On November 5, 2011 I retired. Sixty-five is too old to wear a badge and a gun and answer 9-1-1 calls in the middle of the night. When I quit I thought I could still do it but I didn’t know how much longer that would last. I had these ideas of starting another career, maybe going to law school or just going to college. People wanted me to stay in Parks, become a boat operator. My heart attack a year before made me realize that I wasn’t going to go on forever, that I needed to stop and enjoy life and that would be OK. So I quit. I retired.
I had some money saved. The last year or two in Parks I even put some more aside on top of the generous retirement credits I got from CalPers. My investments, mutual funds, had grown back after the market crash of 2008 and by 2011 were nearly back to what they had been. I applied for Social Security and there was Social Security for dependents under 18. With my City of San Francisco time and then the State I got 20% of my final pay in CalPers retirement. And with my 30 years of paying Social Security tax there was no reduction to offset the CalPers.
I think this was probably one of the most anxious times in my life. What would retirement be like? I focused on money but really it was about not having a job, connections, identity and status. I had resisted being a retiree when I quit work in 1999 but this time I had no claim to anything else. I didn’t have a good image of retirees. What does a retiree really do? I knew the stereotypes and what I had seen. I didn’t want to raise tomatoes and talk about writing a book. I didn’t want to buy an RV and tour America. I certainly wasn’t going to become a gardener. I had no role model that worked for me.
My Dad didn’t retire until he was 75 and could no longer work and then he just stayed home and puttered. My mother said he was writing a book. When he passed away I found a notebook about the Balkans but it was mostly gibberish and didn’t make much sense to me. My grandfather was still a drunk when he stopped working. My Lashley grandfather was a cripple and sat in the doorway of his tar paper shack and smoked hand rolled cigarettes. My uncle was a working artist and kept working until he passed away.
I wasn’t going to be a police officer until I was 75. I really never liked working. Before retirement we moved off the island to an apartment near Lake Merritt. As to what I was going to do in retirement I’d made a few transitions in my life so I had at least an idea of how I wanted to start retirement. I would be on vacation, put off making any plans for three months. I don’t remember much of what I did, puttered around, enjoyed living on the Main Land in one of my favorite neighborhoods anywhere, Grand Lake in Oakland.
Suzette and I planned to move to a Spanish speaking country for a year. I was beginning to settle on Uruguay because it has a good government and a European feel to it. Then I realized if European was an appeal that maybe Spain was the right place to go and we began looking into that.
We went to the Spanish consulate and started learning about moving there. We met friends of friends who had lived in Grenada for a couple of years and he had written a small book about it. Then sometime in that year my Father-in Law convinced his daughter that that was a bad move for her in her career, too risky and she listened to him. His torpedo sunk the plan.
When my Social Security check went into my account, it was like magic, we were there, and it was bigger than I thought it would be. My CalPers check arrived and it was a real check bigger than I expected. CalPers seemed like a gift. I didn't get the Juvy job and then State Parks thinking about retirement but CalPers turned out to be a very good deal for me. Medicare kicked in and I got the Senior Advantage from Kaiser. Adam’s Social Security check game and that was another gift. There was a final check from Parks for compensating overtime and unused vacation and it was about 3 months pay. At least for the first year I had plenty of cash and Suzette had a good job. We had money in our pockets, paid our bills and got by. We were going to be just fine.
And in December I started a blog. I wrote a piece about making bread. The ember of writing a biography that had been smoldering for years flamed and in January I began it.
In retirement, I had the time, and I did what I enjoyed, I wrote every day. I was a writer. One of the things I enjoy about writing, is that when I do a piece, some work on it, an hour or two of intense writing, I feel free for the rest of the day. I produced something and that’s enough.
Suzette went off to work, Adam went to daycare and in the evening I picked them up. I had the whole day to myself. I wrote, I bicycled, I enjoyed the lake, I read, I met with friends, I did whatever I wanted.
The results were readable. Nothing I write is good enough but readable is good. It was a biography for my family, for my great grandchildren, people who will never know me. It was a gift to them.
In July, 2012 Arom, Suzette's 17 year old son moved back in with us. Before in 2007 and 08 Arom spent a difficult year with us on Angel Island and then went to Florida to live with his dad. John was in grad school and it wasn’t a good time for either one of them. One night Arom threatened his father with a knife, the cops were called and Arom picked up a Juvenile record. Arom told us after that John got a teaching job in Brazil and couldn’t take Arom with him. He was coming back to California. As far as I know there was no job in Brazil.
Arom is a good kid. He’s bright, he’s handsome, and when he’s himself he’s very charming; he has a wonderful smile. I knew that from my coworkers and friends on Angel Island. But the Arom I got was angry. The way I came into the picture didn’t make him any happier. I think Arom was really upset at all the changes in his life, things were out of control and when I was around I was the focus of all his problems. I understood as a kid he was doing the best he could to survive. I tried to be helpful. I think sometimes he’d recognize that and occasionally I’d be asked for advice or help, but most of the time Arom was just angry.
