Retirement

The End of Full-Time Grandpa (And Other Things I’m Not Supposed to Admit)

I’m going to confess something, and I need you to hear it with some grace.

When I found out Ellie’s babysitting hours were getting cut roughly in half this summer, I felt something I wasn’t entirely prepared for. It wasn’t grief. It wasn’t dread. It was approximately 30% relief — and somewhere between “pleased about it” and “absolutely horrified that I’m pleased about it.”

Here’s the thing about spending the better part of eight months as a near-full-time caregiver to a tiny human: you become incredibly important. You control what she eats. What she plays with. When she sleeps. You are, functionally, the benevolent overlord of her entire world — which sounds like a power trip until you realize the overlord is also cleaning up after every snack and quietly celebrating when she naps on schedule. The point is, Ellie is my buddy, my partner in crime. My best one right now, honestly. And I’m not entirely sure I’ll find her caliber of companionship roaming around in the wild.

But she is also, for the record, almost entirely dependent on me. Which makes it a healthy grandpa relationship. Not a control thing. I want to be clear on that.

The Alibi is Gone

For the past eight months, Ellie has served a dual purpose in my life that I didn’t fully clock until just recently: she was both my greatest joy and my best excuse.

Can’t make that thing? Babysitting. Can’t get to that list? Babysitting. Skipping the world’s least urgent errand? The baby. Sorry.

It worked because it was true. My schedule wasn’t my own — it was a rolling remix of my son-in-law’s class schedule and music lesson calendar, with occasional guest appearances from “early drop-off day” and “can you just grab her a couple extra hours?” Neither of which I ever once actually minded. Love my girl. But now that the schedule is loosening, the alibi evaporates with it.

And here’s the uncomfortable thing that emerges when the alibi goes away: I have to look directly at what semi-retirement actually is. No more buffer. No more built-in structure. Just me, a calendar with some new blank space in it, and the gnawing suspicion that “semi” is becoming less defensible by the week.

The identity crisis, it turns out, keeps scheduling follow-up appointments.

So, What Now?

I have been running through the options with the seriousness they deserve, which is to say I’ve been loosely rattling them around in my head between walks and online chess games.

There’s the bucket list route — though I’ve always been a little suspicious of people who pursue bucket lists “blindly.” Life tends to edit your bucket list for you whether you ask nicely or not.

There’s the T-shirt brand idea, which sounds ridiculous until I remember I occasionally hit a genuinely funny idea in what I can only describe as an elusive zen-sarcastic state. Mugs, maybe. Something.

There’s volunteering — the classic semi-retiree move that buys you grace, purpose, and a totally legitimate reason to defer the bigger decisions until your wife retires and the two of you can figure it out together. I’m not above this plan. I’m almost in favor of it.

What I’m not doing: more crypto. More forex. More anything that requires me to hand my optimism over to an algorithm and hope for the best. I made it to semi-retirement with most of my wits intact, and I’d like to keep that streak going.

What I am doing — and this one feels right — is leaning harder into the semi-autobiographical writing I’ve been circling for a while. There’s something in there worth saying. There are stories I’ve been carrying around waiting for someone to sit down and actually write them, and lately that someone keeps making eye contact with me in the mirror.

The Part That’s Easy

Here’s what I already know, even before I figure out the rest:

I want to be the grandpa who’s down on the floor. The one who pretends to sleep and gets “rudely” awakened by a curious toddler who thinks this is the funniest game ever invented. The one who’s genuinely present — not physically in the house but mentally somewhere else drafting a passive income strategy.

I missed parts of my kids’ childhoods that I can’t go back and retrieve. That’s just honest. But I get a second pass at this — not to rewrite anything, but to actually feel what I apparently drove past too fast the first time around.

If every project I consider from here on out has to fit around that commitment — being available to my kids, being present for my grandkids, staying on the floor — then that’s not a constraint. That’s the whole architecture.

If I never find anything more valuable than that, I’ll consider it a life well-lived. Ellie didn’t know she was giving me an eight-month tutorial in how to be that grandpa. But she was. The “semi” might be fading. The purpose is getting clearer.

The Call That Postponed My Retirement

This is a further explanation of two of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Dual Format Bookworm and Spousal Support Engineer)

The phone call came two months ago, and just like that, the Summer of ’26 vanished.

It was an offer my wife couldn’t — and, logically, shouldn’t — refuse. A similar role to her current one, fully remote, better pay, working with a well-respected colleague from her past. I wasn’t in the room when she took the call. I heard about it afterward, which is probably how most husbands learn the major plot twists in their lives.

I considered a counterargument. The best I had was “I have over 6,000 books on Kindle and Audible.” Most of them were free. The rest I bought on sale, fully intending to read them immediately. That argument, it turns out, doesn’t hold much water against a high-level role with better benefits. So we pushed the goalposts. Summer of ’29 it is.

To understand why I didn’t put up more of a fight, you have to understand our roles. For 35 years, my wife has been the undisputed Bread-Winner. I’ve made several noble attempts at being a Dough-Winner, but her bread is simply better baked, more plentiful, and has a much more reliable crust.

As we navigated kids, fostering, and a move to Texas, she was the one traveling when the company called. She worked evenings and weekends to make the bosses happy, while I waved from the sidelines — or texted her from the same room to see if she remembered she had a husband. My retirement is technically rock-solid and investment-backed, but it is not the golf-and-slow-coffee variety. It is a series of Supporting Roles. I am the Head of Domestic Logistics, and my CEO just signed a three-year extension.

Here’s the part that gets me. She’ll be home. Physically present, same house, same zip code — and completely unreachable. My wife working remotely is not my wife being available. It’s my wife in a digital fortress with a closed door and four consecutive video calls.

I was hoping to pass the childcare baton this year. Instead, I’ve been re-enlisted. I am currently a specialist in diaper-related hazardous waste management — an unpaid internship with zero upward mobility, but I’m told the exposure is great. By the time 2029 rolls around, our granddaughter will be four and likely helping her mom manage two or more siblings.

Then there are the hockey boys. Another three years of work means another three seasons of high-protein breakfasts and civilized-living lessons. It’s all penciled in. As long as they like toddlers and don’t commit any sins beyond redemption, the house stays full.

So we’re staying in the wind and the Oklahoma heat a little longer. Our local kids will be here at least two more years before their academic pursuits take them elsewhere, which means delaying retirement only adds one year of real extension anyway. I participated in this decision. I agreed it was the right call. My counterargument was weak, and I knew it.

I am a reluctant retiree, but I have people — and one very small person — depending on me most days of the week. I don’t get paid, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get compensated.

I’ll get to those 6,000 books eventually. I just need my wife to retire first.