Hello from my little 3rd floor corner of the Magee,
As I look out the window, I see a typical little town. There is a statue at the center of our little town commemorating the veterans to the Civil War and beyond, I can see the back of the public library, the flag pole with the Star and Stripes raised before the United States Post Office building, and as I gaze down toward the horizon of Main Street, the buildings have histories that could tell countless stories of Bloomsburg’s past when the family-owned businesses were the life-blood of this only incorporated “town” in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. When I arrived in Pennsylvania the first time as a parish pastor, I was here for about 4 years, and when I pulled away in my 25 foot UHaul truck with a 4 Runner on a trailer that August day, I did not believe I would ever find myself back on the East Coast (and I know it is not technically the coast, but to an Iowan it felt like it), and then due to a multitude of events, I was asked to return. I had a new profession of sorts, and more education, and I was not all that far from where I had been a decade and a half before. Now as I write this, it is yet another decade and a half and I am still here in the Keystone State. Life has its way of throwing the proverbial curve ball, and while I do not know baseball pitches all that well, but I think that in spite of the variety of pitches (e.g. split-fingered fastballs, sliders, sinkers, or cutters) I have somehow managed them and perhaps even hit it out of the park.
My time here, my excursions, beginning at 17 when I left home to a meandering educational journey, my experiences from visiting every state to service in the Pacific and profoundly life-changing trips to Europe, the blessing of students, foreign exchange students, and a variety of surrogate children who graced my home with their presence, has been extraordinary. It has been beyond anything I could have ever imagined, or possibily anticipated, even in the wildest of dreams. I was that undersized boy who seldom imagined anything beyond the next day. When I graduated from high school, my enlisting in the Marine Corps was to leave home because home was not a positive experience. The choice of the Marine Corps was because I needed to prove I was more capable than I had been told most of my life. I did not even pass the physical when I went to Omaha for my initial testing. I did not weigh enough!
Retirement is an adjustment; and it is not all that I expected, though like most of my life, I am not sure what I expected. That is not to say I did not plan, but rather the profound difference from life before is immeasurable. Al least for me it has been. Conceptually, I understood that I would not be required to manage the same schedule; I realized that while I had planned there might be some things that would be different. In the last three years I worked, I worked dilligently and intentionally to do things to add to my pension. Waiting to collect Social Security more more than the 2 1/2 years after I was able to qualify for a full check was also planned, and undoubtedly, that all has made a significant difference. So what is it that makes retirement so different. It is the more abstract qualities that I took for granted. While people still refer to me as Dr. Martin, and some refer to me as Reverend Doctor, I do not feel like I am that person anymore. Even when returning to campus, be it in my old building or the Starbucks where I spent hours, days, and tens-of thousands of dollars over 15 years, I feel like to old guy in the corner. Most of the students who might know me have graduated or on an internship somewhere. Even the atmosphere of campus, which was substantially different after COVID is still different. When I first arrived on campus in 2009, the quad was teeming with students and the classrooms from 8:00 a.m. on where full of students. That is no longer the case. When I walk through my old building in the morning most of the classrooms are empty, and the quad has merely a fraction of the students of past years.
What I am realizing is I am wondering who I am on the other side of working? From being a server to a parish pastor, from being a graduate teaching instructor to an eventual tenure track professor and program director, I was in charge of my space. This is not something I understood until much later in my career. When I told restaurant servers that they were in charge of a guest’s experience; that server was an oxymoron of sorts because what a guest orders or how they remember the restaurant is much more about the server, not to say the food is not important. When I was the pastor of a parish or a campus pastor, when you have that title or wear that tell-tale shirt with the turned-around collar, people have decided a lot about you, but they also give you incredible authority. I used to tell my parishoners, “Please do not put me on a pedestal.” And whether I was a GTI, an adjunct, a probationary or tenure track faculty, there was to some degree a level or respect, be it from title or their perceived giving of power, I was afforded a certain degree of decorum. So . . . all of my adult life, I have found myself in positions where I held a position of authority or knowledge that provided some sense of automony and a position of value.
The American focus on individual freedom, of the belief that one must pull themselves up by their bootstraps does not bode well for how we regard or portray the elderly. Studies demonstrate there is a sort of polarization (how surprising in our current world situation) about how people consider the value of elderly people. First, what constitutes elderly? That is a question for which there is little agreement. Stereotypes fluctuate between regarding them as something in decline or dependent because of mental acuity or physical struggles (about 40%) to at least a significant percentage believing their life experience and subsequent wisdom are of value (75%). And yet about 2/3 of the public believe we do not know how to adequately care for elderly people. All of this is, of course, an important societal issue, from finances to medical care, from social acceptance to understanding how the increased life expectancy of humanity requires a rethinking on multiple fronts. I am at the point where I think old is a mindset versus a chronological benchmark. I believe that when people live into their mid-80s and beyond they have had a long life. And yet on the other hand, I know people younger than me who seem to act old, or appear old.
What I realize for me that having a role that required accountability to others, and that was the case in all the things noted above, it demanded to some extent the necessity of being around the other in some systematic way. Retirement does not require that. I am the captain of my schedule, of what I must put on my daily planner. I am not accountable to much of anything or anyone when it comes to where and when something occurs. That is not to say there are no boundaries or necessary things, but I have much more flexibility and autonomy. When I make an appointment, I do not have to say it has to be between this time or that time, on this day or that day. When I want to set up a social engagement, I do not have to worry about how things fit into my schedule to the degree I did. When I want to sleep in; when I want to decide to take a trip; when I want to decide it’s time to eat or even what to eat, it is my decision. And as a single person, that is even more my reality. There is an incredible freedom to that, but perhaps that is wherein there is a rub. I do not know what to do with such an increased level of freedom. It is so outside most of my life experience, such a level of choosing is beyond what I find comfortable. Is it something I will grown into? I hope so.
I am reminded of how we respond to the clapping of something. When I greww up, I was in a select Children’s Choir in my hometown. I was in a City Community Theatre for children. I was in band and orchestra, and one year I traveled on a LYE team where we were constantly infront oaf people. I was in concert choir in college, and I even did my own solo guitar vocal gig at one point. As humans, we are affected by applause. I have attended multiple concerts from Roger Waters to Elton John, from Celtic Woman to Mannheim Steamroller, from the 5 Man Electric Band (my very first concert) to Areosmith as a backup band (in 1974). The applause at times was deafening, but it was also electric. It affected us. What I realize now is while there was not always visible applause at what I did, there was always some sense of satisfaction when something was completed. There was acknowledgement. Sometimes it was as simple as the class was over and they left the room. Sometimes it was as surprising as someone telling me some 20 years later they remember a sermon. Other times it was actual applause or a standing ovation. After the initial retirement party, there is little that acknowledges who you are. There is no need to require your presence in an old classroom or at Starbucks, and when you are there, people seem genuinely surprised. While I am appreciative of my less hectic, my less demanding or requiring schedule, I am not sure how it all fits together or what I want to need to do. The applause has stopped, both literally and figuratively. What I do know is how grateful I am for those who still seem to believe I have something of value to offer. What I realize is this absence needs to be filled with something new and I need to figure that out.
Thanks as always for reading.
Michael
thewritingprofessor55 