Taking Retirement: A Beginner's Diary - Softcover

Klaus, Carl H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807072192 ISBN 13: 9780807072196

Verlag: Beacon Press, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

In this diary of retirement, acclaimed writing teacher Carl Klaus guides us through a passage that we all must take, one that forces us to confront the deeply disorienting issues of identity and mortality as well as the pleasures of creating a whole new life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Carl Klaus, author of My Vegetable Love and Weathering Winter, is founder of the nonfiction writing program at the University of Iowa. He lives in Iowa City.

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Taking Retirement

A Beginner's DiaryBy Carl H. Klaus

Beacon Press

Copyright © 2000 Carl H. Klaus
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780807072196

Excerpt

Friday / February 21, 1997

    Retirement. I've been phasing into it slowly, gently (three yearsat three-quarter time, two years at half-time), so I figured it wouldbe an easy transition when the no-time time begins a few monthsfrom now. I'd step into my new life so well prepared for it that I'dhardly miss my old one. Just a simple matter of putting one foot infront of another on my way to the brave new world of AARP?theAmerican Association of Retired Persons. As a retired person?aretiree?I'd no longer feel the old compulsions to go into the office,check the mail, chat with my colleagues, confer with my students,or do any of the other things I've been doing the past forty years. I'dhang out instead in my attic study, overlooking the backyard, andwatch the seasons unfold. But just to make sure I didn't go to seed,I'd keep a hand in by teaching one of my favorite courses in the nonfictionwriting program that I used to direct?a course in prosestyle, or the personal essay, or the art of the journal. One course ayear?enough to keep in touch with the students, keep myself stimulated,and keep my office too. But without any of the hassle.

    No more department meetings, no more committees, no moresalary reviews. Free at last! Free to tend my garden for the rest of mydays. Free to read what I want, write when I want, teach when Iwant, go fishing, visit the children and grandchildren. And travelwith Kate to all those alluring places in the glossy brochures thatclutter our mailbox every spring and fall. Hike Machu Picchu, explorethe Galápagos, take a villa in Tuscany, tour the Holy Land, visitthe Forbidden City, and behold the Great Barrier Reef. No wonderI chose to retire at sixty-five rather than seventy. Especially withmore to spend than if I were working full time?thanks to SocialSecurity and forty years of investment in TIAA-CREF, otherwiseknown as Teachers Insurance Annuity Association and College RetirementEquities Fund. My pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

    The only problem is that some of my plans began to change, andnot by choice, when I stopped in a few weeks ago to visit my colleaguePaul, who now directs the nonfiction program. The minuteI sat down and started to discuss my teaching plans for next year, Icould see the smile on Paul's face beginning to droop. When I askedhim what was wrong, he told me that our department chair, Dee,had been fretting about low enrollments in some of our nonfictioncourses, especially given the recent additions to our nonfiction staff.So, as he explained it, there'll probably be no chance for me to teacha course next year or any other time in the near future. No room forme, no need for me. No fault of Paul's or of Dee's, but those wordsreverberated in my head as I listened to him reviewing the numbers,just the way I'd advised him to do when I passed him the baton a fewyears ago. As he leaned back in his office chair, ticking things offwith his fingers, it dawned on me that I'd not been keeping track asclosely as I used to. It also dawned on me that I'd soon have fewerprofessional options than I'd imagined. I too was ticking things off.

    Then I found out from Dee that the department will be short ofoffice space for several more years. So I'll probably have to give upthe office I've had the past twenty-five years?my office overlookingthe river?and take up residence in "the emeritus suite," a three-roomghetto for retired professors overlooking the parking lot. Aplace so crammed with metal lockers and similar amenities thatonly one or two of my retired colleagues have ever used it. Onceupon a time, retired faculty kept their offices as long as they wished,so the department was like an extended family, and retirement wasnot an eviction notice. But now I might be evicted altogether, forthe emeritus suite, as I discovered just a few days ago, has been convertedinto office space to house our visiting professors and the department'shonors program. Talk about being out of touch! You'dthink I was already retired, given how little I know about what'sbeen going on around the building while I've been phasing in. Orphasing out, to put it more accurately. And not just out of my office,but also out of the community of my colleagues.

