Retiring Minds: Life after Work

from The Way Out, an Introduction

Susan Thurin

Many retirees can identify with Professor Job who told me that his adjustment to retirement spanned the time it took him to leave his desk for the last time and to reach his car in the parking lot. Job’s experience isn’t universal, however. For retirees from every kind of work—even some big lottery winners say they want to return to work as usual—just thinking about retirement can arouse fear. . . .

The original idea was to be lighthearted, retired professors telling amusing stores about their current lives. Several contributors have taken that approach, but retirees tend to be reflective and so their stories vary in mood and form. The reader will find mostly essays here, but also poetry and clever pieces of memoiristic fiction.

To begin, there are four ways of addressing Retirement Angst, four ways of answering the frequent question, “Do retirees have any regrets about their new life?” Richard Gardner’s “A Fool’s Leviathan,” a story about the decision to retire, evokes the sensations of a drowning man whose life flashes by him, only to be happily rescued. Next, Sudershan Perusek recounts her first day of retirement and the unfolding of her new life with an appeal to Indian philosophy in “Another Bend in the River.” Then, with high-spirited musings, William O’Neill dismisses the vicissitudes of retirement by relishing a sort of second adolescence as an opportunity for whimsy and dodging moralizing about time and purpose. The section ends on a more serious note with Patricia Zontelli’s poems that probe memory and growing old. Using imagery drawn from the natural world, the poems make the familiar shimmer with comfort and tranquility.

The other sections of Retiring Minds describe numerous activities and approaches to life during retirement. Since reading and writing were essential to their work, many academics luxuriate in re-defining these life-long interests. The Writing after Work section begins with Gene Bloedorn illustrating this in deed as well as in word: he is using his retirement from being a professor of art to write short stories about a long-married retired couple. His “Life with a Cat” examines the way memories cause confusion and disorientation in the “new middle age.” James Eggert’s appropriately titled “To Dance in Forbidden Fields” finds retirement an opportunity to combine a professional interest in economics with a personal interest in ecology and spirituality. Next, Jared Brown describes the process of settling on writing as a retirement occupation after a period of fretfulness about what to do with his new freedom from work. Plans are all well and good, but they don’t always work out, and Brown insists that creative laissez-faire-ness provides a happy substitute. The Writing after Work section concludes with selections from the journals of Erik Thurin illustrating his favored activities of reading and writing, his bons mots, and thoughts about mortality.

It would be remiss to have a collection about the experience of retirement without acknowledging the effects of time rolling on. The Maturing Things section pays homage to this with both professional interest and jocularity. To begin, Robert Meier discusses his photography in a stunning photo essay about retired buildings in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Next, Richard Beckham approaches the subject of aging with bravado in his humorous commentary on “geriatria,” places where elderly people congregate. Carol Dolphin’s poem “Monochromatic Prism” takes an inspired approach in seeing the “new grayness” as a symbol of moderation. The section is completed with David McCordick’s hilarious though sobering health care story.

Next we turn to travel, one of the favored activities of retirees. As the growth of the cruise industry, elderhostels, and snowbirding attest, retirees love the road, tourism, a change of scenery. The travel stories we present in this volume are set in favorite destinations of American tourists: England, Central America, and Texas. Sue Bridwell Beckham combines a recent trip to England with a retrospect on her Anglophilia and Carol Dolphin offers a picturesque view of Guatemala. Mary Thompson, joining the ranks of those who mark their retirement with a definitive change, describes her decision to pull up stakes and move cross-country.

Volunteerism, the new profession of many retirees, is addressed in the Work without Borders section. The section begins with the account of Leland Nichols who places himself in the midst of one of the greatest natural disasters in American history with his Red Cross work in New Orleans after the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Following the path of doing good works also, Liina Keerdoja writes about cooking for the homeless in Bethesda, Maryland. Judy Brown follows a rarer, adventurous path in using retirement to devote herself to her first love, the theater, which had been relegated to an avocational pursuit during her teaching years. Before finding rewarding new work, though, there is the letting go of a career, the subject tackled in Margaret Gordon’s poem, “Flexing My Spirit Again.”

The final section, titled Women Academics, Women’s Roles closes the collection with writings on work and family responsibilities, the subject of much research and discussion during the feminist era which coincided with the work years of our generation. Carolyn Wedin revisits the debate about women balancing career and family, opining about the legacy of the women’s movement for today’s young women. For Sheri Nero and Susan Thurin, the debate about balancing career and family becomes merely academic as they are faced with traditional care giving roles and the death of a spouse. Patricia Zontelli’s poem “Loss,” about burying hurt, adds fitting closure to this section.

In all, this volume describes retirement not as monolithic, but as varied in occupation, joy and fulfillment. Increased longevity means that most retirees have many years of this stage in their life, a long, active life after they leave their work years behind. The world is still at their feet, if they want to stoop to pick it up, or to answer the call in those prescient lines ending Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”: