Lair Davis (Our Man in Costa Rica)

15 Days — But, Hey, Who’s Counting?

The executive director and board of trustees of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County took me out last night for a going-away dinner at Omei’s, a very good Chinese restaurant. What a nice bunch of people! On Thursday, my replacement will spend his first day “learning the ropes” of the job I am leaving. (Don’t tell anyone I told you, but I think he is gay — gaydar, y’know?)

Today, some friends hauled away my bookcases. This place is looking emptier and emptier every day. I am condensing 60 years of living into a total of five medium-sized suitcases (plus the laptop case, plus my very large purse). I will fly out of San Francisco for paradise in Costa Rica, and another phase of my life will begin. They (whoever “they” are) call it “retirement.”

Funny word — “retirement” — sounds so sedentary. I don’t know any “retired’ folks who aren’t as active as they’ve always been, if not more so.

My friend Ed in San Diego, for example, seems more on the go now that he’s retired than he was when he worked all day. One day he’s at the Storefront shelter, the next day at Mama’s Kitchen, then there’s the youth group at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito, then there is one friend or another he’s helping out in some way. The man’s a saint — and he ain’t even Christian!

I plan to keep on the go in retirement as well. I expect I’ll have more energy to do what I want to do, since it isn’t being used up working at a job. Not sure of that, of course. Time will tell.