    Out of it, just at the moment when a new person's coming intothe nonfiction program who's sure to be a wonderful colleague?aperson who'll fill the vacancy created by my departure and so in asense will be my replacement. Though I met Sara just a few days agoduring her campus interview, I've been hearing about her frommembers of the search committee, also from my longtime friendand former colleague Bob, who's directing her doctoral work atBrown and sang her praises in a recommendation that's exuberantlyover the top?"She can charm bees from flowers and words fromdictionaries" Last summer, I exchanged a few e-mails with Saraabout her thesis on the essay?the subject of my own study the pasttwenty years?and just from that exchange I was buzzing about hertoo. Then a few weeks ago, I looked at her teaching materials andnoticed that she's offered courses not only on the essay but alsoon prose style, covering some of the same material that I've beendealing with the past forty years. And doing it with more pizzazz,though she's only been teaching a few years. A lot more pizzazz, asI could see from watching her run a two-hour workshop a few daysago. The room was abuzz when she finished. So when the departmentmet yesterday afternoon to consider our two job candidates,I could hardly contain myself as I waited to make a strong closingstatement for Sara?even though she hasn't yet finished her doctoralthesis and several people are worried about bringing in someonewithout a degree in hand. I don't think I've given such an impassionedtalk since my heart attack twelve years ago?I could feelthe pulse throbbing in my temples.

    Only then, in the flush of my excitement about Sara, did I realizethat I'd delivered my valedictory?that I'd probably never have anotheroccasion to address the whole department. And only then did Irealize that I was far less ready for retirement than I'd supposed?thatI have, in fact, such mixed feelings about giving up the classroom,my office, and the community of my colleagues and studentsthat I thought I'd better start keeping a dairy. A diary where I candeal with the bittersweet feelings I'm experiencing even now as I situp here in the attic writing this piece. A diary that might help methrough this suddenly dismaying phase-in-phase-out?and beyond.For I don't want my final day of teaching, just a few monthsfrom now, to be a day of mourning. I want to take retirement ratherthan feel as if it's taking me unawares. Maybe even seize it joyously.But at least behold it without looking back so longingly that I turninto a pillar of regret.

Saturday / February 22

    Last night I e-mailed Sara a one-word letter of congratulations,and this morning she replied: "Thank you. THANK YOU. You havebeen enormously helpful. As you know, this job wouldn't even existwithout you. I am fitting both my shoes into one of your footprints,and very grateful to have discovered their impression in the sand."Such a gracious and flattering note that I responded in kind?"Yourfeet are bigger than you think." And I meant it, meant it so muchthat it made me keenly aware just then of how easily replaceable I'veturned out to be. No one, of course, is replaceable. "One mind less,one world less," as Orwell says in "The Hanging." Still, it's hard toignore the contrary truth that resonates through the halls of everyplace I've ever worked whenever someone decides to change jobs ormove elsewhere or retire?"No one is irreplaceable." I've sometimesuttered that line myself, especially when a big name has decidedto leave. But then again, I'd have to admit that I've sometimesheard a little voice within me saying, "It'll be different with you.It won't be so easy for them to replace you." Come to think of it,though, I've rarely heard that voice the past two years since Paul'staken over the nonfiction program and done such a fine job of it.And now with the coming of Sara, I don't expect I'll ever hear itagain. So the most haunting thing about her lovely message is theimage of my footprints in the sand, likely to last no longer than thenext incoming tide.

Sunday / February 23

    Tides be damned, there's a life to be lived, and that means it'stime to get started on the vegetable garden. This morning I plannedthe spring garden and planted a few tomato seeds, keeping myselffocused on the task at hand, on the dry seeds in the wet germinatingmix, on the prospect of fruits to come. No matter what happens atthe building, I'll have homegrown tomatoes in June or early July.Fresh produce just a few weeks after I retire. Maybe Kate's rightwhen she tells me, "Just get on with your life, and retirement willtake care of itself."

