The twilight side of the ski slope

People of the tercera edad may remember the 1970s hit duet “Morning Side of the Mountain,” recorded by Donny Osmond and Marie Osmond. The song actually dated from the early 1950s and was originally a hit for an African-American singer, but the Osmonds revived it with considerable enthusiasm, the sort of enthusiasm that was common in that decade when love songs were sung as if the fate of the world depended on them.

But the lyrics are very curious.

In the first verse a boy lives on one side of a mountain and a girl lives on the other. They never meet. Geography keeps them apart.  Ta-ra. So far, so good. Then the song shifts to another couple who do meet in person but can never kiss because of something else that the lyric never quite explains.

The lyric says the couple “never kissed,” which is a curious choice of words, though no doubt it was influenced by the easy rhyme with ‘missed’. In the America of the early 1950s that phrase carried more weight than it might today. Laws and customs in many parts of the country made certain relationships impossible before they even began, and popular songs by black artists often hinted at such things without naming them directly.

So the obstacle that does not speak its name might be religion, politics, family expectations, or something else entirely. Either way the result is the same. Two couples who might have been happy together never quite reach the peak that was possible.

It always reminded me slightly of some of the songs in South Pacific, where geography quietly stands in for social barriers that people prefer not to discuss too openly. In that great musical, islands and oceans often represent the invisible boundaries between cultures and races. In the mountain song, the obstacle is less specific but equally immovable.

Listening carefully to it now, the phrase also hints at something else entirely.

Retirement, I have discovered, takes place on the twilight side of the mountain.

When you have been working for forty years or more, retirement arrives like the lifting of a heavy gate you did not quite realize you had been pushing against since the mid-1970s. The alarm clock disappears. Traveling in the morning rush becomes someone else’s problem. For decades you have been getting up in darkness to face deadlines, supervisors, paperwork, or simply the physical effort of doing a job that becomes harder each year.

Then suddenly all of that stops.

You wake up when you like instead of when you must. Nobody expects you to arrive anywhere at a fixed hour or to read all your emails before the morning meeting. The day unfolds slowly, and it becomes possible to notice small things that once passed unnoticed, such as the ever-changing weather over Cuenca or the way the afternoon light moves across the floor.

Meals improve immediately. Restaurants appear where once there were frying pans, grocery lists, and the faint resentment of a sink full of dishes waiting to be washed. Retirement reveals that someone else is perfectly willing to cook your lunch or do your laundry while you sit quietly enjoying the luxury of unhurried time.

Afternoons acquire a quality that once would have seemed faintly irresponsible.

You lie down for a short nap, not because you must but because you can. During the working years overcoming the postprandial slump required determination and a strong dose of caffeine. Now the only schedule is the movement of the sun and the slow rhythm of the day itself.

For a while retirement feels less like the end of something and more like the beginning of a very pleasant holiday.

Then gradually another realization appears: Every year of retirement is also another year of sliding down towards the bottom of the valley where the sun never reaches.

This does not arrive dramatically, but at first it arrives disguised as a small inconvenience. A knee that complains on the stairs. Glasses that must be slightly stronger than last year’s prescription. A doctor who casually suggests that certain tests might be wise now that you are in a particular age group.

The calendar also changes its meaning. During working life the years seem to lead somewhere. Promotions, projects, new responsibilities. The road ahead always appears to climb upward like a stage in the Tour de France.

In retirement you begin to suspect that you may already have reached the summit and are now racing downhill, which may be the most dangerous part of the course.

The body, meanwhile, develops a surprising sense of drama. A sprained ankle that once meant two days of limping now becomes a subject for careful observation. The swelling is studied. The pain is evaluated. One cannot entirely dismiss the possibility that a simple fall could begin an avalanche of medical events that doctors describe with unsettling calmness.

At this stage the imagination becomes remarkably active.

Is that brief lapse of memory merely distraction, or the first whisper of dementia? Is the headache simply a headache, or the beginning of a stroke that will reorganize the remainder of your retirement into hospital visits and physical therapy?

Retirement therefore turns out to be a curious arrangement.

On one hand it is the most comfortable period many people will ever experience. The hours belong to you. The responsibilities shrink. The world becomes something to observe rather than something you must wrestle with every morning.

On the other hand the whole enterprise resembles a long ski run down an avalanche-prone ski slope on a mountain whose base you can never quite see.

The ride can be pleasant. The scenery is excellent. Yet gravity, as every skier eventually discovers, never takes a day off and at any moment you might take a tumble.

The sensible retiree therefore adopts a modest philosophy. Enjoy the ride while the snow is good, keep your balance when the slope becomes steeper, and try not to worry too much about the bottom of the hill.

After all, tomorrow morning you will wake up without an alarm clock. And on the twilight side of life, that alone still feels like winning.