The Things I love Most in Life.

Peanut butter is one of my all-time favorites. Forget the jelly. I love it with sliced bananas or apples, on a matzo topped with apple sauce, or between two graham crackers. Then, again, a tablespoon of peanut butter just on its own is pretty good too! And Justin’s is the best.

Mostly, I look forward to getting up in the morning and going to bed at night, taking a long hot shower, going braless in the house, and barefoot in the grass.

Then there’s food. I live to eat—but, given all my allergies, I have to keep it simple: an egg on toast for breakfast, tuna or chicken salad for lunch, Vodka-and-Tonic with a good Irish Cheddar and a few sesame breadsticks mid-afternoon and, for dinner, some salmon or pasta with greens or veggies, and yogurt or melon for dessert. A sliced banana with Justin’s peanut butter is my favorite late night snack. But just plain peanut butter scooped out of the jar with my pointer finger will do.

I love vacations, but I was 21 before I took my first one. My family never went on vacation. They got away by visiting relatives every year in Massachusetts or Nova Scotia, but these visits were considered more of a duty than a vacation. In fact, vacations were frowned upon as being self-serving and too expensive. The only vacation my mother took was when she was 40, though it was hardly a vacation. She went to St. Anne de Beaupre in Quebec, the oldest religious pilgrimage in North America, and prayed to St. Anne to cure my father from TB. Her prayers were never answered. Dad died the following year.

That first vacation was my honeymoon in Mexico.  My family didn’t understand why my husband and I went so far away, and wondered why Niagara Falls or the Poconos didn’t suffice. I loved Mexico, but it took me many years to accept vacation as a legitimate way to getting away from it all, that I didn’t have to earn or deserve. Of course, I learned that no vacation leaves you fully immune to the tolls of life you try to leave at home; you bring your baggage with you wherever you go. But there’s no way that I’d give them up. They’ve become an important reprieve in my life—whether for a weekend or a week—to temporarily suspend daily worries and abandon my cares.

I love being retired. I don’t have to set an alarm for the morning and or worry about getting enough sleep at night. I’m my own boss and give myself my own performance reviews; they tend to be a lot more lenient than my reviews were at work. I do not miss early morning appointments, crowded subways, and Sunday night blues, and I love going to Wednesday matinees, early evening dinners, and moving my dresses, suits and heels to the back of the closet to make room for my sweat pants, t-shirts and sneakers.

But, as much as I enjoy retirement, working did have its virtues: It helped to center my day and focus my mind. It gave me an excuse for not returning the calls of neighbors I was trying to ignore. It enabled me to also ignore the dust under the bed, the dead bugs under the radiator, and the crumbs under the kitchen table. Then, too, working made it easier to overlook the dirty windows, the cat hairs on the couch, and the new cracks in the living room ceiling. All that said, though, I much prefer the retired life.

I’m fortunate to be on the board of my co-op and president of my local Democratic Club. Both of them provide the sense of community that I grew to love growing up in a boarding house and which I’ve continued to need in my retired life. The co-op gives me a sense of extended family, especially since my daughter lives directly next door to me, and the Democratic Club gets me involved in grassroots politics and keeps me sane in the midst of so much political insanity.

Crossing items off my to-do list also gives me tremendous pleasure, as does getting on the scale and finding I’ve lost two pounds, having my first cup of coffee in the morning, reading the New York Times, playing Words with Friends, and having lunch while watching CNN’s mid-day news.

Notice I haven’t mentioned how much I love being with my husband or my kids. I love them up to the moon, of course, and I never take them for granted. But they are not the daily antidotes I count on to take my mind off all the toxic things I don’t enjoy thinking about to get through the day.  

Yes, the births, the birthdays, the graduations, the marriages and the anniversaries can be counted on for wonderfully high spurts of enjoyment and pleasure. As Robert Frost has written, “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.” But the family celebrations don’t occur often enough in my life to get me through the days—it’s the little things in life that I count on to make my every day. The many small and recurring ways that are there at my fingertips.

The little things in life don’t rank as high as family and friends, but they’re the next best thing. And it’s up to me to make them happen.