    On days like this, in fact, I wonder why I'm worrying about it atall, especially when I think about my parents, neither of whom livedlong enough to retire. Even if they had lived to be sixty-five or seventy,they'd probably have kept on working until they dropped deadin their tracks. Like most people of their generation, who were bornlong before the time of ample pension plans and Social Security?myfather in 1879, my mother in 1903?they couldn't have affordedto retire, particularly after my father, a doctor, lost everything heowned, including his home, in the stock market crash of 1929, andmy mother returned to schoolteaching after he died in 1934. WhenI think of how hard it was for some of the relatives who raised meduring the Depression era in Cleveland, and harder still for the immigrantparents of my childhood friends, I feel as if I've been richlyspoiled by the retirement funds I've accumulated during my yearsof working at Iowa. A far cry from the way it used to be for collegeprofessors. A far cry from the way it still is for many clerical, factory,and service workers, given the recent wave of downsizing and cost-cuttingprograms. No wonder so many people have to work twopart-time jobs just to make ends meet, without any chance of acomfortable retirement. No wonder McDonald's has been runningwant ads for elderly employees. They make me feel like the beneficiaryof such a rare windfall that I should keep my mouth shut andget on with my life?gardening, reading, and puttering around thehouse, as I did today. But no sooner do I vow to shut up than somethinghappens that starts me fretting again. And then I understandthe embarrassing truth of E. B. White's acknowledgment that "Onlya person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and thestamina to write essays." Or to keep a retirement journal.

Monday / February 24

    Today I was back in the pre-retirement world, getting ready fortomorrow's workshop in the art of the journal, a course I createdthis year as an outgrowth of My Vegetable Love, the journal I wrotetwo years ago. It's the last course I'll ever teach here, and happily (orsadly) it seems like one of the best I've ever taught. Eight giftedwomen and I, turning our days into daybooks, our lives into journals.I wonder if it's exciting just because it's a new kind of venturefor all of us. I'm teaching something I've never taught before, andthey're writing journals in a much more artistically conscious waythan they've ever done before. I also wonder if it's so special for mebecause it's the last course of my career. Perhaps I shouldn't even beworrying about such questions and simply be thankful that it's beenso satisfying, especially when I remember how it was with my colleagueJix, who retired last year after teaching a course that accordingto him was one of the most disappointing of his career.Maybe, after all, there's a truth to the cliché of quitting while one'sahead, particularly considering the recent growth of my retirementfunds. But then again, what a pleasure it would be to have anothergo at this course. But then again, what a pleasure it would be to stopgoing back and forth like this. I wonder if everyone goes throughsuch mood swings on the verge of retirement, or if it's just me andthis day. But one thing's for sure?I can't ever remember myselfhaving such ups and downs, such highs and lows, as if I were ondrugs or had somehow lost control of myself.

Tuesday / February 25

    At breakfast this morning, I devoured a two-page feature in theDes Moines Register, called "New Beat for the Old Reporter." A pieceabout a recently retired columnist, whose stuff I've been reading thepast thirty-five years, without ever realizing we're almost the sameage?just five months apart. He's always looked so much older thanme, especially in this morning's article, balding at the front, grayaround the edges, that I was doubly surprised after mentioning it toKate, who smiled at me across the breakfast table and said, "Haveyou looked in the mirror lately and seen what's going on?the thinninghair, the sagging cheeks, the growing waistline?" Only yourbest friends will tell you! I was also touched by the discovery that hisdecision to retire "came as a surprise to everyone, even himself," becausehe "suddenly realized it was time to go. `I was so tired of it.'"

    Though I've never been tired of the students, or the give-and-takeof classroom discussion, or the office hours, or the mentoring,I'm so burnt out from forty years of reading and commenting onstudent writing?a lifetime with the editorial pencil in hand?thatI sometimes feel as if I can hardly bring myself to look at anotherset of student essays. And it's not just the tediousness of making thecomments again and again. It's the emotional and intellectual exhaustionthat comes from repeatedly making the effort to producecomments that are evaluative but constructive, probing but encouraging.Now I'm beginning to wonder what makes other peopledecide that it's time to go. Boredom? Burnout? Buyout? Illness?Wanderlust? New ventures? Old hungers? Or the sand runningswiftly down from top to bottom? And I wonder how they feel aboutit once they've decided to go.

    A few more classes like the one I had this afternoon, and I'll beready to retire?without any qualms at all. Discussion got off to aslow start, everyone sitting silent around the big seminar table as ifthey'd all lost their voices at once. And it didn't get any better therest of the session, so I had to offer a more pointed critique of bothmanuscripts than I care to make in class, especially when I'm concernedabout the confidence of the students, as I was this afternoon.By the end of the two-hour workshop, I felt much more drainedthan usual?also more in touch with the burnout I was feeling fiveyears ago when I decided to go on phased-in retirement. And nowafter dinner, as I sit up here in our attic study finishing this entry,I'm also feeling in touch with another post-workshop eveningtwelve years ago today, another February 25, when I first started feelinguncomfortable spasms in my neck that turned out to be thesigns of a heart attack. A heart attack, followed by a triple bypass,that changed the course of my life as much as I now feel it's beingchanged by my forthcoming retirement. But in this case, there's nokind of bypass available.

Wednesday / February 26

    Kate's birthday, and once again I was elated to give her some bettergifts than the heart attack I had twelve years ago. Especially anillustrated book about trees from around the world?my contributionto the library she's building for herself and for Heritage Treesof Iowa City, the long-term preservation project she's been spearheadingthe past several years. That book is also an emblem of thetraveling we hope to do in the years to come, a leafy reminder of whyI should be looking forward to retirement. Skimming its pages aftershe opened it at lunch, I gazed at seductive photographs of trees andplaces I've never seen before?the grass trees of Australasia, the fevertrees of South Africa, the araucaria trees of Chile.

    But this afternoon I was back at the office for conferences withAngela, who's working on an M.F.A. thesis about her Chicano heritage,and Jean, who's keeping a journal about coping with her mother'srapidly failing memory. Both compelling projects that I hopecan be turned into publishable manuscripts. So the thought ofabandoning the know-how I've developed during forty years ofteaching is difficult to accept, particularly when students ask if I canserve on their theses after I've retired. I wonder if it might be possiblefor me to stay on as an unpaid consultant to the program. As anadjunct professor rather than a professor emeritus. As someonewho can help colleagues and students develop their manuscriptsand get them placed with agents and publishers.

    Or am I just looking for excuses to avoid the unavoidable? Andif that's the case, why can't I just let go of it all without trying to hangon in one way or the other? Retirement, after all, is a time for newventures, yet for some reason I seem wedded to my same old job.What a strange thing?to know better, yet not be able to let go. Asif it were an addiction rather than a profession.

Thursday / February 27

    In the midst of such fretting, there's nothing like the spectacle ofa tomato seedling just beginning to emerge, its neck arching out ofthe soil. Only four days after being planted, thanks to the warmth ofthe living room radiator directly under the seed tray. I christen itwith a little mist from Kate's spray bottle and think of the monthsahead. I imagine myself taking up watercolors, so I can do detailedstudies of emergent seedlings. I'm inspired by the ethereally beautiful,larger-than-life watercolor of leeks by our dear friend Jo Ann?alovely pair, suspended in midair?that arrived late yesterday afternoonas the climactic present in Kate's birthday bounty. Better tolook forward rather than back. Better to focus on the joy rather thanthe sadness of my coming retirement. Better to stop spouting suchplatitudes lest I turn into a latter-day Polonius and not come toterms with the fact that it's time for me to leave even though I'm notyet ready to let go of what I've been doing for almost two-thirds ofmy life. And I don't know if I'll ever be ready. Now I'm beginningto understand why some of my older colleagues seemed prickly ordistant when they were facing retirement.

Friday / February 28

    "Looking forward to your retirement party?" My colleague, Jon,clearly meant well by the question he asked me when our pathscrossed in the office corridor this afternoon. But in my currentmood, a retirement party is the last thing I want to hear about. Somy response to Jon was a bit crusty?a response that left him lookinga little less bright-eyed than usual, especially since I didn't feellike going into a long-winded explanation just then.

    How could I tactfully explain that such parties usually give methe creeps? They seem like a thinly veiled expulsion, complete withgoing-away gifts and celebratory farewells. A few years ago I wrotea note to Dee, asking her not to plan any such thing for me. No luggage,thank you, or emotional baggage, or anything else to send meon my way. I should have known that she'd urge me to reconsiderand I wouldn't have the gumption to refuse, especially given Dee'sirrepressibly genial and earnest manner. Now I'll have to write heranother note, asking once again to be spared the ceremonies and theremembrances and all the other stuff that sometimes make me feelas if I'm at a memorial service rather than a retirement party. For Idon't want to be buried alive, don't want my story to be told untilmy story is complete, and certainly don't want to hear it being told.Especially when I'd much rather stay on as an unpaid editorial consultantto the nonfiction program. Maybe I should propose thatidea to Dee as something I'd much rather have than a party or agoing-away present.

Saturday / March 1

    Though I've been writing about retirement for a week or so, Iwoke up early this morning with the sudden realization that I?theso-called English professor?don't really know what the word itselfmeans. Oh yes, I know that it usually refers to the act of giving upa longtime job or business, career or profession, usually because ofadvancing age. But a quick check in the dictionary reminded me ofits derivation from the Old French verb retirer (literally, to drawback). So, in its root sense, retirement denotes the act of withdrawingto a private or secluded place, as in going to bed. Or to givingground, as in retreating or withdrawing from battle. Retirement, inother words, is deeply connected with the act of giving up, giving in,retreating, as it were, from life itself. And that's not what I'm readyfor at all, which is probably why I was put out by Jon's well-meaningremark yesterday and by the whole idea of retirement ceremonies.Perhaps I just need to get it through my head that I'm not retiringin the root sense of the word, not retreating, not giving up anythingbut my classroom teaching, my tenured job, and probably my office.Even if I'm up here in the seclusion of the attic, I'm still going to bewriting new books and essays, revising my textbooks, keeping intouch with colleagues, collaborators, and students. And when I'mnot up here, I'll be gardening, traveling, cooking, and so on.

    But Jon's remark reminds me that others might be inclined toperceive me as retreating into a world of inactive graybeards (eventhough I don't have a beard at all). In fact, the mail these days hasbeen bringing me so many cards and letters and flyers and advertisements,most of them trying to sell me retirement housing, retirementplanning, retirement counseling, retirement insurance,that it's sometimes very hard to see myself as anything but a retiree.Or a big old cash cow that everyone wants to get a piece of.

Sunday / March 2

    Though I'm not a cash cow, this whole retirement process hasbeen making me wonder who I am, especially this afternoon whenI was staring at the blank screen of my computer, confronting thequestion more directly than usual, because I had to write a noteabout myself for the jacket flap of my forthcoming daybook, WeatheringWinter. Just a few sentences, a short paragraph, that would putme in a nutshell, the catchy sort of prose I've written so often inyears past that it usually takes no more than an hour. But today Ifussed over the thing for several hours, because today for the firsttime in twenty-five years I couldn't refer to myself as a professor ofEnglish, since the book will be published several months after I retire.The minute I realized I'd be losing that title, I suddenly began toexperience something like an identity crisis, the sort of thing I can'tremember since my sophomore slump, when I switched from beinga premed student to being an English major. Who am I, I wonderedthis afternoon, if not a professor of English? And a faint voice whisperedin my ear, "You're about to become a professor emeritus ofEnglish." My first promotion in twenty-five years. The only problemis that I've never craved that venerable title, whose Latin wordfor retired makes it sound "ever so much more lofty," according toKate. Nor have I ever thought it fit me, since I've always been toorambunctious to be addressed in such a high-flown way. Besides,who would want to buy a book by a professor emeritus, except anotherprofessor emeritus? So I decided to avoid any mention ofprofessorial titles and referred to myself instead as the "founderand former director of Iowa's nonfiction writing program." I waspleased at first with how adroitly I implied my retirement withoutcalling myself a professor emeritus. But now I can't help wonderingwhy I wasn't willing to identify myself openly as a retired professor.Am I embarrassed, perhaps, at being known as someone who's retired?And why should I be, given that someone who's getting on inyears might know a few things about weathering winter. Besides,now that I think of it, why do I feel compelled to refer to any of thetitles that I once held? I mean, what's the good of retirement if itdoesn't free you from the titles and other claptrap that pervade theworld of corporations, governments, and academic institutions?Come to think of it, who am I anyway? A retiring professor? A cynicalauthor? A gardener? Or a person who's lost his bearings?

Monday / March 3

    The painters and wallpaperers arrived this morning to beginputting the house in order "for our golden years," as Kate says, wrylyreminding me that she's ten years younger than I and not all thathappy about being lumped in with the golden oldies. "I'm not retiring,"she said a few days ago, and "I'm sick of hearing all this talkabout it, as if that's all you think about anymore." But she's evidentlynot averse to planning our golden years projects, which started lastsummer when we had the second-floor bathroom deconstructed allthe way down to the bricks and an elegant room designed by Kateconstructed in its place. A room fitted out with handmade oak cupboards,handcut tiles and decorative tile borders, brass fittings, aruby red granite counter, and an old-fashioned door key with abraided silk tassel. A monument to self-indulgence after twenty-sevenyears of bathing at the far edge of comfort and respectability.Retirement, it seems, is the final fling. The love boat, thetrip-around-the-world, the Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited, thebathroom-of-our-dreams. Now I'm beginning to understand why myretired colleague Jix and his wife, Jean, just finished building a spacioustwo-story, glassed-in addition to their house, including anelevator. "Whatever turns you on," as Kate says. The only questionis whether I have enough gold to gussy up this nineteenth-centurybrick house for the fling of our desires, without having to look fora new job in a new profession. I was thinking along those lines a fewdays ago, when I got another e-mail from Sara, thanking me forsome advice I'd given her about rental housing in Iowa City. "Yousound just like a realtor," she said, playfully picking up on all thehousing suggestions I'd offered her, and for a moment I wonderedhow I might do in that arena. The old competitive instincts feel almostas sharp as ever, especially after some forty years of honingthem to a fine edge.

Tuesday / March 4

    This afternoon's workshop was so lively, and I felt so energizedby the discussion, that it made me wonder why I decided not to continueteaching beyond this semester?as if I didn't already know theanswer. I was listening to the discussion of some richly detailedjournal installments by Priscilla and Vanessa, but I found myselflooking back five years to the time when I was still directing thenonfiction program, also teaching a full load of courses, advisingsome forty students in the program, sitting on a dozen M.A. andPh.D. thesis committees, chairing a special reading group on the essayfor six doctoral students in nonfiction, and grousing about thefact that I had virtually no time for my writing, or for traveling withKate, or for anything beyond the press of my academic commitments.No wonder I wanted out.

    But now I wonder why I couldn't foresee how much more appealingmy lot might be on a drastically reduced workload?so appealingthat I sometimes wish I could keep this comfortable berthforever. The only problem is that I would never have discovered thishappy arrangement without taking part in the university's phased-inearly retirement plan, the financial inducements of which I acceptedin exchange for agreeing to retire completely at the age ofsixty-five. And without agreeing to retire, I couldn't have affordedto work part-time, so I'd certainly not have had enough spare timeto keep the journal that led to both of my daybooks, and I'd probablynever have hit upon the idea of teaching a workshop in journalwriting. Now that I'm thinking about the matter like this, takingeverything into account, it looks like this phase-in-phase-out planhas turned out far better than I could have imagined, even thoughit includes my upcoming retirement and the end of my teaching career.And that charming rationalization suddenly puts me in mindof a haunting couplet by Richard Wilbur from the end of "NewYear's Eve":

We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.

No wonder I'm keeping this journal.

Wednesday / March 5

    Sometimes, though, this journal makes me feel as if I'm becomingobsessed with retirement, writing about it every day, worryingabout every twist and turn in the road, rather than enjoying thescenery?and the surprises?along the way. But at breakfast thismorning, when I mentioned the possibility of giving up this journaland working on other things, like the garden and my book on thepersonal essay, Kate stopped scanning the newspaper and told mein her sternest, no-nonsense tone of voice, "You can't keep startingthese journals and then dropping them, like you did with that otherone last fall." I never thought she'd bring up my journal about thejournal-writing course, especially after I explained how it was gettingin the way of the course itself.

