An Elf in the House or a Retired Spouse?
The benefits of my wife's retirement while I'm still working
I worried I’d resent it, her freedom—to wake when rested, to write, to wander.
I’ll admit there’s a bit of that. Yet what I’ve found more often since this new chapter of our marriage began is an expansion of time, a lessening of stress, and more playfulness.
I’d anticipated ways that retirement might enhance Annette’s life. We both had. What we hadn’t given much thought to was how her retirement might improve mine. In fact, I had the most clarity about one thing not to expect.
While Annette was visiting friends of ours in Florida last February, another lesbian couple, one retired, the other still working full-time, joined them for dinner. Wine and conversation flowed. When the retiree described bringing her wife coffee in bed, packing her lunch, and cooking dinner each night, Annette responded, smiling, “You’re never meeting my wife.” Everyone laughed.
But she wasn’t exactly kidding. Over the past several years, she had emphasized many times that she would not do all the cooking when she retired. More? Sure. Every night? Nope. I’ll come back to cooking later. Let me share what I noticed first.
The marvel of work-free travel
When we celebrated Annette’s retirement, her birthday, and our anniversary with a long-anticipated trip to Alaska, her 50th state, her work did not travel with us.
The ping of emails did not distract her from spending a lazy first morning in Anchorage watching a moose lounge and munch beside our friends’ fence. Nor did a Zoom meeting keep her from taking a scenic drive to gaze at the Homer Spit jutting into the Kachemak Bay, nearby mountains evoking visions of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Instead, she photographed bald eagles, sang along with a raucous pirate band, hiked beside glacial rivers, and strolled around Talkeetna at midnight in the soft summer light (no flashlight required).
On previous trips, carrying her work with us was simply part of being us. We didn’t dwell on it. So, the difference its absence made surprised me, the lack of those distractions deepening not just her ability to be present but mine, amplifying our pleasure and the connection we felt—to each other and whatever we were doing in the moment, including just being. It felt like playing hooky, like getting away with something.
What would happen when I went back to work?
The benefits of a retired spouse (or an elf) in the house
What I noticed first after school started was how groceries appeared in the fridge. After 15 years as our main grocery shopper, it seemed like a tiny kind of magic. I’d add bananas to our Google Keep list and within days, they’d materialize in the fruit bowl.
Then it was dinner that I didn’t cook. Not every night, but more often. More times when the scent of sauteed onions or seasonings in a bubbling soup greeted me when I opened the door. I noticed a sort of “ahhhh” in my body sometimes, a subconscious response to that aromatic signal that sustenance was on its way.
Since late September, when Annette returned from a three-week road trip to visit friends in Michigan, we’ve settled into a rhythm.
Most mornings, she’s still asleep when I leave for work, but that was true when she was working. Early morning is my quiet time, late night is hers. Not everything is new.
The small notebook in our kitchen is. Annette’s idea. We leave notes to each other in it a few times each week—reminders of an event or appointment, mundane details like the fact that I’ve left half of a banana in the fridge for her cereal, and lots of I love you’s and good wishes for the day ahead.
When I get home, we share updates about our day, asking, How was your day? rather than What did you do today? Retirement, even when it does not yet apply to both of us, nudged us to stop measuring a day’s worth by the to-do’s that get done.
As October unfolded, a tension I hadn’t even known was there gradually released, as if our home had been holding its breath.
Taking a cue from neighbors who build haunted tunnels in their yard for Halloween, Annette suggested that we decorate our yard too, and that we wear costumes and sit at the end of the driveway beside our portable fire pit with a cauldron of candy. Other neighbors do that too, but we’d never taken the time before.
It was as if the work worries that had occupied a nation in the continent of her mind decamped, freeing new territory for creativity and play. She’s always had a youthful spirit, a joyful wonder and sense of humor that’s part of what makes her so irresistible. This wider field of time renewed that spirit like I imagine exploring the woody ravine near her childhood home did when she was a girl, sparking a merriment that was catching.
It’s one of the best things about love, isn’t it? The way that seeing your beloved’s smile, a smile that shines in their eyes, feels like a sunrise inside.
At a holiday open house that Annette proposed so we could share warm cider and cookies, reindeer and rainbow lights, and indoor gnomes, angels, and Santas with our friends and family, I tried to explain these changes to someone who asked how things have been going since Annette retired.
As I described the groceries and dinners, the playfulness, and the fresh towels that show up in my bathroom, he said, “it sounds like having an elf in the house.”
“Yes!” I grinned. “Yes, it is.”
Annette isn’t fond of the elf analogy. Those pointy shoes and striped socks would not be her jam, and a house elf that did my bidding, well that wouldn’t do at all. Knowing that these changes feel magical to me? That makes her happy.
I’m not saying that her retirement hasn’t come with any challenges. As she anticipates her upcoming trip with her brother and sister-in-law, I am a little envious. Ditto when she spends a whole day writing. Our budget is smaller which has required some adjustments, but we’re tracking our grocery spending and other variable expenses on envelopes that we update as we add receipts—another Annette suggestion. I was skeptical, but it’s working.
And it’s not like we didn’t know this chapter was coming. When we met with our minister before our wedding, we discussed what our age difference could mean as we got older. This was one of the topics. We’ve had time to prepare.
Time. These changes: grocery shopping, a few more dinners, fresh towels, they aren’t enormous things, but they matter and they add up. It feels like there are more minutes in my week—because there are.
The biggest difference, though, is the delight that Annette finds in her freedom from work demands and clocks. Picture an elf humming or singing as they make toys. That’s the kind of energy that’s in our house now. That’s what I come home to.
In celebration of the sea along Alaska’s coastlines and the starfish and other creatures that wowed us there, here’s a poem for your pocket until the next post: maggie and milly and molly and may by e.e. cummings.
Note to readers: Thank you for reading Furrow and Fire and for leaving comments. This month marks two years on Substack! For the next six months, I’ll be taking a break from posting here so I can focus on other writing—but I’ll return. Stay cozy this winter and enjoy the blossoming of spring. I’ll post again in late July.