How a Plant Brightened My Retirement Years

As a journalist, mother and primary caregiver to my late husband, I was used to being seen, being heard, having a life filled with intention and purpose. In retirement, nothing I did seemed to matter. Frankly, I like mattering, and I missed it.

I tried hard to make new friends and develop new interests. Most of my old friends were still working; while I had plenty of time to linger at lunch, they always had to rush back to their jobs.

I joined a group of local women who took neighborhood walks together. Unfortunately, their availability alone didn’t make them very interesting conversationalists. Most barely paid attention to the news of the world, and I have been a news junkie all my life. They all had grandchildren whose photos I nodded at and said nice things about; I tried showing them photos of my dogs and got eye rolls. I called it quits when I realized that the walk was just a warm-up to an afternoon spent at a local pub. Day-drinking was never my thing. And not even being lonely would make it one.

I volunteered at a local animal shelter and lasted one day. I wanted to bring home at least six dogs and cried the whole night after I couldn’t. I tried to put my writing skills to good use and posted on my local NextDoor site, offering to help students write their college essays. I got no takers.

And then the light bulb went on. My new husband and I were staying in a lovely guesthouse in Provence, France, run by two European men who, in their 50s, had walked away from very lucrative marketing and design careers in New York City. They’d bought the stunning centuries-old property we were staying in, restored it with great attention to detail and authenticity, and now are happy innkeepers.

“We escaped the chaos and learned to savor the still,” Régis Péan told me. I suppose it was another way of saying “stop and smell the roses,” but when spoken with a French accent in a beautiful setting, it triggered something in me.

Instead of attempting to re-create all the feelings of importance that my previous working life had provided, I decided to start appreciating my bounty of good health, a wonderful new husband, and adult kids who have turned out to be pretty decent human beings.

I do my best to find the joy in each day. Doing things for others makes me happy, so I try to do more of that. Longer conversations with meaning bring me more satisfaction than making small talk. I spend my time with interesting people who have led interesting lives. Sometimes they live in the books I read; other times they live online; and sometimes they used to have big jobs in New York City but stepped back so they could pursue a more mindful and kinder existence running a guesthouse in Provence, surrounded by the beauty of nature and love.

I spent much time asking Régis and his husband, David, where they found the courage to jump off the speeding train of their previous lives. Régis smiled and said, “You are eating it,” confusing me even further. You see, outside our room in their guesthouse was a potted plant unlike anything I had ever seen. It bore the oddest fruit that looked like a bright yellow spindly human hand. But in the morning, when we woke, the fruit was gone. And on our breakfast plates was the most delicious lemony cake that Régis had baked fresh that same morning.

The plant and the cake? Buddha’s-hand, a citron variety whose fruit separates into fingerlike sections resembling those on representations of the Buddha. The Buddha’s-hand had been their good-luck charm when they took the leap from the rat race to become innkeepers in paradise. Yes, their business is flourishing. So is their peace and joy.

And so, of course, the first thing I did when we got home was buy a Buddha’s-hand for our garden. I am happy to report that so far, I haven’t killed it.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.