Suzette found us a house to rent in El Cerrito and we moved there, Suzette and I, Paloma and Arom. It was three bedrooms and had a large family room downstairs. Arom had found The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It’s a popular book in Juvenile Hall and prisons. It’s the Thug’s Handbook or how to be successful by being an asshole. Greene was a minor entertainment company executive, an industry well known for it’s lack of ethics. He rewrote Machiavelli in present day. It’s been one of the top 10 books read in US. prisons ever since. Arom carried his copy around like a bible and did everything he could to make my life miserable. Whenever our eyes crossed he gave me the mad dog look.
At heart Arom really was a nice kid, sensitive and thin skinned; his intimidating angry Black Man never really quite worked. But as a 17 year old with focus, persistence, and righteousness he did a good job of making my life as miserable as he could.
I continued with my writing and got to the end of my story at that time, to retirement and I was done. It was good. Each piece I had done what I needed to get that, wrote first draft dumps, let them simmer, and then rewrote them. Sometimes I started over with more focus. I'd polish it, revise it and then I post it on my blog. My goal was to publish one piece every week or two and I did. The pieces had to be good enough to put out in public. Years ago my writing had taken a leap forward when I heard the Hollywood saying, “Did you want it perfect or do you want it done?”
I had done it, a first draft a full biography. I knew I needed to go over it, sew it together and make it flow, but I had a first draft and for then that was good enough. I was going to let it sit for awhile before I went back to it. I needed a break. I was tired of writing.
After that I would occasionally write something but I no longer wrote regularly. I didn't give myself goals or deadline and not much happened.
It was hard to work with Arom around. He was the angry young Black man at every opportunity intentionally self centered and rude. He was going to join the Army and began the dance with the recruiter who became his best friend and encouraged him to think of himself as already the almost war hero. Unfortunately he omitted his Florida Juvenile record on his application. When they did a background check that was enough to disqualify him.
He finished high school and graduated. Arom had a sister in Boston who had lived with Suzette, John and Arom in Berkeley 12 years before. She had had a break with the family and moved out of the apartment and went to live with a friend’s family. She had formed a bond with her friend’s mother, Cricket. Cricket was willing to take Arom in when he graduated from high school.
That lasted for most of the summer when Cricket told him they were moving and he had to leave. He was coming back to us.
About that time his grandmother my mother-in-law came up and took over. Arom was going to live with us and somehow he was going to get his life together and go on from there. I put a time limit on that and said he couldn’t stay with us forever unless he was going to school and had a job. We were not going to support him laying around the house radiating anger. It was sad, his real nature being so sweet and his efforts to cope so sincere, but he was making my life miserable. Suzette was passive. Somehow I was the adult who was supposed to give Arom what he needed, to finally begin to cope and grow up. I was the last adult in the world that Arom would listen to. There was nothing I could do to make it better.
He went to Berkeley City College but his attitude had if anything turned worse. The Army had been a big disappointment to Arom and Arom’s coping skills, being a hostile and scary young man, did not help. He looked for work and couldn’t find a job. I asked him how he was going about that. He said he presented himself very professionally and gave me his deepest voice and angry young Black man war hero look. It was unfortunate that Arom did not have anybody whose advice he could accept. He was doing the best he could but with 48 Laws of Power and professional demeanor it wasn’t working very well.
As Fall came I had had it with Arom. He went to classes part of the day and was an angry presence in the house the rest of the day. My agreement with his grandmother was that he could stay with us a short time if he went to school and had a job. Now he was planning to join Job Corps on a nonresidential program and live with us. I had not worked my whole life and retired to be responsible for someone else’s angry teenager.
His grandmother had a big family gathering to celebrate her 65th birthday with friends and family from all across the country. Arom went down to Corona to stay until Christmas. In the passive way that we all had it was understood that Arom was leaving and so he packed everything in his bag and gave me his keys. I knew staying with us wasn’t doing Arom any good.
After the celebration we returned home and then in December went to Corona for Christmas. Everything was OK, and then it came time to leave and I said we weren’t taking Arom with us.
Elvia, her brother Ervin, and James his grandfather all seemed to think I was responsible for Arom and told me I had to take him. That was one miserable afternoon. The whole Anderson clan screamed in my face, especially Uncle Ervin. Suzette was there but she didn't take part either way. There’s no doubt that people had abandoned Arom when he needed them, but it wasn’t me. He was 18 now and I wasn’t the person who could make up for that. We left without Arom.
And life went on. Since then no one in the family tells me anything about Arom. When I ask Suzette she says she doesn’t know. At his aunt’s wedding a year or two later he was there and still giving me the mad dog. I figured Arom will be one of those kids who never get to grow up and lives in the nether world of dependency on whomever will let him. Eight years later we were at the Andersons for Christmas and like the good dysfunctional family all is forgiven, or at least not talked about. Arom is not there and no one says anything about him. And then I see on the wall a diploma from UC Santa Cruz with Arom’s name on it. I did a quick internet search and Arom is working as an IT person in Santa Cruz.
After being with Arom at what was probably the most difficult time in his young life, it gives me a very good feeling to see he succeeded. I don’t know how he did it but to me that diploma said he figured it out and was doing well in life. I didn’t think he was ever going to be able to right himself and he did. Good man!
