Retirement - It’s never too early to plan for retirement. Besides the obvious money matters, there’s also the “where will we live?” question for Tom and me. When we were young and dating it wasn’t an issue, but the older we get….. I can now better understand my dad, Tereso Velasquez’s, answer when Tom went to Guymon to ask for my hand in marriage. My mother said she was happy to see us in love and trusted my judgment of Tom and wished us God’s blessing. My father, on the other hand, paused for an unnerving while, took a deep breath and said, “I don’t prefer either of you to marry each other.”
I was surprised. I thought he would be relieved that I was engaged since I was already 31 years old. I said, “Dad, I didn’t know you felt that way. Why do you say that?”
“Because, if you guys live in Korea, we will be painfully missing you and your children. If you are in America, his parents will be missing Tom and the children. You know how we miss our relatives in Mexico and your Mom and I are even from the same hometown, but Korea is half a world away”, he said. “Nevertheless, I see that you are a stubborn girl and that you two are in love and Tom is a good man so I will also give my permission and blessing.” He didn’t say that I would be missing them and America and Tom would be missing his family and Korea, but I’m sure he thought it.
They were wise words that I couldn’t yet fully appreciate. Tom and I got married in America in 1998 and lived in Texas for 7 years. He went through his American culture shock of sometimes detesting America and sometimes loving it. Now we’ve been back in Korea 3 years as a married couple (my 8th year total). I’m getting tired of it. Almost nightly I dream that I’m back in the states and, in some dreams, I run down the street happy to be back “home” then I wake up and, well, I’m here. My hope for living there long-term won’t happen until we retire. Tom wants to retire outside of Guymon in a country house and maybe teach at OPSU part-time and raise horses (huh?). My heart pines for America. It is my great desire to live there but Andy is growing up here in Korea. What if he prefers to live here in his adult years? Sigh…
My parents are in Mexico, as I write, building their second retirement home. Since they spend a good deal of time in our hometown village of Rodriguez, Durango, Mexico they decided to build a second home instead of always crashing at his brother’s house (my late grandparents’ house where Dad and his siblings were born and I and my siblings were born). It’s hard enough for them to live close to the kids (Oklahoma) and also trying to stay close to brothers, aunts and cousin back in Mexico even if Mom and Dad are from the same hometown. I can imagine how complicated it’s going to get with Tom and I trying to stay close to Andy and Korea and Oklahoma.
Nowadays people move around so much that the old question, “where are you from?” doesn’t fit anymore. They’ll usually ask, “Do you mean ‘where was I born? Where did I go to elementary school? Where do my parents live?” I once made conversation with my airplane seatmate and found out she was an American school teacher for the American Military. She was nearing retirement age and said that a real headache was, “Where am I going to retire? I’ve lived ten years in Germany, five years in Japan, seven years in Korea…..whichever place I choose to retire I’ll be missing friends and family in another country”.
An American friend here, Seth, an only child, said that his father mentioned that they are getting ready to retire and they would like to be close to him and his grandchildren. Won’t he, please, come home to California? But, Seth, who has studied and worked in various countries, said, “Dad, if you want to be close to me when you retire, you come to me wherever I am”. If I am in India, then you come to India.
It sounds callous but it’s realistic because the other option isn’t great either, Tom and I are here because his parents want to be near us in their retirement years and they don’t want to leave Korea. It’s a comfort to them but not to us. But there is no right or wrong answer for this situation. I won’t judge anybody for their decision.
