Two friends turned 65 and threw themselves a Medicare birthday party. We drank margaritas, played bocce ball and frolicked long past our bedtimes. It was hard to imagine our friends being 65. Or any of us ageless agile people who all looked gorgeous by candlelight.

But that’s what happens. You look up one day and you’re old enough for Medicare. Which makes being 65 something to shout about. At least loud enough to put your age on a government document and celebrate with sympathetic contemporaries. It means you have made it to the finish line. At least one of them. You can stop worrying about health insurance.

It’s not exactly the same thrill as being old enough to take your driver’s test or vote or order a drink. But it’s a definite rite of passage. Sixty five - the new 21. Bring on the black balloons.

I remember being at a dinner party a few years ago and realizing that our conversation had been dominated by deductibles, COBRA and pre-existing conditions. When did health insurance get to be so sexy, I asked the silver-haired marvel on my right.

Back then we griped about employers switching to health plans that didn’t include our long-time family doctor. We talked about co-pays going up. About sticking with a job just for the benefits. Things weren’t as grim as they are now, but the concern was starting to creep in that something a lot of us had taken for granted all our working lives was eroding.

Sixty five - the new 21. Bring on the black balloons.

Now that health insurance has turned into a huge, slippery pile of lies, threats and insecurity, you can turn 65 and be glad to be over that particular hill. No more worrying that you’ll lose your coverage. And the doctor finds something awful which costs bags of gold to fix. And you have to sell your home and move in with the kids.

Bad economic times color one’s perspective on many things. Suddenly it’s not so bad to be getting older. The worst recession in 80 years can make a person grateful to have lived long enough to climb into one or two life boats. Medicare and Social Security may be leaking but at least you’ve got a seat.

Well, at least for the time being. The relief could be brief, because there are mighty forces trying to torpedo the life boats. Opponents of Social Security and Medicare would like to undo both, leave it to individuals to find their own best deals. Critics, including members of Congress, sneer at these government guarantees like they’re some kind of public assistance. They call them entitlements. But wait a minute. Social Security and Medicare are no more entitlements than members of Congress get with their own socialized health insurance, made in the USA.

For us regular people, they’re a return on our long-time investments. We’ve had money taken from our pay checks for Medicare and Social Security ever since we started working. It’s been our deal with the government, that there’d be this sure thing when we needed it.

Not that it’s enough. You have to buy a supplement if you want more than bare bones Medicare. And Social Security is a nice allowance but you can’t live on it. Most people expect to also rely on their greater savings, investments and pension. But look what’s happened to them. No sure thing there, either. Plenty of retirees turn around and go back to work.

When I asked in a bookstore for books on retirement the clerk, in gray ponytail and Birkenstocks, said, “Who can afford to retire?” I’m starting to worry that he might be right. Maybe we need to change the lyrics in the song from, “I hope I die before I get old,” to “I hope I die before I go broke.”

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com

Dear reader: I don’t know where you are in this retirement experience – enjoying it, dreading it, denying you’re in it, can’t wait for it? But if you’re like me you definitely find it puzzling. Which is what I’ll be writing about from time to time under this post My So-Called Retirement. I hope you weigh in because as always, when it comes to change and challenge, we need each other.

The word retirement definitely has image problems. Google “retirement” or look it up in the dictionary and you’ll see a basic definition: withdrawal from one’s position or occupation.

It follows, then, that to be retired is to be withdrawn, in retreat, backed off, removed. On the outside. Synonyms for retire include: to stop, adjourn and to dispose of, as in, “She retired her white zip-up boots.” Then there is “retire” referring to a type of behavior - meaning overly modest, often linked by the adjective “shy,” as in, “He yearned for the days of shy, retiring women.”

Look, too, at what the media does with the word. In a story about Harrison Ford’s movie career still going strong at age 67 the headline read: “Ford says he’s not retiring, still feels useful on set.” So what does that say about being retired? That you are no longer useful?

So far, my favorite alternative is “jubilada,” the Spanish word for retired.

Other synonyms for retirement include: ending, termination, seclusion, hibernation, rustication, solitude, obscurity. When connected with a graphic image, there is often a picture of a hammock suspended between palm trees.

The hammock is a nice time-out image, but do you want to spend the rest of your life in one? Feeling terminated, rusticated and obscure? Of course, that might seem perfectly glorious to people. But for me and I suspect for many the word retired and its stereotypes don’t fit.

