I am a searcher and not always sure about what I’m looking for. I’ve lived in thirty-nine houses in four states and changed my name five times. One would think I embrace change, yet I find it discombobulating. My unrest is part of what inspires this blog on retirement. It’s like a last chance to live reflectively, instead of wandering helter-skelter into whatever shows up to keep me occupied. I’m interested in the soul work that presents itself at various times in our lives and in how that changes us. In past lives I taught middle school math and science, raised two children and helped with four grandchildren, finished four degrees, worked as a professor and researcher, and married three times—whew. In my present, retired life, I’m tutoring 4th graders, learning rosemaling, and when I’m not working out—writing—writing about this wonderful, often painful, and fascinating journey.
Mary Oliver’s line, Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life? seems to be quoted everywhere of late. It speaks of living a life of one’s own design, a design that unleashes the wild and precious rather than the banality of slugging through our days intent on keeping a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. It speaks of something wondrous that’s out there if we only let go of our need to conform and live from our true center, our spirit.
Not too far into retirement I found myself often wondering what was wild and precious but dormant in me. My life was not exciting. I moved between my own home, the library, the health club, my children’s homes, and the homes of friends, with an occasional trip out of town. Not the stuff of wild and precious, of that I was certain. And here I was, free to find the wild and precious and live it.
But how do I find that which lies dormant in me, that which yearns for expression in my life? Or perhaps I already have it, perhaps in the routine I’ve pressed upon my days. I suspect, however, that routine, while affording stability, suppresses experimentation about what might be dormant. . . and yet “a girl can dream.”
The dream went something like this. . .
She spent the entire summer dreaming of Wales. It made no sense, this yearning to leave her settled life, her children, her easy routine. Yet in her fantasies, it made all the sense in the world. She could start over, no, not start over but be born anew, without memory in a lush, beautiful place, where people speak in a language that she would have to learn—as a baby learns language from birth.
In August she booked her ticket. She bought an enormous suitcase and packed it with her clothes. She told her children she was taking a long trip—how could she tell them her truth, that she sought a new land, a new beginning? How long will you stay, they asked, but she avoided the question. I’ll be back when I’m ready. . .
The plane landed in Heathrow, not Wales. Wandering a bit felt right. Like Odysseus seeking his home, she sought a new home and an adventure on the way. Why had she brought such a big suitcase, she thought as she pulled it outside to find a taxi to the train station. What had she been thinking? But wasn’t that the point? To not think but to wander and live on the way?
The taxi driver left her suitcase on the curb, and she dragged it inside. The train timetable clicked with suggestions. Where in Wales should she go? She settled on Llangollen—how many words have four “l’s”—“l” for living. She pulled the suitcase to the platform. She would need to drag it through two train changes, if she was reading the itinerary correctly. Maybe she should just leave the suitcase here. It was still baggage from her old life. She could buy new clothes in Wales—Welsh clothes. But still, money was money, and she wasn’t sure how far hers would go in her new life.
The train ride was exhausting. For each of the two changes, she bounced the suitcase down to the platform and dragged it up and onto the next train. She slept when she could and stopped counting stations, staying awake just enough so as not to miss her stop.
And the dream of a wild and precious life stops somewhere about here. . .
Is this what it would be like? Is it real or an escape? What I wonder is whether and how we lose the will to live that which is wild and precious in service to work, family, security, and whatever else haunts us. Then, suddenly—and it seems sudden—we are retired, free but with baggage that we are reluctant to leave on the train platform, baggage that must be hauled up and down with every new step we take. And how do we reconcile baggage with possibility?
Sometimes I think I could teach a course in nostalgia, that longing for a past perceived as perfect. I seem to nostalgize (who knew it’s also a verb) often. A couple of weeks ago nostalgia for school hit me full force as I watched the neighborhood children, on the first day of school, weighed down by enormous back packs filled with new pencils, notebooks, glue, rulers, etc., waiting for the school bus. I was immediately back in school smelling that gummy stuff they used, in my day, to sweep the floors; remembering how the smell of cinnamon rolls baking used to fill the school where I taught; and recalling those Bunsen burners in junior high that we loved to mess with when the teacher wasn’t looking.
We all have our own memories of favorite places. Having spent most of my life in schools, as a student, a parent with children, a teacher, a college professor, and now a tutor, mine are about schools—my geomagnetic field is probably over the nearest school. In fact, just to indulge my nostalgia, here are some pictures of favorite school-related places—my elementary school, junior high, and the Danish bakery we’d frequent on our way home from school (I grew up in Racine, Wisconsin).
Although I suspect nostalgia has been part of being human forever, it was first coined to be a condition in 1688 by a Swiss doctor, Johannes Hoffer, who called it a “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause.” In the 19th and 20th centuries it was still considered to be a pathological condition, but when Dr. Sedikides, Tim Wildschut and other psychologists in Southampton, England began studying it in 1999, they found it to be just the opposite, a rewarding positive experience. They also found that it’s universal and not just an adult pastime, occurring even in children as young as seven. Both the features of nostalgia, pleasant reminiscing, and also its focus, holidays, weddings, songs, and places, are found worldwide, with most people reporting that they experience it at least once a week and almost half saying they feel it as much as three to four times a week. I guess I’m not alone.
Research has challenged the belief that nostalgia is unhealthy, finding, among other things, that feeling nostalgic helps with loneliness, boredom, and anxiety, makes people more generous to strangers, and makes couples closer and happier when they share nostalgic memories.
That said, I’m convinced that nostalgia can be a little addictive as we grow older and have memories upon memories, all the while—at least in my case—slacking off on creating new memories. Research seems to confirm this, finding that nostalgia is high in young adults, goes down in middle age, and gets high again during old age. The reason is that nostalgia helps deal with transition. So maybe that’s why I find myself waxing nostalgic whenever I am reminded of schools; I’m in transition from a life in education.
Thomas Wolfe wrote a book called You Can’t Go Home Again, meaning that If you try to return to a place you remember from the past, it won’t be the same as you remember it. I test that claim every time I walk into Lake Harriet Upper School to tutor (I couldn’t get back in schools fast enough when I retired so I signed up as a volunteer tutor) or when I stop by Burton Hall on the U of MN campus or revisit the classrooms of my undergraduate days. On the surface, these buildings and their classrooms remain the same, and almost like an addiction, trigger some sort of feel-good chemicals in my brain.
Recently, however, my addiction to schools was tested. I was finishing up with my tutoring group, when the principal, whom I could see through the open door standing in front of a class, walked out and asked me if I wanted to take the class for the rest of the day, the sub had not shown up. (I need to explain that this principal happens to be my son, who thinks his mom might be more at his bidding than other tutors in the building). How tempted I was to say “yes!” To get back into the fray, get those kids, who were taking advantage of having no teacher, back to work. But then something clicked in me. I didn’t want to go into that classroom. From a lifetime of teaching, I remembered clearly what I’d be taking on, and I realized that my freedom to do what I want is awfully sweet. Mother or not, I told the principal, “No thanks.” I didn’t want to go home again.
Freedom. It is a sweet thing. Loads of time all to myself, no obligations. And my new-found freedom in retirement clearly moderates my desire to actually work again full time in schools. But the memories are also associated with the sense of being involved in something bigger than myself, something with the potential to make the world a better place. And . . . taking classes, traveling, having lunch with old friends, getting lots of exercise, and volunteering—even tutoring—don’t quite satisfy the need to have my life count, even now, in retirement.
So where am I then? I can’t go home again and I don’t want to, but my new “place,” retirement, leaves me searching. As I noted before, I am in transition, and my happy memories about schools, while addictive, will not suffice for a meaningful retirement. So I go forward, I can’t really replace my bond to education, but nevertheless I’m ready to commit to something equally meaningful, something that in what I hope is a distant future will live up to all the virtues of nostalgia.
