I Told My Friends I Was Moving on to a Sailboat ...

 

     Or, "What are you -- nuts?????"

“Why are you doing this?” “Are you sure that’s safe?” And the big one – “Why NOW?????” After all, I had chosen to live on a sailboat at age 64. Friends felt as if I were moving away. One friend cheered me on while another worried that I would end up in a run down trailer park one day. I suspect my sister thought I had finally gone ‘round the bend.

Not only was I 64, but I was born with mild cerebral palsy (CP). Now, for those of you who don’t know, cerebral palsy isn’t an illness that gets worse over time, as multiple sclerosis does sometimes, or as Lou Gehrig’s Disease does. You’re born with it. You can learn to maximize your abilities, but as you get older, if you don’t actively work to keep the abilities you’ve developed, those skills will fade. But it doesn’t get worse over time just because it’s CP (see my two entries, “Where My Tenacity Came From" for more about my CP).

The answer to the big question, “Why now?” is “If not now, then … when?” I’d already dodged a couple of bullets. I could have born with a much more serious degree of CP. I could have spent my life in a wheelchair. I was very, very lucky. Then I had breast cancer when I was 60, and I survived it. Again, I was very, very lucky. Just how much longer was it wise to wait if I wanted to do this? At my age and with my history, every day is a gift. At 64, if you are burning to do something, now is the time do to it. Not tomorrow, and not next week. The awful truth is that a metaphorical refrigerator could fall on any of us at any time. But the other awful truth is that the older one gets, the more falling refrigerators there are to dodge.

If I was going to do it, now was the time.

My parents, I recalled, had made the mistake of not noticing that the sky over them was slowly filling up with refrigerators. Those possible life-changing medical crises were getting lower and lower (closer and closer), and the straps holding them away from them were wearing out, but people tend not to look up.

And oh, my parents had plans. When my dad retired, they would take their travel van to the Grand Canyon, and the Smokey Mountains, all sorts of places. A couple of months before my Dad’s 65^th birthday, he announced his impending retirement to resounding cheers.

Then my mother got called for jury duty. It didn’t seem like a big deal to her, and she went to do her civic duty. At 64, she sat on a hard wooden bench, not moving much, for two days. She took a book, a deck of cards and a good attitude. She met nice people, and they played cards as they sat on those wooden benches. After two days of not being assigned to a jury, they released her from her obligation. She and Dad went out to eat. She was stiff and sore from the two days, and she slipped on just a few terrazzo steps in the restaurant.

She took a hard fall and shattered her thighbone. An orthopedic surgeon performed extensive surgery and put her leg back together as best he could, but she was in constant pain for the rest of her life and walked only with great difficulty and discomfort. Most of the time she used a wheelchair. That was the end of their travel plans. Then a couple of years later Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He wasn’t as lucky with cancer as I was. They didn’t catch his in time, and once it had spread to his bones and liver, he couldn’t do much either.

LESSON LEARNED: I’m not saying anyone should precipitously quit their jobs to become vagabonds, but as one plans for one’s retirement, I urge them to enjoy life along the way as well. Retirement isn’t the only destination. Each day is a destination, and each day can be an adventure, even if it only lasts for 30 seconds. Those 30 seconds will energize you for the next hard day of work, and if you pay attention, you may come across another little adventure on the next day as well.

So, here’s to adventures. They don’t have to all be as grandiose as stepping out of a condo in a retirement community and onto a sailboat to be of value. They only have to be some form of an experience you want, welcome and treasure. My dream was to live on a sailboat. What’s yours?