I woke up this morning with the sun in my face. The snow had melted already. Then my cell rang. My oldest daughter spoke softly so as not to wake her dogs — just me.

“Are you and Mom all right?” She said sweetly.

“All right? ” I asked.

“Well, I’ve been worried lately” says she.

“These are your golden years, you know, and you should be thinking about the future.”

“At eight o’clock? In the morning? I don’t start worrying about our future until at least nine. Can you call back then?”

“Seriously. I had this dream that you haven’t saved enough for your golden years.”

“Golden, what? Is this one of those TikTok things?”

“Be serious.”

So this is why she and her sister send me Starbucks cards — they don’t want us to go to the poor house without a Mocha Latte?

I assured her that we were fine. But after she hung up I laid there and started worrying. Were we all right?

After those cold years in New York, we moved to Hollywood, which She hated, and I became a teacher, so that I could act and make us “all right.”

Well, Hollywood was better. We were slightly “all right,” sometimes “giddy,” and often “all right.”

“Save,” she said. I had to think about it. I don’t actually do “save”; She has always done the saving. I just do the “asking.”

Save? I’m famously Irish. I was born in the worst year of the Great Depression when there was nothing left to save.

Save? I’m a writer. We drink and type and spend money we don’t have, but we’re bad at saving. “Save” is the button on my laptop. “Save” was when I was young and crazy and poured some good beer back in the bottle for tomorrow.

I write. I used to be better, but I’m all right for the time being. I love my job. I love making you laugh and spend days making you look up words I made up.
I write for a small local paper or two, and everyone of us who write are “all right,” as long as someone in Portland agrees.

Hold on. Wait a minute. I hit SAVE.

Who am I talking to here? You’re probably not all right as much as you’d like to be. You’re probably wondering what these “Golden Years” are, and when they’re coming, because whatever this “all right” we’re living in now isn’t “all right” at all.

What with Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis messing with Mickey and Minnie, crazy George Santos in Congress wanting to dress like Gwyneth Paltrow, and The Donald wanting his Oval Office bathroom back, I’m wanting “W” back.

OK, let’s talk about Golden Years. I looked it up. It’s not about getting old, you know. It’s about retirement. Which is like wanting to dance in the Trevi Fountain, which are two things none of us are going to do this summer.

So I go to She, and talk retirement.

I asked She, as is required, “Are we ‘all right?'” Because She is my crystal glass of clarity, and She looked up from her book and took some cashews from a bowl.

“We’re OK,” She said. I felt a chill down my back.

“That’s the same as all right. Right?”

“No,” She sighed. “It’s just OK,” and went back to her book.

I was ready for that and had prepared this stand-up routine to defuse her.

I start with, “I’m thinking we can sell this house for a lot of cash, sell my paintings, give the bird to the neighbors, and take a trailer to Waco, Texas, and cheer Trump.”

She dropped the book; her features froze. I had her attention.

I took the stage.

“We can get one of them trailers with a kitchen. And ride around the new Republican America, right? We can go to all of Trump’s rallies this fall — it’ll be fun, right?

“We’ll pretend we’re from South something, like home-schooled Republicans. We’ll get a couple of those red hats and get you some American flag underwear, sit in lawn chairs and wave flags and scream.”

And then I stood up and danced in front of her.

She just sat there, mouth open, eyes wide, with that same expression she has when we watch “Jaws.”

She speaks. “This is a first draft … right?”

I sank into my chair and ate some cashews.

“Yeah.”

She waits a beat, and: “You should turn the furnace down.”

“All right.”

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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