Working girls

Until two years ago, I thought I had it all figured out. I would keep working until retirement, then leave the office in a flurry of decorated cakes, speeches and goodbyes, to live comfortably, if not affluently, for the rest of my life.
That was then. This is now. Laid off from that job that allowed me to save for retirement, I’m now a freelance writer. It’s a fulfilling life, but one with fewer financial benefits, less stability and a less-certain timeline for the upcoming decades.
I no longer have a plan that includes a life of leisure in my old age. But it’s going to be OK. I know it is, because I watched my grandmother work happily until she was in her mid-80s.
Widowed in the 1950s, she got a job as a retail sales clerk in a clothing store in the small town where she had lived most of her life. She had never gone to college, never gotten her driver’s license, but she was proud of her job and she was good at it.
Each morning she walked to work. She lived frugally on my grandfather’s small railroad pension and her regular salary. She never made grand retirement plans, and never complained about working.
In 1976, when she was 74, she was named Employee of the Month by the town’s Chamber of Commerce. She was immensely proud of the small wood and brass plaque they gave her, and kept it as one of her most prized possessions.
She worked another decade after her award, and lived past her 100th birthday, spending her final years in a nursing home, slowed by arthritis and other ailments.
When my parents gathered up her few remaining belongings after she died, they came across the small wooden plaque.
Today, it’s displayed on my wall, a reminder to live a modest life with pride.