Finding My Retirement Feet and Valdemar Kornerup

It's official. I'm RETIRED. Now I get to enjoy it. And artist Kornerup suits me to a tee.

"Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness."
— Pearl S. Buck

"You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled."
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Well, that last quote fits my situation perfectly. I retired early and have had a lot of trouble finding myself again. I was an attorney for thirty five years, spending my first five years in a courtroom prosecuting criminal cases, then joining the Army as a JAG officer, and finishing up managing a group of civilian and military attorneys and staff. I got very used to people coming to me to solve their problems, knowing my name when I attended a meeting, or asking my opinion and acting upon my advice.

But I don’t MISS it. I miss the money. I miss having a place to go, structure to my day. Oh, shoot, I can’t lie - I do sort of miss the ego building part, too.

And now there are two job announcements up. I know one of them is a long shot and the other -there’s a definite SHOT, but I’d be back in my old area doing a new job. Two of my attorney friends still in the game sent the announcements and encouraged me to apply.

I asked my husband if we could use the money. He snorted and said, you’re going to put us right back into that higher tax bracket. Sure, we’d be able to save a little more into our IRAs and mutual funds, but you’re almost 62. How long are you going to work? Are you really going to get any professional satisfaction?

Um, probably not. I’d just have more money. And less time to spend with the people I love, less time to travel, less time to just lie in bed reading a book next to my husband, the cats lounging on the covers and purring. Less time to pursue new hobbies and interests. Less time to cook healthy food and get the exercise I need every day.

"Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward & learning to enjoy whatever life has and this requires transforming greed into gratitude."
— John Chrysostom

I need to give up this idea that I still have something to give at the office. I think I might have already given too much!

If I go back, I’ll be a 62 year old attorney. Everyone will wonder when I’m going to retire, why did I come back - let alone that ageism in the interviews. “Umm, if we hire you, Mrs. Zen - how can I put this delicately - how many years will you be able to stay with us?” Nah, they won’t say it out loud - we’re attorneys, for gosh sake, no one wants to get sued for elder discrimination - but I can guarantee you they’ll be thinking it. To be expected.

(Especially since one job is in Europe, so there are transportation and housing expenses. If I don’t like that one, it will be COSTLY to up sticks too quickly. )

After all the mental stress of trying to decide if I should just apply and see what happens, one of the attorneys is ALSO retiring soon, so I won’t get to work with my friend, and the other is on the cusp. It suddenly hit me, I miss the FRIENDS I had at work, and I can’t get them back. Even if I get the job, my friends aren’t there anymore.

And I think I just have to get past this part of things, this last grabbing at the salary doorknob as the happy, joyful, fierce wind of free time blows me through the door. I can feel it - I’m almost done. I’m about to step off the gravelly well worn path that I’ve been trudging for years and chase some butterflies wherever they take me - maybe quilting, maybe skydiving. Who knows?

I’m not applying for the jobs. Neither one is my dream job, although the money IS tempting. But I have ENOUGH. A little more is not going to add time to my life, or happiness - probably just enough for an extra bedroom when we buy a house. Eh, I’ll manage with less space. I liked the smaller German houses, compact is good.

I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments—we hear a word that sticks in our mind—or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly—we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the lagoon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a Dairy Queen—or we have an episode like the one I had with the M&M cars back at the Husky station.

And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection—certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether; one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real—this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives."
— Douglas Coupland (Life After God)

ANYWAY, the artist Valdemar Kornerup (1865-1924) taught me a lot with his quiet, contented art. I often say that my perfect life would have been as Heidi in the Alps helping her grandfather herd goats and eating bread and cheese with a glass of milk when hungry, sleeping on a hay mattress at night. And here’s my fantasy made real in art!

I especially love the ones of the older couples together, one reading, one doing handwork. And I’ve started to realize that MAYBE the reason I want to go back to work is because I have too much free time at home. All of the people in the paintings are satisfied because they’ve been working themselves to the bone cooking, taking care of animals, children, repairing tools, darning socks. Their lives are FULL enough that there’s a clear delineation - time to work, and time to rest. Quiet contentment. It’s enough.

And I’m sorry, I HAVE to put a detail shot up for the artists out there, because that copper tea pot is perfection.

Valdemar Kornerup made his name as one of the last great folk life painters in Denmark. When painting styles around him were changing and modernising, Kornerup looked to a tradition of Danish art to create paintings which celebrated home comforts and the simple life.

Kornerup received a thorough artistic education. As well as lessons from his father, lithographer and draughtsman Lars Andreas Kornerup (1822-1894), Kornerup also attended the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts. On top of this, he also received tuition from Peder Severin Krøyer (1851-1909), an eminent painter who was promoting the newer style which was currently sweeping across Europe at the time: impressionism.

Kornerup, however, was much more intrigued by the Danish painting tradition of the Danish Golden Age, which had occurred earlier in the 19th century. Here, the beauties of Denmark, both natural and human, were celebrated, idealised, romanticised. Folklife, and the simple rustic spirit of rural life, were celebrated as utopias of simplicity, far away from the churning cogitations of the industrial revolution. There was a profitable market for artworks which captured this whimsical nostalgia, preserving it through joyous, delicate painting.

Even as many of his contemporaries became swept up in the modern modes of painting, such as impressionism, being imported from the rest of Europe, Kornerup became progressively enchanted with this older style. With sharp realism he captures the homely interiors of creaky cottages and familial farmsteads. An old couple sit huddled at their table, quite content with their books and knitting. Delicately rendered flowers clamour at the windows, set upon the sill, drawn upwards by the enticing slither of sunlight outside. It casts crisp light upon the room, just tickling the flowers’ petals and the aged lines on the occupants’ faces. There is a sense of serenity, no need to rush.

Even in scenes of finer interiors, there remains a focus on the simple motions of life: a family eating breakfast, apples stacked upon the tabletop, as fresh as if they have just been plucked from the orchard. A mother cares for her child, whose naïve movements stir feelings of whimsy. This Kornerup represents with clarity of composition and a keen eye for detail. His works show clear influence from the Danish Golden Age greats such as Julius Exner (1825-1910) and Frederik Vermehren (1823-1910).

Alongside his painting, Kornerup worked for a time at a painting school for women and as a drawing teacher for Viscount Reventlow. This position afforded him the benefit of travelling with the statesman across Europe. Germany, France, and Austria were among the places Kornerup would visit. Examples remain of landscapes executed by him in these places. There is the same canny detail, the same vibrant colouring.

It was his sentimental scenes of his homeland, however, for which Kornerup was celebrated. These remain as fine examples of the Danish painting tradition and how compelling it could be to an artist, even as the art world around him was irrevocably changing.

So, there you go. Less money, more life. Sounds like a good trade.