On the Occasion of My Dad's Retirement

Dad on his 88th birthday

On Friday night, my parents and sister came to our house for dinner. I meant to have a cake or something special for my dad, because it was his last day of work, but somehow dessert never ends up factoring into my meal planning. I'm not sure he really felt like celebrating it, though.

The truth is, I can't quite imagine my dad not working--and not because he's a workaholic, or because his identity is tied up in what he does for a living, but just because he likes to stay occupied and he likes having a place to go and seeing new people.

Nine years ago, we had a retirement/birthday party for him, but right before the party, he decided that instead of retiring, he would just cut back to part time instead of retiring. He was 80 then, and I think he was hoping to keep working until his birthday this year, when he will be 90. So if anyone deserves to kick back and take it easy, it's my dad.

Dad with my grandpa, circa 1945

I don't know what Dad's hopes and ambitions were for his life when he was a young man, but probably he assumed he would keep farming the land that he and his father had been farming--and he was doing just that when he met a young nursing student at a church singles' group. They married soon after she graduated, and he was past 40 when three children came along.

I've often wished I could know what went on in the conversations that took place in which my dad was convinced to leave Indiana, the only home he had ever known, and go out west, with no particular town in mind, with the object of finding someplace they liked where there was a motel for sale. I have my ideas of how that went, but even if I were to ask them now, I don't know if I would find out the whole story. But in any case, we ended up in Durango, Colorado, the owners of the Alpine North Motel on Main Street. And then we ended up in Peru for a couple of years, where my parents were sort of "temp missionaries." When we came back to Durango, we didn't have the motel anymore, but there were two mini storage businesses.

And then, in 1978, we moved again, this time to Asheville, NC, where my parents still live. They were small business owners again for a little while, but it wasn't a good fit and didn't really work out, so my dad went out and got a job.

When I was 12 and he was 54, he started working as a locksmith at Alan Shaw Company. I remember him bringing home the cylinders and pins and showing me how to put different sized pins in a cylinder lock and how a key is cut to match the pins so that it will open the lock. For 35 years, he's been keying locks and installing them, working on projects big and small, in people's homes and in schools and hospitals.

It may not sound like a very exciting job, but one of the beautiful things about my dad is that he always found something interesting about his work day--someone he had spoken to, or a new route he had discovered while driving to a site, or the particulars of the job itself. When my son and I lived with my parents for a while after my divorce, we all ate dinner together in the evening, and he always had a story about his work day.

Dad with my son, planting his small garden patch

It is rare, going out in public with my dad, that someone doesn't come up and speak to him--and often it's someone he's met on a job site. These days, he's more likely than he used to be not to remember who the person is, but they never know it, because he greets them all in the same friendly way. But these are the people he would talk about at dinner--the janitor whose wife was battling cancer, the contractor who knew a guy Dad went to high school with.

A book could be written about the lessons to be learned from a guy like my dad, but I think the thing I admire the most about him is his absolute contentment. A couple of weeks ago I got a fortune cookie that said, "Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation." I understand the truth of that in terms of the big picture, but in terms of daily living, my dad's quiet contentment with his lot in life is, I think, the way to really live.