Facing Reality and Surreality in
Retirement: A Call for a Salon on New Paradigm
Thinking and New Knowledge, Seen through a
Feminist Lens
Gloria Orenstein
Retirement obliges you to face REALITY whether you
want to or not. Many of my friends seem to have dived into their
dream worlds immediately, but I was greeted, after my preretirement disability leave, and then my ultimate retirement on Jan.
1,2013, with the immediate call to face up to the fatal loss of
colleagues and friends. I was really caught short – almost
unprepared. There is something about reaching this auspicious
moment, which in your fantasy life is akin to a graduation with
prizes awaiting – such as travels and the fulfillment of life-long
dreams – that somehow causes your expectations to be almost
totally out of sync with reality. You are immediately faced with
endless paperwork and decisions – about medical plans and the
distribution of your money to stretch it to last until the end of your
life. Aha! That brings up the calculation of how much time you
have left. It makes you keenly aware of the number you try not to
dwell on – your age, your generation, your senior status. Of course
there are some rewards for seniors, but the decline in income (due
to the financial crisis of the country that went on during the forty
years you were teaching and trying to build up your retirement
fund as the market was crashing) and the other life and death
decisions you must make, don’t seem to resonate with your
retirement dreams. Before you can catch your breath, inundated as
you are with endless forms to fill out, you find yourself reading the
obituaries first in the newspaper. I lost my dear colleague Moshe
Lazar, who hired me and supported me through all my years at
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University of Southern California first. Then came a list of friends
who died before their time, and – who were my age. I was also in
the crisis of disability. No one knows exactly how I came to suffer
such an injury due to my hip arthritis, but I had to take disability
for two years as I could never have walked to my office from
where 1 parked my car. I was really out of commission for almost
one year, and little by little, after a lot of physical therapy, I was
able to walk, but not much more than one block. Of course I know
that hip replacement surgery awaits me. I also know that with one
Cortisone injection I am feeling as if nothing had happened. When
I have that injection (which they limit, so eventually I can’t have
any more) I come to life like in the past and I start to wonder why I
would submit to a knife when I am feeling so fine. This is the part
of retirement that I call Facing Reality.
During my teaching career in Comparative Literature at
USC I had specialized in Surrealism, and I was not accustomed to
facing this much Realism all at once – figuring out when I will die
– thinking about how I want my death to be handled, what I will
bequeath and to whom etc. These are all things I find I cannot yet
face. I have not made many of these decisions yet. I just try
bravely to recover from each consecutive blow that comes along. I
try to give a sane answer to friends when they ask “How is
retirement, Gloria?” I don’t want to depress them, and at the same
time I do want to recognize that I actually was enjoying the
twilight of my Surrealist activism with talks I gave at Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (LACMA) and at the Museum of Modern
Art in Mexico City about my long friendship with the surrealist
artist Leonora Carrrington. She is another great friend who died
during this period, as was Jovette Marchessault, a close friend
since the seventies about whom I had written many articles.
Indeed, as I took out and re-read my letters from each of these dear
friends, from the seventies to their deaths, I had to think about
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where these precious letters from our correspondence could be
placed. That became another problem when one of Leonora’s sons
put a stop to any private papers being made available to the public
in important art archives. It became a problem for the letters from
Jovette, as she really needs an appropriate archive in which to
place her letters. For a while I was receiving news about a death of
someone I knew quite well every few months. At one point I went
to Mexico for the opening of an important art exhibit, and I had
plans to meet a good friend and spend quality time with her. When
I arrived I called her home, and the woman who was working for
her told me that she was in the hospital. I inquired as to when she
would come out, and I was told NEVER. She was deathly ill, and
expected to die within forty-eight hours. That in fact did happen. I
had to bring this tragic news to the friends gathered at the art
exhibit. She was so much younger than I was, and she was not sick
when we talked about our plans.
There were glitches also associated with all the other areas
included in REALITY. For example, I had taught at Douglass
College of Rutgers University and built up some retirement money
during my years there – but Tiaa Cref was no longer associated
with Rutgers, so we had to search for my holdings elsewhere in
New Jersey. Many glitches like these went along with the period of
my most difficult adjustment. Naturally I missed teaching – I loved
my students. I loved having an audience that was interested in the
avant-garde and in Dada and Surrealism in particular. Suddenly I
no longer had that audience – but fortunately I had some friends
from the IN WONDERLAND show at the Mexico City art
museum on the women of Surrealism who shared my enthusiasm
for that art and vision.
Ultimately, I came face to face with SURREALITY. Most
of us would not think of the constructive and positive aspect of
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A Call for a Salon on New Paradigms in Retirement: Facing Reality and Surreality
Thinking and New Knowledge as Seen Through the Eyes of a Child
A Feminist Perspective
Gloria Orenstein is a writer who lives in New York City
Whether you like it or not, retirement forces you to face reality.
whether you want to or not Many of my pals appear to have jumped right into their projects.
After my pre-retirement disability leave and then my final retirement in January, I was greeted with dream realms.
1st, 2013, with an urgent demand to confront the fatal loss of
coworkers and acquaintances I was really caught short – almost
unprepared. There is something about reaching this auspicious
moment, which in your fantasy life is akin to a graduation with
prizes awaiting – such as travels and the fulfillment of life-long
dreams – that somehow causes your expectations to
