoes and homemade rolls— and a new tradition, sticky toffee pudding! Then we headed over to Hope Church for the last of their 9 Christmas Eve services. It was delightful and a wonderful ending to a nearly perfect day.

Christmas Day started with cooking and ended with turkey sandwiches. In between was the Dunnevant family Christmas celebration at my sister Linda’s house. There was a sit down meal for 25 at tables in two different rooms. The food was amazing, the fellowship inspired. Then…it was time for that time-honored staple of American life during the holidays—the family photograph. The job of getting 25 members of any family properly posed for a portrait is fraught with peril, but getting the Dunnevant tribe organized for a picture requires a combination of patience and forebearance seldom seen during Christmas. Predictably, this photograph took over twenty minutes to stage, and was filled with anxious moments. The thankless job of taking this keepsake fell to Matthew Hawkins, husband of my niece Jenny and father of two, who’s attention to detail is impeccable..

Matthew: Ok, Becky..could you scootch over to your left three and a half inches? And Jon, could you lean forward until that shadow that’s covering the last third of your nose goes away? Oh, and Mimi—your makeup could use a bit of freshening…and Aunt Paula, is there anything you can do with your hair??

After the great picture gauntlet, we spent the afternoon opening presents and laughing at and with each other. Then there was the great gender-reveal gingerbread cake cutting which resulted in robust cheering and mayhem as Kaitlin and Jon announced that they will be having a _____. What? You think I’m going to reveal that before they do? I only look stupid.

Finally, yesterday was day three of the birth of Christ extravaganza, when the White clan descended on our hastily-cleaned house for a soup supper and a white elephant (no pun intended) exchange. Pam made chili and this amazing Tuscan spinach and sausage soup which was devoured as if the White family was a group of trail hands who hadn’t eaten in two days! It was delicious and the dessert table was divine with no fruit in sight. It was only 15 of us so it was not as unruly or as cramped. It was a wonderful evening that nobody seemed anxious to bring to a close. The gender reveal was greeted with enthusiastic hollering and an outpouring of love. A beautiful night.

So, there you have it. Three days and three days of celebrations. A ton of work was done by a lot of people to pull it off. But when the last guest drove away last night Pam said to me, “And that’s why I do this…what a joy it was to be together.”

The Very Best News

So, I’m going to be a Grandfather. We got the news over a month ago and have been sitting on it ever since waiting for Kaitlin and Jon to announce it to the world. It’s been a whirlwind, so many changes coming in our lives, first retirement and now this! The child is due on June 5th and we are counting the days.

For the last few weeks I have been Googling pregnancy sites and the expansive baby internet trying to educate myself, get the lay of the land, that sort of thing. What I’ve discovered is that the way Pam and I did things over three decades ago was all wrong. Not just wrong but criminal, and in some cases potentially deadly! Laying a child on their stomach in a crib? What were we thinking?! Did you know that car seats have an expiration date? Apparently my go-to make a kid laugh game—“ride a horse to Boston, ride a horse to Lynn, be careful little baby that you don’t fall in!!”—is a non-starter. It might do damage to their spinal column!

So, I’ve got a lot to learn about being a Grandfather. Luckily, for the past ten years or so I have been in training with the Garland kids next door. We have watched the three of them, ages 13, 11 and 9 grow up. We have fed them treats, bought them presents, terrorized them with my leaf-blower and watched them drive their parents crazy. It’s been a wonderful apprenticeship. But we are ready for the big leagues now.

We will discover the sex of the child this weekend. I don’t care whether it’s a boy or a girl. I was very much invested in this sort of thing back when we were having kids, back before I realized just how miraculous any new life is. I’ll be over the moon either way.

Everyone Should Be So Lucky

What a week this has been.

It was spent wrapping up the last remnants of my active participation in my 42 year occupation, several last minute investments had to be made. Ironically, my last actual appointment turned out to be a Zoom call, an unimaginable concept when I started four decades ago.

Our office Christmas party was held on Thursday night. As usual it was great fun as we all ate delicious food as the insults and jibes flew around the room. We held our gift exchange. I got a bag of full of candy, the kind that few people over the age of 12 like, which seemed appropriate somehow. I make no apologies for my love of Nerds and Airheads. You find a good thing you stick with it, right?

Then something amazing happened. A wonderful lady at my office presented me with a gift that astonished me to the point where I couldn’t form words to properly thank her. She had spent no telling how long making me a quilt filled with all the things I love—scenes from Maine, writing, and my dog Lucy.

