Here we go again. Another countdown, another go at retirement. I think it’s the 4th time I’ve tried to retire. There have been so many failures, it's hard to count. This work gig started out as a 4 month commitment, which turned into 7 months. I’m going to try to make it stick because it would be embarrassing to be a 5 time loser. For one, I’m almost 60. I’m tired of pulling these all day-ers. When you are nearly 60, afternoon delight is the indescribable feeling of putting in ear plugs, pulling the sleep mask on and taking a sweet, sweet nap.
I’ve thought a lot about how you occupy your time in retirement - reading, writing, continuous learning, exercise, impulsive off season travel and maybe a side hustle or two. Because I'll be retired (again) I guess they'll just be hustles. One of my very favorite side hustles was growing papayas when we lived in Saipan. I had a good six years of abject failure. I did have one year of a few freak seedless, incredibly tasty papayas, but it was total crap shoot. Mostly I'd end up with wild papayas or useless males. Throw in the tropical storms and typhoons, which occurred with frightening regularity, and trying to grow anything there is a labor of love. Then I went to a papaya seminar at the University of Guam (yes, such a thing existed) and learned all of the papaya secrets, and no, I'm not going to tell you. But the next season was, as they say in Saipan farming jargon, jackpot. All of the papayas were either female or hermaphrodite (translation: they all had fruit). The fruit was uniform in size, texture and taste.
There's my daughter with some of the papayas, and yes, they were all like that. I was a hero. The old farmers in my village came to me and asked me for papaya growing advice. I gave them the same bullshit answers they used to give me when I asked them for their secrets: pick out the blackest seeds. Put them in water, then only plant the ones that sink. Or plant only the ones that float. Only take seeds from the bottom half of the papaya. And they ended up with wild papayas or males.
The family we lived with? They got all the secrets. And suddenly, just like the prized betel nut that grew in As-teo, it looked like it was a very special place for papayas as well. Just the sweet water and soil, I guess. They gave me a chunk of land to grow more papayas on, which I cleared with a machete. I was a few years younger then. I could do whatever I wanted to do with the papayas, the caveat was when it was fiesta time, I would donate whatever I had on hand so they could make papaya coco (pickled papaya) for fiesta. And what I wanted to do was eat a lot of papaya and sell some to the high end hotels - that was my side hustle.
And that papaya growing at one fiesta led to one of my more embarrassing moments in Saipan. Every village had a fiesta to honor their patron Saint. We lived close to the Shrine of Santa Lourdes, and you guessed it, she was our Saint. If you are part of a village in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, you participate in the fiesta. You contribute food, money and/or your time preparing the food. I had graduated from the grunt work of peeling garlic and cutting onion to contributing papaya and cooking food - this year, I was helping fry chicken with some guy I didn't know named Ramon who was dressed in ratty Army fatigues. We made small talk for a while, then got around to asking what we did on island, I told him I was a teacher at San Vicente Elementary School, he said he worked at the Court. I asked him what he did there and he said he was a judge. And then it hit me. Ahhhhhh. I had been frying chicken with Supreme Court Justice Ramon Villagomez. Doh.
Retirement? Like Bill Clinton said, I have more yesterdays than tomorrow’s, so starting January 4, 2020, I’ll be trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, this time with a bit more urgency.
I’ve thought a lot about how you occupy your time in retirement - reading, writing, continuous learning, exercise, impulsive off season travel and maybe a side hustle or two. Because I'll be retired (again) I guess they'll just be hustles. One of my very favorite side hustles was growing papayas when we lived in Saipan. I had a good six years of abject failure. I did have one year of a few freak seedless, incredibly tasty papayas, but it was total crap shoot. Mostly I'd end up with wild papayas or useless males. Throw in the tropical storms and typhoons, which occurred with frightening regularity, and trying to grow anything there is a labor of love. Then I went to a papaya seminar at the University of Guam (yes, such a thing existed) and learned all of the papaya secrets, and no, I'm not going to tell you. But the next season was, as they say in Saipan farming jargon, jackpot. All of the papayas were either female or hermaphrodite (translation: they all had fruit). The fruit was uniform in size, texture and taste.
The family we lived with? They got all the secrets. And suddenly, just like the prized betel nut that grew in As-teo, it looked like it was a very special place for papayas as well. Just the sweet water and soil, I guess. They gave me a chunk of land to grow more papayas on, which I cleared with a machete. I was a few years younger then. I could do whatever I wanted to do with the papayas, the caveat was when it was fiesta time, I would donate whatever I had on hand so they could make papaya coco (pickled papaya) for fiesta. And what I wanted to do was eat a lot of papaya and sell some to the high end hotels - that was my side hustle.
And that papaya growing at one fiesta led to one of my more embarrassing moments in Saipan. Every village had a fiesta to honor their patron Saint. We lived close to the Shrine of Santa Lourdes, and you guessed it, she was our Saint. If you are part of a village in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, you participate in the fiesta. You contribute food, money and/or your time preparing the food. I had graduated from the grunt work of peeling garlic and cutting onion to contributing papaya and cooking food - this year, I was helping fry chicken with some guy I didn't know named Ramon who was dressed in ratty Army fatigues. We made small talk for a while, then got around to asking what we did on island, I told him I was a teacher at San Vicente Elementary School, he said he worked at the Court. I asked him what he did there and he said he was a judge. And then it hit me. Ahhhhhh. I had been frying chicken with Supreme Court Justice Ramon Villagomez. Doh.
Retirement? Like Bill Clinton said, I have more yesterdays than tomorrow’s, so starting January 4, 2020, I’ll be trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, this time with a bit more urgency.
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