Tuesday. Mid-December. A Workday.

Tuesday.  Mid-December.  A Workday.

The rain was coming down on Tuesday, not in driving buckets or torrents of storm-lashed water, but in misty cold veils and swirling eddies of raindrops and vapor.  The sky was a leaden-gray color and the wind blew - now in gusts and later in lazy zephyrs and whirls.  It should have been colder as it was mid-December, but it wasn’t.  The 48-degree temperature more resembled a day in early March – fitful in its unpredictability and unable to be nailed down.

I should have been a little depressed, I suppose.  I’ve been known to mimic the weather with my mood on occasion – sunny on bright days and morose on days such as this one.  But I wasn’t.  I was perversely in a good mood and feeling quite optimistic.  I had the radio tuned to my favorite classic rock station and was enjoying its offerings at a higher volume than normal – pretty doggoned loud, actually, as I sang and hummed along with the familiar tunes to the best of my ability.

My quest for the day was a lunch with a friend of mine at a restaurant north of Akron to be followed by a stop at the office where I used to work to drop off some Christmas cards and a platter of cookies and candy for the troops.

The parking lots of the businesses and factories that I passed that day were full and the work of the world was being accomplished as I rumbled past, glancing occasionally in their direction as my pleasure directed me.  This was the start of my fourth week of retirement and the business of business was starting to seem a bit removed from my new norm, the workers seeming an odd bunch as they scurried and hurried here and there doing whatever it was that they did.  I observed without comment or much thought.  The world was as it was and I was now removed from that portion of it.

For that I was glad.

And it was a workday Tuesday and I was off for a relaxing lunch.  That still seemed a remarkable thing.

The rain was not quite strong enough for the intermittent setting on the wipers, so I had to reach up and hit the handle now and again to clear the view.  The miles drifted by under my tires, hissing with that wet road sound that we’re all familiar with and the radio kept me rockin’ with AC/DC, The Stones, Jimmi, Zep, Queen, ZZ Top and all the other immortals.  I was cookin’, I was grinnin’ and the miles were passing by.

I arrived at my restaurant destination at the agreed upon time and soon was sitting in a booth with my friend Larry.  We’d not seen each other much in the past three years and we had oodles to talk about.  He brought me up to speed on what had been happening in his life since his retirement and I caught him up on what interesting things had gone on at the office during that same time period.  We gabbed and laughed and enjoyed each other’s company, each one of our stories triggering similar tales from the other.  The food was also excellent, Larry’s filet steak and whiskey, my honey-glazed chicken and lemonade.  Our sitting there as equals was a situation a little different than it had been in the past as we were no longer supervisor and subordinate, but two old retired friends who were comfortable in each other’s company and who wished each other well.

It was kind of odd and kind of nice at the same time.

Several things that Larry said that afternoon hit me as important enough to remember – insights, perhaps, on the way he thought and the way the world worked, at least to his eyes.  He recounted one of his last trips to the office – on a visit about a year ago perhaps – and a question that he had asked his replacement.  Dave was the name of the guy in question and he had worked as Larry’s assistant for many years before Larry retired.  He was assigned to Larry’s old supervisory job and had been performing those duties with expertise and competency during my last several years on the job.  The position in question was that of County water department supervisor. His responsibility was to operate, maintain and, when needed, expand the county municipal water system.  Larry had worked there long enough to truthfully state that it was “his” water system.  He’d build more than half of it while he was employed there and it was, in all respects other than formal title, his baby.

During that last visit to the office and during his conversation with Dave, Larry had asked him, “Is it your water system now?” stressing the word “your”.  He was of course referring to the invisible reins of responsibility that would fall on the new supervisor when he was, at last, comfortable with the myriad facets of the job.

Dave answered simply, “Yes.”

Larry said he was happy with the answer and the underlying meaning that both men knew the answer entailed.  Dave was, at last, “The Man”.

It’s funny how certain things strike you.  That statement packed a lot of meaning in a very few words and I’ll remember it for a long time.

After a few hours of good food, good drink and good conversation, Larry and I bid each other adieu and I adjourned again into the wet windy afternoon.

I drove the next 40 minutes or so, feeling fine and enjoying the world going about its workday around me. I passed through the various neighborhoods and communities between the restaurant and my former workplace in a bubble of contentment, enjoying my present role as observer and not participant.

I arrived there, totally by coincidence, at about the same time I used to arrive when I was working second shift.  I dropped off the goodies which were well received and distributed the Christmas cards to my former work-mates.  I chit-chatted with the folks, the first-shift ones who were heading off to home shortly and the second-shift ones who were settling down to their long evening of work.  It had only been three weeks since I’d been an employee there, but the disconnect was obvious.  My desk was now someone else’s, the furniture was somewhat rearranged, the work I had once done was being done by others.

I was now a visitor and it was obvious.  They belonged to the class of the gainfully employed.  I no longer did.  I was the visitor, the retiree, the Old Guy who used to work there.  Only three weeks separated my station from theirs, but it was as big a divide as day and night, plus and minus.

The quick and the dead.

But when I left, my mood was not sad or mournful at my change in station, my new place in the scheme of things.  I wasn’t melancholy or wishing I could return to the ranks of the wage earners.  Through the corner of my eyes I thought I could see the envy written on my former fellow employee’s faces, the subtle urge for them to also call it quits, to also return to their homes as I was now doing and to be done with the toil and turmoil of work.  To call it a day…

To join the ranks of the retirees as I had done.

But perhaps what I thought I saw was only a reflection of my own smiling face in a shiny piece of metal in the office.

I bid them all a fond farewell as I left and again motored south into the rapidly approaching December night, again grooving to the old rock songs and the hissing tires on the asphalt, again retracing the route I’d taken hundreds of times in the past from work to home.  Before I knew it I was again pulling into my driveway and saying hello to my wife, my son and my eagerly appreciative dog.

I was again home, I was still retired and all was well with the world.

It was a Tuesday in mid-December and a workday.