As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past, letting my memory rush over them like water rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream. I was even thinking a little about the future, that place where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine, a dance whose name we can only guess.
From Billy Collins "Nostalgia" in Questions About Angels 1991
I always envied my second husband, Gary, and my sister, Marylyn, because they each had a clear vocational calling. In eighth grade, Gary had to write a report about a career. As he loved to tell it, “I chose city planner because it had the word ‘city’ in it, and I wanted out of Danville, Iowa so badly.” He went on to a successful and driven career in city planning and urban development. Marylyn’s first job was shelving books at the Racine Public Library. Within a few months of starting the job, she announced that she wanted to be a librarian. She worked summers full time at Western Printing, saving her money to go to the University of Wisconsin and become a librarian. She reluctantly retired at age 76 from her job as head librarian at the veteran’s hospital in Florida.
When
I read Karen Rose’s piece If
I Don’t Know My Purpose, Am I a Retirement Failure?I began
sorting for myself the difference between purpose and calling, words that are
bandied about in the retirement literature along with reinvention—all of which
I believe are related. Purpose has always been nebulous to me. It’s some big
thing out there that others have but I don’t.
I always wonder when I try to ascertain my purpose, isn’t it enough to
keep living? But a calling is quite like it sounds, a sense, an intuition, or
voice—you know, that call from the great beyond—that compels us to do
something, like be a city planner or librarian or take quiche to a friend (A Soul on
the Move). It might compel us to be something, more
compassionate, more frugal, more generous. A call might move us towards
something or away; it might ask us to commit. A calling can also evoke a feeling of being
led, being drawn ahead in some way.
I must admit that
I’ve never felt a vocational calling, I definitely stumbled into becoming a
teacher. After changing majors every semester in college, all the while playing
as much golf as possible, I realized that if I wanted to spend my summers golfing,
then being a teacher was the way to go. So I became a teacher almost by
default, but the minute I stepped into a classroom, I knew I was where I
belonged. You might say I “stumbled” into where I belonged.
I didn’t worry too much about having a calling after that, but when I became an assistant professor, that’s when I really wanted a calling, what the associate and full professors, who’d arrived in my estimation, said was a “research agenda,” something every professor needed to be successful. I wanted to be like them and like Gary and Marylyn. But I could never fix on either a calling or research agenda that carried me more than a few months, even though I prayed, searched, journaled about finding one, and read everything I could about careers and callings. Then I remembered advice that Gary used to give me: “When you’re stuck, throw stuff out, and see what sticks.” He had a talent for “throwing stuff out and seeing what stuck.” I eventually stopped searching and went with what showed up and seemed to stick. Stumbling along but still listening for that big voice from the sky. Looking back, I landed on meaningful projects, projects that “stuck,” with passion growing along the way.
Then,
as I’ve keened and wailed about before in this blog, along came retirement and
what I call its stages:
Karen Martha’s Retirement
Stages
Panic; What have I done?
Denial As in get re-involved in work, be a consultant;
Flight There’s always travel;
Acceptance See it with a new lens, and . . . dare I say;
Transformation Away I go!
Right now I’m in the acceptance
stage, looking at the days ahead with a new lens, a different lens than that of
work, a lens that focuses on what’s going on inside me. Nevertheless, even with
my new lens, I’ve not experienced a “calling” for how to use this incredible
gift of time, reasonable security, and health.