And so we make efforts to tweak the R-word. Martha, a minister emeritus, tells people she is on a “re-adventure.” When I asked on Facebook for alternative words for retired, I got suggestions like: rewired, released, renewed, rejuvenated, revised, remodeled, recycled. There’s also recalculated, like what your GPS does when sensing a detour.

If you look for books on retirement you’ll recognize attempts to gloss up the image by referring to retirement as “the third age,” or “the encore years.”

So far my favorite alternative is jubilada, the Spanish word for retired. It sounds like well, …jubilant. Euphoric, elated, giddy with freedom.

And some people are.

My very smart sister-in-law retired last year from teaching elementary and middle school and is delighted to be done. She took her car to get serviced and sat next to a woman with a fat stack of papers she was grading. “I don’t miss that,” she said.

I met a woman who used to be with the FBI and adores retirement. The image, the word, all of it. She spent her working years being refined, she said. “But now I get to be outrageous.”

But then I asked a friend, who retired to Mexico how she was enjoying her new freedom.
“I spent all my life thinking only about wanting free time. I must have thought I had a million things to accomplish. Now I’m not sure what they were.”

But yes, she does prefer to call herself “jubilada” rather than retired.

DEAR READER,
I don’t know where you are in this retirement experience – enjoying it, dreading it, denying you’re in it, can’t wait for it? But if you’re like me you definitely find it puzzling. Which is what I’ll be writing about from time to time in My So-Called Retirement. I hope you weigh in because as always, when it comes to change and challenge, we need each other’s help.

I used to sympathize with my friends who didn’t work but stayed home and raised kids and who dreaded the “What do you do?” question at parties. Their answer “I’m a mom,” would get them little but a polite smile from others who would then turn to scan the crowd for someone more interesting.

I could argue on behalf of those women that anyone who didn’t respect the hard job of being a mother wasn’t worth talking to. I, too, was a mother, and I was on their side.

But I was on the other side, too. I didn’t have to avoid the question at parties. I, in fact, looked forward to it. I had a better answer. And did that make me feel a little bit superior? Sure.

“I’m a newspaper reporter,” I said and later, down the road, I could add the even sexier, “I’m a columnist.” That usually got their attention. If a person recognized my name they might try to be flattering and mention something I’d written. Or they might become a little antagonistic, like the guy who said he liked my writing except for when I sounded like a feminist. Sometimes a person would use me as their chance to rant about the media. But they never just turned away.

I was advised by a friend to never answer “retired” when asked what I did.

When I first left my regular newspaper job more than a year ago, I was advised by a friend to never answer “retired” when asked what I did. “Tell them you do something,” she said. “It makes you seem young.”

That’s part of it, isn’t it? To say you’re retired creates an image attached to an age (old), a lifestyle (sedentary) and value (past). People envy retired people their time, but not their standing.

My generation of women (the Boomer vanguard) was the first to swarm into the workplace in a big way. We were educated women, trained for careers that came with a business card and status. Then, after 30 or 40 years of it, we stopped doing it. Maybe we had no choice because someone said it’s time to go. Or maybe, like for me, we chose to go. The newspaper business was in a downward dive when I left. It had stopped being fun, and to tell you the truth I wanted to exit before someone decided to take away my column and force me to write cops and robbers or spend weekends covering some NASCAR race.

When people ask me what I do now, I say “writer.” And if they say, “I thought you retired,” I start explaining that just because I no longer go into a newsroom every day and just because I get a pension doesn’t mean I’m actually retired. At least not in the classic sense. I’m doing it my way and I’ll tell them more once I figure it out.

People envy retired people their time, but not their standing.

I was at the beach with my dog and spotted a woman I had once interviewed for the paper. She had been a college instructor and I asked her how it was going and she said she’s never been happier since retiring. And what, I inquired, does she answer when people ask what she’s doing now. “I say I’m just being,” she said.

Now, this woman is at a point where I am not. She looked regal, her long silver blonde hair twisting in the sea breeze, a black poncho wrapped around her tall lean frame. When she and her elegant dog trotted off down the beach I pulled my dog off a rotting seagull and thought, well, there’s a role model. I never thought about “just being.”

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol, Ca. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com