My First Retirement

What does it mean to retire? For a long time, it meant collecting a pension.

I was introduced to retirement by New York State. I was only 57, but the State was into cutting costs, and offering early retirement to senior staff could save money. The offer came at a fortuitous time for me. Morri was only a year and half then, and I figured I had another twenty years to work before she graduated from college. The State mental health system wasn’t the same place it had been when I started at South Beach twenty years earlier. I couldn’t picture working there for another twenty years.

Still it was frightening to cut myself loose. When I stepped into the unknown, where would my peacemaker path take me? A great adventure for sure. It took some years of meandering, but we ended up building a network of four charter schools serving students who faced the trifecta of challenges – poverty, racial discrimination, and the stigma of “special needs.”

I embraced Bernie’s Zen joke: retiring was about changing the tires on your car, often without stopping or slowing down. I loved the work we were doing, and when people asked me about the future, retirement was always five to ten years away. Until it wasn’t. My body announced the retirement. I was tired. Stick a fork in me. I was done. I remember the moment so vividly – Dee’s birthday dinner at hotel in Madison, Connecticut – we were just emerging from Covid, eating on the deck overlooking Long Island Sound, in November with space heaters. “I’m done.”

Six months later, my team threw me one hell of a retirement party. I thought I was prepared for retirement. I’d done it once already. But I’d been confused by New York State. My first “retirement” was a mislabeling. I had merely started a second career at a time when many people were actually retiring. There was a level on which I’d known this. I knew I was fortunate to have my most productive years at a time when so many my age were playing golf or fishing or going to the track.

I was confused. I thought I was starting a third career. Briefly, I fantasized a continuing role with our charter school network. Then, I imagined a writing “career” – the only difference from previous careers was that this time I didn’t have to worry about earning a living. I didn’t have a clue what it meant to retire. That has been the great learning of this moment in my life, this moment in the bardo.

We’re turning the page. We’ll get to real retiring in the next week.