    But I couldn't make a similar case against this one. And even ifI had decided to stop keeping it this morning, the rest of the daywould have convinced me that it isn't the journal that keeps methinking about retirement but all the other reminders of it thatcome welling in on me every day. Like the flyer that arrived todayfrom Blue Cross/Blue Shield, inviting me to think about my upcomingsixty-fifth birthday this May and the need to supplementmy forthcoming Medicare insurance with a "wraparound" policy(of which there are ten kinds to choose from). Or the recently gyratingstock market that makes me wonder whether I should reallocatesome of my retirement funds. Or my upcoming trip to Clevelandthis weekend, to visit my ninety-five-year-old Aunt Ada and helpher adjust to the move she recently made from her longtime apartmentinto a retirement home. Or the well-meaning question thatmy hairdresser Chris put to me this afternoon when I sat down inthe chair and took off my glasses: "So tell me?what are you andKate planning to do once you're retired?"

Thursday / March 6

    Henceforth, perhaps, I'll be known not as a retired professor ofEnglish but as an active winterologist, thanks to an hour-long radioprogram about winter, for which I was interviewed last month byWisconsin Public Radio. The nationally syndicated program airedin Wisconsin last Sunday, and since then I've received several callsand e-mails, all telling me how "thoughtful" and "informative" Isounded. At first, I assumed it was just the affection of my daughterAmelia, who lives in Wisconsin, and the eagerness of Sarah, marketingdirector at the university press, whose mother also heard theprogram in Wisconsin. But a few other favorable reports led me toimagine that I sounded more knowledgeable and articulate than thethick-tongued fellow I felt like during most of the interview. Thepast few days, in fact, I began to think about doing some radio essayson gardening or winter or retirement or writing, or anything elsethat might come to mind. A new venture and a way to continueteaching as well. For a moment or two, I even imagined myself beinginvited to do a weekly or biweekly essay on one of the PBS radio programs.Something with an evocative title, like "Tending My Garden:A Letter from the Heartland." So beguiling a series that I'd becomethe darling of millions. An E. B. White of the airwaves. But then Iremembered the nasally, slow-talking pontificator I used to hearwhen I still listened to myself being interviewed on the radio, andsoon enough I decided, after all, that I'd rather not listen to the programwhen it airs next week in Iowa. Still, there's nothing like a gooddaydream, especially on the eve of retirement.

Friday / March 7

    On a cool March day, there's also nothing like the promise of anearly summer tomato, so it was a pleasure to transplant the seedlingsthat germinated last week, now that their first true leaves havefully unfurled. And then without further ado, Kate transported meto the Cedar Rapids airport for my flight to Cleveland to visit AuntAda. Actually, she's my mother's first cousin, but she's always beenlike an aunt or a fairy godmother, especially during my childhoodwhen I sometimes spent weekends with her and her husband, Bernie,after my father and mother died. The last time I visited AuntAda, some five years ago, Kate and I and a host of other relativesgathered in Cleveland to celebrate her ninetieth birthday. And shewas still the most effervescent relative in my life, still up to a fewcomic vaudeville routines with her younger brother, Jerry, in thegracious apartment they shared, and then to decking herself out inan elegant lavender dress for a celebratory dinner, where she playedthe belle of the ball, with toasts and good memories all around. Butthis time I knew would be different, for Jerry passed away just a fewmonths ago, leaving Aunt Ada in grief at the loss of her last close relativeand friend, leaving her too with no choice but to move into aretirement home last week, a move that she and Jerry had been resistingfor several years. From my recent phone conversations withAunt Ada, I've also realized that she's in a bad way over her loss ofhearing, her diminishing eyesight, her failing health, and everythingelse in her immediate world. It's no wonder I've been gettingSOS calls and letters from Lois, my former sister-in-law, who tendsAunt Ada's many needs as if Ada were her own aunt or mother.

