Drink the Wine Now

I had an unexpected opportunity to take the trip of a lifetime. Would I seize the day?

A few years ago, I read an article by Irene Fassler called Slide Down the Slippery Slope of Self-Indulgence. In it, Fassler talks about how people will often save a good bottle of wine for some unspecified special occasion in the distant future, and how this mindset of delayed gratification can lead people to miss out on so much in life.

I instantly recognized myself in the article. I’m often an adherent of the “save the best for last” philosophy. I put off things that would bring me pleasure because there are so many things I think I should be doing instead. But the fact is, if you save the wine for too long, it might spoil before you finally decide it’s the right time to drink it.

Fortunately, when the biggest “drink the wine now” moment of my life came along in 2015, I let go of all the “shoulds” and jumped in with both feet.

I’d been working at a small university for almost 15 years when my boss retired. His replacement had a chaotic management style. He didn’t fully understand the extent of my department’s responsibilities and he wasn’t interested in learning more. He regularly handed me special projects that took weeks to complete, on top of everything that was already on my plate.

Soon, I was working 70 hours a week and hating my job more with each passing day. I stayed late at the office almost every day, brought work home and stayed up half the night trying to finish it, and worked hours every weekend. Quite often, just as I was finishing one of my boss’s special projects, he would change the project parameters, setting me back days. To add to the stress, when I handed him the finished projects, they often seemed to vanish into an astronomical black hole, never to be mentioned again. It was disheartening, to say the least.

Something Had to Give

Can you feel your blood pressure rising as you read this?

Join the club. I was beyond stressed. My mental and physical health suffered, and my husband was sure I was on the verge of a heart attack, a nervous breakdown, or both.

I knew something had to give, so I made an appointment with my boss’s boss, the president of the university. We had a frank talk. I described the chaos that was roiling the department and the toll it was taking. I told her if things didn’t change, I would probably have to quit, because I desperately needed a break from the chaos.

Saying that I needed to hit the pause button was like saying open sesame in front of Aladdin’s cave. The president immediately offered me a semester-long sabbatical, no strings attached. It was an unexpected and almost unheard-of opportunity for a non-faculty employee, and I accepted with alacrity.

When I told my husband, he had the most astounding reaction: Go to England.

England in a Bottle

This is where the bottle of wine comes in. For most of my adult life I’d been saying that I wanted to spend a year in England after I retired. That was delayed gratification of the highest order, so I was stunned by his suggestion.

Just drop everything and spend three months in England? What about all the things we’d need to consider before deciding if we could leave the country for that long?

“Just you,” he told me. “Go by yourself. I’ll stay home and take care of the house, the dogs, and anything else that comes up.”

He didn’t say, “Do it now, not 20 years from now. Do it before life catches up with you,” but I knew that’s what he meant. Before I was too old and creaky to enjoy it. Before I needed to take care of an aging parent, help with grandkids, or any of a dozen other things that might crop up and disrupt my plans for “someday.”

Taking the Plunge

So, did I dare to drink the wine? Yes, but to be honest, I never would have come up with the idea on my own. It simply never would have crossed my mind: England was the bottle of wine I intended to savor after I retired.

It was August, and the clock was ticking; if I was going to England in September, then a lot of things had to happen, and they had to happen quickly. I worked out the details of my leave with HR, updated my passport, bought plane tickets, found a place to live, set up a bank account so I could easily access funds while I was in England, and checked off dozens of other items on a very long to-do list, plowing through each item with surprising determination.

I arrived in London in mid-September, settled into a house share, and spent the next three-and-a-half months exploring London’s nooks and crannies and volunteering at the Benjamin Franklin House museum near Trafalgar Square. I also ventured to places I’d never had the chance to visit on my shorter trips to England, including Cambridge, Oxford, Bath, and even Edinburgh. I also learned to enjoy living on my own, something I’d never done before.

My time in London was the ultimate bottle of wine, and I’m thankful I drank it when I did instead of saving it for another 20 years.