In response to
Karen Rose’s blog about purpose, one of the respondents wrote: we can think
not just of ourselves and what gives us pleasure in retirement, but of what the
world demands of us. Many of us have the
luxury of time—and perhaps we can use this luxury on behalf of something larger
than personal satisfaction in retirement. She’s talking about calling with
a capital C—the big call to change the world. Most of our calls, however, are
as Greg Levoy
notes: the daily calls to pay attention to our intuitions, to be authentic,
to live by our own codes of honor (p.5). I believe Levoy is right, at least
in my case, most callings are in the everyday of my life. I tutor math at the
local middle school. No one asked me, I sought it out because it seemed I might
be helpful—it came from within. I am learning rosemaling—I’ve always liked to
make things. Now I have time, and I’m writing, this blog and other pieces. Not
the big C, but it all feels right.
In a way it goes
to purpose, because I’ve come to see purpose, at least for me, about living as
authentically as I can and doing the soul work that supports an authentic life.
Purpose notwithstanding, I’ll never stop hoping for a big C calling. Meanwhile,
I’m stumbling—no, that’s not fair—lightly tripping along in the acceptance
stage, seeing my days and life with a new lens, open to “what shows up.”
I don’t ask for the full ringing of the bell. I don’t ask for
a clap of thunder. A scrawny cry will do. —Wallace Stevens
Catching
a Big Fish at Post Lake, Wisconsin, about 1955 (looked big to me)
I remember as a
child waking up in the morning to a day fresh and new, filled with possibility.
Something exciting was waiting to be discovered, maybe just around the corner.
All I had to do was get dressed, scarf down a bowl of cereal, and walk outside.
Sometimes I rode my bike around the neighborhood, looking for something
interesting. Other times I’d try to find a friend to join me. I’d walk to my
friend Carole’s house, and from the street, I’d call “Oh, Carole.” If she could
play, she came outside and off we’d go inventing on the way. If not, her mother
opened the door and said, “Carole can’t play right now.” In that case, I’d
wander to the park or go home and read a book of my choosing. I was between
five and ten when I experienced my life this way, the unadorned curiosity of a
young girl.
Idealized,
of course, but I remember that time seemed to stretch on forever (especially
when I was bored at the end of summer). Bored
or not, I didn’t look outside myself for something to do, rather, I acted from
within, indulging my moods and curiosity. My notion of work was uncomplicated,
something imposed by adults, “Practice your clarinet, finish your homework, do
your chores.” It was before I learned that work was ubiquitous to living, any
and all work, jobs, housework, yard work, volunteer work, and meaningful work,
however it is defined. I had not yet assimilated the byproducts of work, productivity,
success, and accomplishment, as guideposts for adult life.
I
remember telling my son, out of college and frustrated because he couldn’t find
a job, “don’t worry about it. You won’t escape working. You will spend
basically your whole life working.” At the time, I believed that the necessity
of work had absolute power over my life, what I called the “tyranny of work,”
because I saw work, too often, as something that needed to get done. I’d lost
the inner direction that had, as a child, given so much impetus to my daily
living. I didn’t see my work in context, as a necessary part of life but also,
if completed purposefully, as an expression of my authentic self. I had not yet
come face-to-face with the question of what life would be like without
work—retirement, if you please.
And Then It Came. . . Retirement
On
December 11, 2015, I retired at age 73. I woke up that first Monday, after the
retirement toasts at the bar on the previous Friday, feeling that overnight the
ground had become unsteady. I was prepared to shower, get dressed for work,
fight the traffic, and get a good parking space, but there was nowhere to go. I
knew I could sleep in, hang out in blue jeans. . . but then what? Unlike my
fellow blogger, Karen Rose, I had not taken a phased retirement. I simply decided
that it was time to step aside for someone younger with fresh enthusiasm. I
worked on soft money, and I was tired of chasing it. As for getting “busy with
something that looks a lot like work,” (Falling from Grace, posted
7/8/2019) I thought it would be easy. Finally, I would have the time to sit at
my desk doing the creative writing I’d longed to do but had put off throughout
my life.
My Facebook posting with the
caption: This is where it ends. . .