The ironic thing about this lavish and beautiful gift was the giver. When she first came to work for us she seemed like the kind of person who might not get along well with my particular brand of hijinks. Of course that didn’t stop me from introducing her to my shtick the first day she arrived. To put it mildly, it was a hard sell. She wasn’t a morning person and that’s my favorite time to pester my victims. After a while I finally was able to coax a stray smile out of her with one of my Dad Jokes which only made me double down on my pestering. I do love a challenge. Then she suffered the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband. Through her grief she soldiered on at work, and although I probably should have lightened up on her—I didn’t. Every morning I was over at her office trying in my clumsy ham-fisted way to cheer her up. Some days were better than others. So…for her of all people to make this quilt for me seemed like some kind of miracle. You just never know.

The next day, as fate would have it, was the day that I had promised the girls that I would clear out my office. There’s a lot of shuffling offices to come after my exit and they wanted to get to it before the end of the year. I had not been looking forward to this part of the deal. But, I made it through without incident. I threw away lots of junk, but held on to other things that I really won’t need in the future, but didn’t have the heart to discard. At one point it became painfully obvious to me just how childlike and immature I can be. One would think that a man who survived and prospered for over 40 years in such a grown up and deadly serious business would have collected more adult memorabilia…

Unfortunately, Cluck my beloved rubber chicken who I used to randomly stuff in people’s filing cabinets, didn’t survive my entire career, having disintegrated from overuse during COVID. I might have observed a moment of silence…

Then Saturday morning came. I had asked a friend with a pickup truck to help me move some furniture out. When I arrived at the office there was a letter folded on the top of my empty desk. I sat down and read through it and for the second time in three days I had tears in my eyes and was again speechless. One of the sisters who are buying my business had typed the most heartfelt letter I have ever read. Reading such an emotional letter alone in your empty office might have been an occasion for great sadness. But for me it felt different. I was overcome with a wave of gratitude that I have been surrounded by so great a universe of people, people who understood me, people who got me, and somehow loved me too.

Everyone should be so lucky.

Advertising is the Worst

One of my favorite television shows over the past ten years or so was Mad Men. One of the reasons I liked it was because it confirmed something I had always believed—that the advertising business is a giant con filled with the worse people on the planet. This time of year is filled with tons of examples of the absolute worst of the worst. I am bombarded with them every time I open my computer, use my cellphone or go to the mailbox. Here’s one of my all-time favorites…

What in the name of Estée Lauder is going on here? I mean what the actual hell am I looking at?! No freaking wonder this stuff keeps selling out! This 50-something year old woman on the left apparently has been transformed into a 21 year old by rubbing some miracle wrinkle cream on her face, if this advertisement is to be believed. And it has to be true, right? They wouldn’t be able to claim this if it weren’t true, right? The inventor of this wrinkle cream must have won a Nobel prize for this, so how come I’m just now discovering this miracle?

With the obvious exception of political advertisements, this is probably the most audaciously dishonest ad I’ve seen in years. Now that a significant percentage of Americans seem to have endorsed the assassination of CEO’s of unpopular companies, I wonder how long it will be before some violently disappointed 60 year old Karen turns up on Madison Avenue waving a Glock around?

The Murder of a CEO

I saw the story first when opening the Drudge Report the other day. There was a grainy video surveillance camera photo of someone in a hoodie firing a handgun at another man in front of a swanky Manhattan hotel. The assassin then ran off and hasn’t been found as of this hour. The dead man was the CEO of a big company who is under investigation for insider trading of his own company stock . My first thought upon seeing the story was —Why is this the lead story on Drudge? I mean so far this year over 12,000 people have been killed via guns in the United States alone. What made this guy so special? Over the past few days my question has been answered.

I’ve learned some things about the deceased, a well compensated (10 million in 2023) Executive Officer of a particular company which is part of perhaps the most despised business in America—health insurance. While the murdered executive was only 52 years old with a wife and kids, the internet blew up as soon as word got out that he had been gunned down in cold blood. The vast majority of people were positively giddy with joy at the prospect that the top executive at a health insurance company was taken out so violently. One of the most popular posts was—“Sorry, but my sympathy is out of network.” Stories began pouring in of families being denied coverage for their dying parents, the tediousness of the claims process itself and how its very design has the purpose of making the claimant eventually give up in exasperation. There were many comments about the billions of dollars in profit made by his company and the perverse incentives inherent in a for-profit health care system. There were even videos of joyous public gatherings celebrating his death and the promotion of the as of yet still unnamed assassin to hero status. The public reaction seems to be overwhelmingly pro-killer at this point, helped along by the only other photograph we have of him, smiling coyly from underneath his hoodie at Starbucks before the attack. More than one internet observer has made much of his striking good looks—for what that’s worth. So, what to make of all this?

