Vindication
Don’t you just love it when some long-held belief ends up getting some validation and makes you feel that you are not so very stupid after all? I’m not so sure that I am as opinionated as some people, but I have more than my share of long-held views that inform my lifestyle and make me the way I am. I think we can call it the Popeye effect where we all huff and puff that “I yam what I yam!” I think this set of core lifestyle choices and cultural beliefs become more evident in retirement. We are stripped of our facades somewhat because we have largely removed our cultural body armor. In olden days, the armor one wore was not only a means of bodily protection during warfare, but also a status symbol that identified you for your nobility and societal status. The more elaborate and shiny your armor, the higher rank you likely held and the greater wealth you had to spend on your armor. Today’s version of all that ranges from custom-made bespoke Saville Row suits to designer dresses and suits from the major global luxury brands. We have learned to dress for success in an aspirational sense, but also to dress to show success as a declaration of both our arrival into the 1% and the good taste we have presumably brought with us to the table.
In retirement, you get to dress like you want and mostly battle armor is a distant memory with our stomping around focused on critters who eat our vegetation or little insects that want to both us on our hilltops. For the types of battles we now wage, we have a very different type of uniform. I have moved to a very different type of wardrobe in retirement that reflects far less about who I am and what I have to spend on clothes and more on what I like and what the weather reflects in my choice of garments. Last night I watched a movie that I had somehow missed on release. It starred Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, two of the old gold standard A-listers who represent the beautiful people of our older generation. Both actors are now in their mid-80’s and still look good. The movie, Our Souls at Night, is about two retired single people who choose to try to give each other companionship in their dotage. The small moment that I took note of was when Redford had to step out of his normal retired-guy daily routine and go into town for a nice Sunday lunch with Fonda in order to show the town that they were now a couple. He goes to his closet and you see him searching through about ten blue flannel plaid shirts before he finds a single solid white shirt on a hanger. He is a retired teacher, so his armor may have never consisted of bespoke custom suits, but he probably used to have more than one white shirt and probably fewer blue plaid flannel shirts.
My closet has a shifting landscape. What started at perhaps 30 suits, a dozen sports coats and two dozen dress slacks has been cut way down since those pieces of armor are wasted on me at this stage. I still have more armor suiting than I need or ever use but I hang onto them just in case I have a flurry of unexpected warfare in which to engage. For instance, I am heading to NYC this week to see my kids. I get medium-suited in casual armor for that trip just because midtown Manhattan, where we are staying, still seems a bit more formal than my hilltop in expected level of dress. Nothing fancy or elaborate, but not cargo pants and long-sleeved t-shirts either. That is my current battle gear for attacking the gardens on the hilltop. My going-out-to-dinner or classroom attire tends towards darker jeans and a buttoned-down open-collar dress shirt. For Manhattan, the going-out-to-dinner attire will be the best option. But from Manhattan I go on to Des Moines for some court testimony work. For that I have dusted off a grey suit that was made for me in 2009 (my tailor sews in fabrication dates on all suits and shirts). I have packed two new white dress shirts (I find that it never hurts to stay conservative on the witness stand, especially in a place like Des Moines) and three ties (one blue and two red, in honor of the political leanings in the state of Iowa). I will fly in and out wearing business casual, but in the courtroom, the full battle armor will be in evidence for all the same old reasons, most notably that it is expected and they are paying me a lot for my 45-year Wall Street resume and status.
I should also note that since summer seems to have finally arrived on the hilltop this week (nice friendly mid-70’s summer), I am mostly inclined to wear shorts for my daily routine. But shorts have all sorts of, (dare I say it?), short-comings. Shorts just never look very serious. Kids wear short pants, serious adults don’t. Shorts get your legs all nicked and scratched when you work the gardens of the hillside. Shorts also aren’t the best and safest choice when riding the motorcycle further than a casual drop-in on Mike. If I have to come down off the hilltop on the motorcycle, I do not want to be wearing shorts and exposing my skin to the horrors of road-rash, which I have had too many times in my life. There is nothing quite as uncomfortable as picking asphalt bits our of your skin over the length of a swath of leg that has unceremoniously connected with the pavement. When I first moved out here I thought I would wear shorts every day of the year. That got more realistic after about a year, as all the realities of life made themselves clear to my understanding of the optimal retirement wardrobe.
When I first started showing up places with my shorts and t-shirts, some people would suggest that I looked like a day laborer. I took that as more of a compliment than not. I have nothing to prove sartorially. I know I clean up well and can wear a suit and tie with the best of them. And after forty-five years of suiting up every week, day-after-day, I know I can handle it just fine for as long as is needed. At this stage of life, I only needed to dress to impress myself and even that is just about what works or doesn’t work for the occasion. The exception to all these dressing options was when I go to either play pickleball or would go to the gym with Kim for my Total Workout. It does not feel right to wear yard work shorts and t-shirts for that purpose. Athletic wear is somewhat more refined than yard work clothes. The shoes are certainly different, but so are the shorts and even the shirts. They are cleaner and more crisp. Decidedly less like a day laborer’s clothes.
My friend and college buddy Michael is a public health physician who served as an Air Force flight surgeon for many years. He recently read my blog about Mobility, and decided to comment on my lifestyle choices. He told me that my choice to do manual work on my hilltop gardens was the best way to get aerobic and strength workouts and that the longest-lived populations are those that do just that, work out of doors rather than go to the gym. That made me very happy for two reasons. First of all, I don’t like going to the gym and I do like the satisfaction of working in the garden. Secondly, that means that my preferred choice of clothing for everyday wear is the right one. Cargo pants and shorts with long and short-sleeved t-shirts as my go-to wardrobe make sense both for personal comfort and pragmatic daily work wear. That feels like a vindication of my lifestyle choices on several levels. He also said that flexibility matters and that I might consider doing some yoga. That tells me I had better keep the gym shorts and tidier shirts for when I find and go to seek my chi. Namaste.