I don’t think I was ever a child, even when I was one. Sure, I must have been young once. I am sure I had a toddlerhood. I have the pictures to prove it. Somewhere around the age of five, though, I lost the kiddiness.
I think I was always a pretty old soul… serious, hyper-responsible, and perceptive. Even as a kid, I was not good at living in the moment. I tended to plan and think about what I would be doing years in advance. Instead of playing joyfully and discovering the richness of the world, I sort of just waited to grow up. I can remember being aware, even as a young child, that adults laughed at things children said and did. Now, I know that when a child causes an adult to laugh, it is often sweet and endearing. As a child, all I perceived was that I was being laughed at. And being laughed at seemed to be a very bad thing, indeed. The end result was that I kept a low profile and avoided doing anything that might provoke what I saw as ridicule. It is sad, but I feel like I waited out my youth.
I started saving money to go to Europe when I was eleven. I began working when I was sixteen, even though there was no economic necessity that I do so. I married young. I started working at my “career job” within weeks of graduating from college. My friends were all older than I. I never seemed to fit in with an age-appropriate life, so I cobbled out my version of an adult grown up life long before it made sense. Once I went down that path, it seemed unlikely that I would ever veer off it.
When I got divorced, I did start to find the child that I had long ago stuffed inside the deepest recesses of myself. I remember thinking that I was finally learning to play. There was one day when I was walking on the beach when it hit me. I had a week off from work. I let the sun melt the tightness on my shoulders. I locked my inner fussbudget in a closet deep inside my brain. I heard the breeze whooshing around my ears. I saw the crystalline sunlight fracturing into prisms around me. I tasted the salt in the air. I smelled the pungent odor of sunscreen and seaweed. I felt wet sand crunching and oozing between my toes. Suddenly, I knew what it meant to live in the moment and slip my leash. The saturation of the experience did not last long, but it did at least teach me that I had a lot of work to do if I was ever going to learn to play. The experience stayed with me, but I was already Little Red Riding Hood deep in Grown Up Woods. My beach experience taught me that there was a wolf inside me trying to devour my childhood, but I was too far gone to really avoid that eventuality.
Once I left my working life behind me, I still had responsibilities. Certainly, if there is anything that convinces a person that she is a grown up, it is losing a parent. Still, I have taken time over the past five years of my retirement to get to know that kid I could have been, had I allowed myself to embrace being a child. It seems the further back in my rearview mirror my career gets, the more riotously childlike (or childish, depending on your perspective) I become.
Some of you have been following along with some of my adventures- hunting for elves on my shelves, undergoing a bippity boppity Tinker Bell makeover, making proximity to Disney World a criterion for deciding where I would move in retirement, wearing light-up Christmas crocs just about everywhere, spending rather large amounts of money to get up close and personal encounters with adorable wild animals, volunteering to play a part in a reenactment of a colonial courtroom drama when visiting Williamsburg, and plunging headlong into activities for which I have absolutely no aptitude… just for the fun of it. Part of my premature and intense adulthood manifested itself as an impressive talent for worrying. I won’t say I don’t worry anymore. That would be absurd. Certainly, though, I worry a lot less. I don’t worry so much about what I look like. I don’t worry so much about being good at anything. I don’t worry so much about doing stuff. I just do stuff. As a result, I think I look prettier, have better and more diverse skills, and enjoy life much more.
People say that we sometimes enter a “second childhood” when we age. I don’t think I am entering a second childhood. I am just catching up with the first one.
How about you? Have you become more childlike in retirement? Why do you think that is? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.
Have a childish day… just KIDding!
Terri/Dorry 😊
PS If you are wondering why this is early, it is because the child in me got impatient and pushed the “publish” button instead of the “schedule” button.