The Art of Retirement

I retired from teaching in June 2002. At sixty-eight I was not forced but chose to retire because my goals of intensive reading and writing were not shared by my students. I have not missed the classroom. At my retirement I published my fifth book, a history of American childhoods since the seventeenth century, and assumed it would be my last.

I left the field of history because I had an alternative: art. Neither my elementary school nor my high school nor my undergraduate college offered instruction in studio art. In my late forties I found myself interested enough in sculpture to enroll in a course on my own campus. This, in turn, led to encounters with ceramics, drawing, and painting. (I could never understand why my colleagues did not take advantage of our generous art department.)

Most recently I discovered printmaking, and I began to create woodcuts. Having often taught a course in American biography, and possessing a fondness for clever rhymes, I decided to carve portraits of all the presidents of the U.S. and simultaneously write about them. The result has been an exhibit during the autumn of 2006 in the library of San Francisco State, my university, titled “From George Washington to George W.: Presidents Getting Verse.” It is the second showing of my work, and I aspire to more.

As an undergraduate at Princeton I was a member of the swimming team, a sport I gave up in the face of library duty as a graduate student and a professor. But in my early fifties I re-entered the pool in U.S. Masters meets, finding enjoyment in competition and the fellowship that accompanied it. When I tired of the chlorine and the swim lanes I discovered open water. For the past decade I have begun every day with a long swim in San Francisco Bay, which refreshes me enormously. That is not to say I have been entirely healthy. In 2001 I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and three years later I had two angioplasties. But I do believe my aquatic activity contributed to my rapid recovery from these illnesses.

One of my fellow swimmers created the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival, and I immediately volunteered to help locate films about the seas, their inhabitants (including humans), and coastal cultures. I have been the director of this festival for the past two years.

As a fully employed person I did not anticipate these retirement activities; indeed, I had given no thought to what I would do in retirement. At seventy-one I am still vital—and, in fact, I took a medal in an international swim competition a few months ago. Although since childhood I have been a bit morbid, I manage to put off thinking about death most of the time. Still, I imagine such denial could quickly disappear.

I provide significant financial support for two of my three adult children, yet I only infrequently see my far-away grandchildren. I regret but cannot alter this situation. I have been living alone since I divorced over twenty years ago, but I am almost never lonely.

As I paint this near-to-rosy picture, I know I have neglected the darker tones, much harder to articulate. Anxiety is seldom absent from my life, yet I cannot identify its source, save to observe that

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my mother was a very anxious woman. As an atheist I am sometimes perplexed by the purposelessness of individual existence, even while I accept the evolution of the species. But time has not made such matters more difficult to live with; they have always been on my mind.

Retirement in and of itself has not been difficult for me, perhaps because my career did not define my life. But as I feel age limiting my movement, even slowing my mind, I know that growing old will be a critical issue.

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