Thursday, May 30, 2013

Retirement: The Courage to Leave the Habitual for the New





As a community college instructor for over 27 years (many years in the same school), I had my parking place—the one I always hoped to get if I got there early enough (by 9 a.m. at the latest). I would drive down the small serpentine road behind Batmale Hall (a prison-like building—home to the English Department) and park. Sometimes, I would see the same faculty member park at the same time. I often saw one women who walked her two leaping dogs; another walked a dog that had lost its back legs, but with a special contraption the dog was able to move up and down the small sidewalk and smell the flowers, lift its leg and pee.
My office was on the 3rd floor (away from the fray) but I would often go up to the 5th floor where there was coffee for a dollar and I would have a few moments with whoever happened to be there—“My child wore pajamas to school today,” a young mother/teacher said—“I spent the whole weekend grading and I have three batches left!” another said. I’d chat with the department secretary— about her daughter who was sick, or her other daughter’s day at kindergarten or the Xerox machine (always breaking down)—or check out the pastries or sometimes fresh fruit brought in by a faculty member. I needed those moments: they brought me into a community, however chaotic and fleeting it often felt as we all made our way across campus to different buildings. Sometimes the only non-student chats of the day were those few words exchanged between teaching 1A Transfer composition—or a night creative writing class where I often got coffee from “The Cart” and again chatted with those surrounding this small watering hole. Food has always drawn me to places!

It is the “watering hole” that I still miss—the talks about life/love/even death with those you have known—even if not deeply—for oh so many years. It takes courage to make the transition—leap into what can feel like the unknown. You have to give up that parking space—with all its easy familiarity.
Al Averbach worked as an editor for many years—and always wanted to write. He is now a published poet. He wrote to me about what it was like for him leading up to actually retiring—and talks about a slow phasing-out before he left his job completely.


In my work life—maybe for many born in the mid-forties and astounded by the sixties--I was almost famously stable. In early 2007, approaching 63, I had spent 30 years as a manuscript editor in just three work settings. It was work that suited me and made me feel useful. Never a planner or dreamer, or, for that matter, someone who took stock, I looked forward to vacations, but could always resume that habitual daily motion back to my desk and my manuscripts. That life just worked.

But now something had set in that I was slow to recognize. Sure, several co-workers had already left for another organization; sure, one whole small group had spun off to another setting. So some blanks had opened up around me, but (fixed as I was on the studies in hand and under way), I was slow to read them as signs. Now I wondered. Do I have to continue doing this same thing? What would happen if I don’t?

I still don’t know exactly what set off the flip in my perspective. There was some inner resistance, a real hesitancy, after all.
First, given our work-consumed culture, whose habits we’re prepared for from kindergarten on, there’s a freight of habit and inculcation, from punctuality on up, that would have to be set down and turned away from. I began to understand that I would have some other work to do . . . some great undoing was called for . . . and I had had no practice at learning it.
Second, to contemplate retiring wasn’t just to bring to an end my life as I knew it, day in, day out. It was, at nearly 63, to consider a decision that would tail me off in a single direction of a different order—toward the rest, and toward the end, of my life.

With these stakes, why such weak, paltry terms: retire, retirement? I didn’t like them, and there were no better near-synonyms. I actually found myself so short-handed for terms that I was angry. So I made one up—rezoom. I needed grounds for resumption of something left off long ago, and looked for them. For the previous 6 or 7 years I had begun composing poems, a practice I had given up for about 40 years, and had gotten several published. I began to feel I had finished an important phase in my life: My son was going to cycle in Europe while running his transcription business; my daughter was about to embark on her counseling/therapist career. My wife was still making a good salary at her work and liked working. And the recession hadn’t come upon us yet . . .

Even so, I “hedged” by choosing to transition slowly: “phased retirement.” A way for me to stick my head out the door from work, and keep a foot in, and see what it was like. I would work maybe 40% time. But then true writing appeared on the wall: our work group was going to be transferred from Berkeley to Sacramento, and subsumed into something else there. The only phase for me then, come late June 2007 was: out. And I took it, and have been in that phase since. Call it what one will, but one of its near-synonyms is “breathe.”

We all hope to “rezoom” as Al says and we often need to see that others before us have done this: left a long-time job and given up their parking place to someone else. I still miss seeing the dogs—but I see new dogs I had never seen before in my Glen Park neighborhood. I still miss all the chats but have new watering holes. Plus, I’m still teaching part-time so I have my students.

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