    But nothing I'd heard from Lois or from my brother, Marshall,could have prepared me for what happened when I first saw AuntAda again this afternoon. Oh yes, she was still carefully dressed, andshe still cared intensely about her favorite art objects, as I could tellfrom the suggestions she kept making to my cousin Joanne and herhusband, Marvin, who were hanging her pictures when I walkedinto her room at the retirement home. But this time, the first I canever remember, she didn't greet me as "little Carly," with the familiartwinkle in her eye and the playful use of the double diminutivethat she knew I detested from years of having been greeted that wayby most of my other relatives. No, this time instead, it was "my dear,dear Carl, how good of you to come." And then I knew for sure thatthings were in a bad way, especially a moment later when she said,"Come give me a hug," a request I'd never heard from her before. Sofragile that I worried about holding her too tight lest I crush her inmy arms. Her eyes tearing, her voice crackling, all she could say tome just then was, "The quality of life. The quality of life." And then Iknew her anguish was so profound that nothing could relieve it butdeath itself. Aunt Ada, it seemed, had reached the point of no return,a place that I can only imagine right now by remembering howdelicate she felt, how frail her bones, when I took her in my arms.

    Yet just a while later, when I was about to go out to dinner withJoanne, Marvin, and Lois, Aunt Ada wanted me to meet her "dearfriend, Alice," a diminutive lady who appeared at her door, smiling,and without a word took Aunt Ada's hand and started walkingdown the hall, arm in arm, hand in hand, as if the quality of lifecould never have been better. And I could never have been more uncertainabout what it means to retire or when one has passed thepoint of no return.

Saturday / March 8

    At dinner last night, Marvin, a retired elementary school principal,could not have been more certain about retirement. "Youshould keep on working as long as you believe in what you're doingand it gives you satisfaction. Which means that it's time to quit, timeto retire, when the work doesn't satisfy you any longer, or you can'tbring yourself to do it any longer." It sounded as if Marvin was talkingabout boredom and burnout. But when I asked him about hisown situation, it turned out that he retired a few years ago, in hisearly sixties, earlier than he had planned, when the superintendentof his school system demanded that he cut the budget by firing someof the young elementary school teachers whom he had hired. "Theywere excellent teachers, who didn't deserve to be fired, so I didn'tfeel I could continue to work in that kind of a situation."

    Given the intensity of Marvin's feelings about leaving a careerthat had given him so much satisfaction, I was fascinated this morningas I listened to Lois talk casually about retiring "sometime nextyear" from her job as a research assistant at Case-Western ReserveUniversity. She's always seemed so knowledgeable and seriousabout the projects in which she's involved that I've assumed herwork to be as central in her life as mine or Marvin's has been in ours.But when I pressed the matter a bit, inviting her to talk about herwork as a research assistant, she devalued her job so quickly that Icould see how she might not feel the anguish of retiring from a cherishedcareer: "Oh no, I don't usually do any of the scientific analysis.I just make myself useful to the project, do whatever needs to bedone, which means that I often put myself in a position of beingused. It's a habit of mine."

    For someone whose life has followed such a pattern?and I supposethere must be millions of such people, especially women?retirementmight well be a nonevent. Or better still a liberating experience.How else to account for the congratulatory remarks I'vebeen getting recently from secretaries in the department and elsewherearound town? At first I was puzzled, wondering if there wassomething wrong with me for being so troubled by retirement, orsomething wrong with them for taking it so joyously. But now I'mbeginning to see that retirement, like everything else in the world,is so deeply differentiated by gender, culture, profession, and everythingelse in human experience that my story of it?and my feelingsabout it?are probably as quirky as all the others.

    Which reminds me of my conversation this afternoon with AuntAda. I was trying to find out about her life during the 1920s, in theyears before I was born. I was curious about how she met Bernie andwhat she'd been doing before they were married. And she didn'thold anything back. "I was teaching elementary school. I receivedmy teaching license, you see, in the mid-'20s, the same time as yourmother. But no sooner did I meet Bernie and begin dating him thanhe started to meet me every day on my way to school, telling me thathe wanted to marry me?wanted to marry me so much that hethreatened to jump off a bridge if I didn't agree. Can you believe it?Jump off a bridge for me? So what could I do? But back then, youcouldn't continue to teach if you were married." At that point, shepulled out her old teaching license from the Cleveland Board of Educationjust to show me the restriction against marriage. "Besides,Bernie and his family would have been embarrassed if I continuedto work after we were married. So that's when I retired."



Continues...

Excerpted from Taking Retirementby Carl H. Klaus Copyright © 2000 by Carl H. Klaus. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Beacon Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0807072192
• ISBN 13: 9780807072196
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 250
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar