Ken Lee on 'Retirement But Only of Sorts'

Ken LeeBy Collingtonian Ken Lee —

I write to my younger friends out there in The World, from my comfortable setting here in a somewhat grandly titled Collington Episcopal Life Care Community. Familiarly known as just Collington. Such a community has advantages. We’re all retired, and so “of a certain age,” and often well beyond that. We are, most of us, out of our houses of yesteryear. No more maintenance. Real estate taxes. Snow shoveling. Yard sales, brownies for school, and book sales. As with the Dowager Countess, the concept of a “week end” has come to lack both definition and significance. In dinner conversation, it is really welcome not to have to apologize to you younger set for mentioning an event or person dating back 40 years, and having to explain it. Never mind the Wall coming down a quarter-century back. What about when the Wall went up a quarter-century before that? Yes, about Larry Bird, but what about Bob Cousy?? And so on.

But, my young friends, there are risks out here. In the precious words of the Book of Common Prayer, let me premonish you against one of our pifalls. I hit one hard just the other day. In moving out here, you bring along too much stuff. Even though you’ve sold or donated lots of it before you get here, one still brings too much. Like books. No, not Kindles and Nooks. Books. But at least one is not into buying more, which you’ve been doing for the last 40 years. No more church or prep-school book sales.

Wrong. Since one of the things we old folks do periodically is, um, graduate, the library here inherits our treasured book collections. Lots of them. Some date back quite a few years. But the library here has to get rid of [read, “productively re-cycle”] lots and lots of books. So comes now a book sale. Here. In this sanctuary from the world’s snares. And your old habits are not yet fully atrophied. So what do I find? A first edition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. That’s like 1939, and they didn’t even print that many. The biography of Dr. Johnson by Walter Bate – 1975, no longer in print. The David McCollough biography of John Adams that you never bought and knew you should have years ago. Even an up-coming selection of your book club, Dead Wake. The timeless Ellie Wiessel volume, Night. My shelves are now further burdened. I am somewhat financially poorer. But I am warmly looking forward to a long winter’s reading.