Retirement—What a Worthless Word

As Julie Andrew said in The Sound of Music, “When one door closes another door opens.” Actually, Alexander Graham Bell said it first, if you don’t count 1. John the Apostle in Revelation 3:8 “I have been told many times, by several people, that when God closes one door He another opens.” 2. Helen Keller (We Bereaved 1929) and 3. Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote 1605). But my personal favorite? Comedian Bonnie McFarlane: “When one door closes another door opens. Usually a refrigerator.” Any way you serve it—pun intended—retirement is a distasteful word.   

Etymonline.com traces the word to the late 16th century:

retirement (n.) From French retirer “to withdraw (something) 1590s,
“act of retreating, act of falling back,” also “act of withdrawing into 
seclusion,” 1570s; Meaning “privacy, state of being withdrawn from 
society” is from c. 1600; that of “withdrawal from occupation or
business” is from 1640s.

Mother of younger children

When my daughter was growing up, I put my writing on hold: “I will always be able to write but I will never get these years with Jesse again.” When she was in high school and I returned to teaching, I put my writing on hold: “I will always be able to write but I will never get these years with my students again.”

While teaching, I worked on a second M.A. degree, attending the Bread Loaf School of English, in Middlebury, Vermont, which enabled me to attend Oxford University for a summer term. For six invigorating weeks, I studied Eighteenth-Century Literature and the Arts with the brilliant and sweet Professor Peter McCullough, Sohmer Fellow of Renaissance Literature. Only five others in the tutorial, we met three times a week in his spacious Lincoln College study. We scrutinized passages concerning Gardens in Paradise Lost, examined excerpts from Virgil’s Georgic translated by John Dryden, and scratched the surface of Alexander Pope’s poem Windsor Forest. I discovered the literary essayist, Joseph Addison, sending me on a search that resulted in an absorbing paper on imagination.

To top it off, regularly we traveled throughout London and the Cotswolds, exploring architecture and manor garden designs. Peter’s course energized me, making constant connections between history, literature, and artistic movements. 

While researching my last ‘Peter paper,’ I stumbled into the late 17th-century court of Queen Mary of Modena, consort to British King James II. There was something about her story that intrigued me. Before heading back to the States, I met with dear Peter to discuss a book idea. True to his MO, he dashed to his computer, a curly dark brown lock one step behind, and gathered up a beginning bibliography for me to pursue.

What was it about Mary of Modena 

What was it about Mary of Modena (pronounced mo’ di nə/) that intrigued me? From the time she had been Duchess of York through her reign as queen-consort to James II, Mary of Modena had women in her court who were artists and writers. A court of women artists and writers was uncommon for the time. Intriguing. How did this come to be? 

Part of the joy of research—and for me it is joyful—is the ability to explore freely. In contemplation and solitude, I also needed to sense their spaces, to breathe the same air, to imagine their lives. Sense of place. The intangible, the pull. For good reason, I stressed the sense of place to my students as an integral piece of writing.

I applied for and received a fellowship to return to Oxford with a rough book draft, to continue my study of these women and their unique literary accomplishments, so unusual for the seventeenth century.  

In my first month of retirement, I attended a publishing workshop, knowing that the industry had changed since my daughter’s youth. Before the year was out, I had a book contract for Rain Dodging: A Scholar’s Romp Through Britain in Search of a Stuart Queen.

So now I am on a different adventure. Retirement? Hell no.

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