One Week into Retirement

     Truth to be told, it is way too early, after only one week of my new status, to pronounce judgment on how retirement and I are doing. Despite the many challenges to a first time homeowner, when it comes to setting up a household, one thing is clear about my new status. I do indeed perceive retirement as substantially different from annual vacation. Let us say that I find the experience very much in order and not the least bit disturbing, despite the fact that what I am experiencing is still very provisional in character. I won't even venture to define the marks of a retirement duly launched and under full sail.

    Just short of one week and I am already picking up loose ends, though. By that I mean that the prayer blocks of my priestly life seem to be coming back in place in much less labored fashion. After COVID tests and controls passing through various airports (Five!) just to get home, I will concede myself a bit of huffing and puffing, especially in getting the hours of the breviary back to their rightful times. As you can imagine, with jet lag, matins in the depth of the night is actually the easiest by far.

The flight was indeed long (from start to finish, I think nearly 26 hours), but I cannot remember another trip where people have been so cordial and helpful. Honestly, I did not find the airline food all that much worse than before all the pandemic restrictions. Opening a container of fruit salad from the grocery store the other day proved more challenging that the packaging of the food on my various flights last Sunday. People in the airports and on the planes, just about everyone, seemed nicer too. Maybe I am kidding myself and perhaps I look more like a retiree than I think and as such that might explain why younger people treat me with compassion. It is all good.

    If I had to confess one downfall of my Exodus experience from "Old World" to "New", passing from my life in Bern to the promised land of Dakota, it would have to do with reading. I haven't even spent that much time on the computer during a week of shopping for car and bed and paying bills, but sadly not a page of a book, either for study or simple reading pleasure, has been turned. That is then my resolve for Week Two of retirement. With respect to the principle of gradualness, maybe I will set aside my big biography of Edward the Confessor and do some Chesterton or Waugh. But read I shall. It has to be part of a man's life. 

    Keep me in your prayers, as I do you!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI