What Does Retirement Mean?

That was what a former student of mine asked me the other day. Actually, she listed a number of definitions from the dictionary, and in her usual brash style, asked what it was that I didn’t understand about the definitions.

I have to admit that I have failed again in my second attempt at retirement. The first time that I retired – 10 years ago – it was just too early and my plan for a business here in Bali didn’t work out; I learned the valuable lesson that I’m not a businessman, better to stick with teaching since I’m fairly good at that. And this time?

Well, I actually planned for this one, and except for the little matter of the world financial crisis, I was ready. I could stay retired and hope for the best, but I hate the idea of leaving the kids and my wife with no money if I happen to die in the next few years. So I was toying with the idea of going back to work. It just happened that I received a call, right at that time, asking if I was interested in coming back to my old job for seven months until a replacement for me arrived. It was one of those serendipitous things – returning to work is good for the school and good for me as well. It gives them a known quantity, and it gives me a quick infusion of hard cash to make up for some of the losses in the stock market.

This retirement has been excellent, although I actually work almost more than I did when I was working. That is I write about six hours a day. I managed to finish the eBook on Bali, am halfway done with the international schools book, and have a start on the book on Islam that I want to do after the international schools book is finished. I’ve spent a lot of time snorkeling; I’ve gotten the kids on track with their new schools; my wife and I have made extensive repairs to the houses here (badly needed after five years of being empty); I went through the visa process so that I know I can do it again in another seven months; and I’ve had a lot of time to read and reflect.

I know now that I can handle retirement – often problematic for workaholics like me. In fact, I’ve only begun to do the things that I wanted to do when I was planning my retirement. I still have a lot lined up for the next time.

So, here I am working on getting ready mentally for a move back to Sumbawa for seven months. I’m not fond of the idea of leaving the family; I’m really going to miss being here with the kids and my wife everyday without the distraction of work, but I can rationalize this decision to temporarily return to work, by looking at it as just 25 weeks of work that will give us a little breathing room economically. Then back here in June again to start retirement all over.

Children leaving home

Dealing with kids leaving home. This is an issue that is going to be something that I’ll be dealing with probably until I’m dead. I made it through the first time when my eldest son left home although I could have dealt with it better. I’m trying to deal with things rationally and coolly this time around. It helps that I have a wife this time to talk about all of this with. The first time things were complicated by divorces and career issues; this time it’s a bit different – if for no other reason than that I’m almost twenty years older and a lot slower.

Mercedes is a first year student at SMA Lab in Singaraja. An Indonesian teacher friend here told me the other day that it was an outstanding school. Mercedes seems to like it from what she says on the handphone. She wants to be a doctor so she’s taking an extra biology class as an elective. I asked her the other day if she was making friends (knowing how important that is to kids around the world, but perhaps even more so for Indonesians who are constantly perplexed by the amount of time that I spend alone (more on that for another post). She said yes she was making friends including a few girls that she knew when she was in elementary school in Bali four years ago. Being perhaps an overly protective dad, I asked her if they were all girls, and she asked if it was ok is she had friends who were boys, but not boyfriends. Hmm, ok Dad how do you deal with that? I thought for a moment and replied that yes it was ok. But (ah, the Dad but), keep focused on your studies.

So she’s pretty much on her own. She lives in our townhouse in Singaraja. The house adjoins what we call the Beach House, and she has an aunt and uncle and three little rugrats living there, and she has another aunt and uncle just 50 meters away down the street. Still, it’s a big jump for an Indonesian kid from a fairly tightknit family. The sensitive one as my oldest sister would say.

So this year I’ll be living in three houses on two different islands – keeping an eye on the end of my teaching career and my family here in Sumbawa, and keeping an eye on my high school daughter in our houses in Bali as she starts off her higher ed career in Indonesia. Higher ed because graduation from high school is still not the norm in Indonesia – mandatory schooling here ends at the end of junior high (and many tragically don’t make it that far due to economics).

Next year, we’ll all be back in Bali; I’ll be able to keep an eye on the kids and help with their homework, and Su will be able to start her new business to keep her occupied once she no longer has to run a big house, a garden, and a crop of kids and animals.

Oh, animals. That’s been one of the questions about how I’m going to deal with moving to Bali. The townhouse is just that – it has about the same space as a small New York townhouse which means no ducks, chickens, geese, goats, and dogs. The plan (another one of those plans) is to get a baby python here and raise it (I’m assuming that it will respond to raising like my old boa constrictor did when I lived in Berkeley, California) and keep it in the small courtyard that we have in Bali.