I am very much anti-death. I generally am against going to war. I’m not a fan of murder. I’m even against capital punishment since I trust no one with ultimate power over life and death. We reluctantly give the police a limited power to use deadly force, but no one else. However, are there exceptions? For example, if I were transported back in time and given a chance to put a bullet through Adolph Hitler’s melon back in 1938 knowing what I know now, would I have done it? The answer is Yes. So, I suppose that makes me a hypocrite. But very few rules in life are exception-free. If someone broke into my home and was set upon doing violence to me or my family, I wouldn’t hesitate to defend my family—even if it meant killing the intruder. So, every rule has exceptions. The question is—should an exception be granted for the public assassination of CEO’s of unpopular and even villainous companies? And if so, which businesses would be on the exception list? The murdered executive’s company raked in several billion dollars worth of premiums last year. I have no doubt in my mind that they unfairly denied a lot of claims, causing many of their customers untold suffering and grief. But a quick review of the public record also shows that the company paid out billions of dollars worth of claims as well. If it turns out that he was guilty of trading his 120 million dollars worth of company stock on news not made public at the time of his trades he would have gone .to jail. But did he deserve a public execution and were those celebrating his death no more that lawless vigilantes? We hear a lot about how fragile our democracy is these days. Nothing would spell the end of democracy more than an angry public who anoints themselves judge, jury and executioner of any public official they think “deserves” it. Who’s next?

But, I don’t think it’s that. I don’t think that all of a sudden people have turned cold of heart. I think that we are at a fraught time in history. People are angry, restless, and disappointed in how life works out sometimes. Nothing is more upsetting than watching a loved one die for lack of medicines or treatment by an insurance company whose CEO makes more money in one week than his average policy-holder makes in a year of back-breaking work. For many people like that, news that a 52 year old multi-millionaire big shot at the insurance company got popped brings a sliver of satisfaction, a temporary balancing of the far too lopsided scale of justice. And while I can have sympathy for that sentiment I universally denounce it for the very simple reason that I have no desire to live in a country where vigilante justice becomes the norm. History tells us what happens next…(see Revolution, French…Revolution Cultural, China).

Having said that, I’m not sure I would want to be a fat cat working in the health insurance business about now…

They Had a Party For Me Today

My work family threw a retirement celebration/open house for me today at the office. It was one of those three hour deals where people stopped by to congratulate me and say thanks. There was delicious food and desserts and lots of wonderful conversations and fond memories—and I had been dreading it from the day they told me to put it on my calendar. Let me attempt an explanation.

The people who came to the open house are all dear to me. These are men and women who I have worked with for decades. They have worked hard all their lives and when they became clients they took a leap of faith and trusted me with their life savings. I have watched many of them go through very difficult times over the years. Some have lost a husband or a wife. Others have endured health problems of their own. Many years ago these folks were transformed from being mere clients. Long ago they became friends, which changes the dynamic, not only of our business relationship, but also of a retirement open house gathering. They all told me how much they were going to miss me. They have no idea how much I will miss them.

One of the strange things about this event was seeing so many of my clients in one place at the same time. Normally when I meet with my clients it’s a set appointment for which I have prepared. For the previous couple of days I had looked over their accounts and checked my notes from the previous year’s meeting. I had pictured them in my mind. This was different. I had no idea who would show up at this open house. I would look up and there they would be at the door, one of them after another. A couple of times a wave of panic would come over me as I would look up and see a familiar face of a dear client and momentarily—forget their name!! Readers of a certain age will sympathize with this embarrassing predicament, commonly referred to as a senior moment. Now I’m worried that they may think I’m retiring because of cognitive decline!! 

Through the years these people trusted me through times of great uncertainty. Trust so dearly earned is hard to walk away from. A 40 year career is hard to leave. But to everything there is a season…and this season for me is over and a new one is about to begin. I’m just terrible at saying goodbye.