Golden Week

It was the third day of an extended four-day weekend, made up of a series of holidays known at Golden Week. During a late breakfast outside, a pheasant hidden in the tall weeds of the next door orchard gave a throaty call and flapped its wings, doing this every few minutes in answer to another in the woods across the valley.

Today we could anything we liked, and decided, depending on the weather, to write mail, weed the garden, dig over a new bed, buy and plant tomatoes, cucumber and soybean plants, and cut our hair. And if we didn't have time to go to Tokyo to see the wisterias at a temple after that, we could do it tomorrow.

What a wonderful feeling to have days to oneself to plan at will. It reminds me of childhood summer holidays from school. They were a gift of absolute freedom, but with a poignancy as each week, and then each day, brought the return to school nearer.

Will retirement bring the boundless joy of freedom? Or will the freedom devolve into the ordinary? Is the joy of freedom most keenly felt only when its opposite looms?

--Julian