Writing, however,
didn’t happen. Ideas suddenly went dormant. Rather, I spent three months having
panic attacks until I read a book about how to overcome them. But overcoming
them wasn’t the same as addressing the root cause. That little girl who once
welcomed a day of possibilities had lost the ability to not only see those
possibilities but also to act on them. I was caught in the conundrum of living
from within or living from the cultural and societal norms that describe
work—I’d fallen from grace and had no idea how to catch myself. . . .
Part 2: One Big Step for Karen-Kind
I shared my angst
about adapting to retirement with friends—and I mean “adapt.” I saw it more as
forced obsolescence. Friends said to find a new routine. Do the things you’ve been putting off—like
cleaning closets. Find a new direction. I bought into it and muddled my way
into a sort of routine, cleaned my desk in lieu of the closets, and started
searching for that new direction. I grew a ponytail—I’d never had long hair. It
was something I could accomplish.
I
started tutoring fourth graders in math at my local school—I wanted to be
productive, feel useful, and there’s nothing as regenerating as being around
ten-year-olds. I taught a couple of classes as an adjunct professor, and I
joined a research project in my field as a consultant. Writing ideas
resurfaced, and I found myself at my desk again. Whew, finally those panic
attacks waned. I was in safe territory—work ( I cut off the ponytail).
Then,
as life will do when you’re ready for it, I was thrown a curve, albeit a
pleasant one. My husband and I and Karen R. and Dan went on vacation to the
Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, Texas http://texascowboypoetry.com/.
For two days we were immersed in a culture different than upper midwestern city
life. A culture of cowboys, in boots, bolo ties, Ariat shirts freshly pressed,
creased jeans, and wide belts with polished silver buckles, standing for over
an hour reciting new and classic poems. These poems were about life on the
range, around the campfire, under the stars, and the meaning of life when
everything slows down and you feel the immensity of our world beneath that
naked night sky. Corny poems, sometimes, but poignant, nevertheless, and framed
by the big questions we all grapple with—is there someone who watches over us?
What is the meaning of our time on earth? Do our lives matter? Turned out,
there was more
to cowboy poetry than campfires.
Thinking
about the poetry gathering on the plane home and later as I went about my
routine of teaching and tutoring, a glimmer of something started to break
through. Experiencing the cowboy culture reminded me that there are multiple
ways to live and know the world. I was living retirement like my former work
life, with never-ending assignments where productivity ruled. I was judging my
life through the lens of work, and that’s why I had found retirement wanting, a
time for panic, and a need to find something, anything, new to do and quickly.
I’d
crossed that demarcation between work and retirement, and I’d found it painful,
so I kept trying to go back to what I knew and had valued for some fifty
years—working, doing something meaningful in the eyes of the world. Yet
available to me was the life of that young girl who awoke every day to possibilities,
unless, of course, I chose to clutter it up with the detritus of those fifty
years of working. I realized that I didn’t need to “find a new direction.” I
was free to have no direction. To wake up and follow my curiosity. To read a
book of my choosing. To call a friend
and hang out at a museum. Even to go to Wales and live (something I’ve dreamed
of doing). To sit on the deck and stare at the stars, unless of course, the
mosquitos got me first. The point was, I didn’t need to have an agenda, unless that
agenda was relearning how to be this person who allows the day to unfold as it
wants to. Retirement wasn’t so much the end of work as it was a challenge to
“start anew,” to just be and to awaken with curiosity about what the day will
bring, and to rediscover the joy of that young girl, which, hopefully, is still
in me.
From Anthem
So mornings
now I’ll go out riding
Through pastures of my solemn plain,
And leather creaking in the quieting
Will sound with trot and trot again.
I’ll live in time with horse hoof falling;
I’ll listen well and hear the calling
The earth, my mother, bids to me,
Though I will still ride wild and free.
And I ride out on the morning
Before the bird, before the dawn,
I’ll be this poem, I’ll be this song.
My heart will beat the world a warning—
Those horsemen will ride all with me,
And we’ll be good, and we’ll be free.
Karens' Descant 