Former Boston Globe Reporter Writes About How She Learned to Retire

A professional career woman and feminist all her adult life, Susan Trausch found herself choosing to iron her husband's shirts after she took an early buyout from The Boston Globe. Feeling guilty that she was able to be on perpetual vacation while her husband continued working, she wanted to compensate for the perceived inequity. He, thank goodness, would have nothing to do with Susan's ironing his shirts.

Trausch, with the typical tongue-in-cheek humour she displayed in 32 years of writing human interest pieces for the newspaper, turns that exquisite attention to detail to her own journey of finding herself in an entirely different and unfamiliar role. No longer could she whip out her press card to state "who I am." No, now she was Mrs. Housewife, lingering over food selections in the market, intent on cooking the most nutritious and attractive meal possible and having it on the table when her husband entered the house.

Groping Toward Whatever or... How I Learned to Retire is not a how-to book. Rather Truasch wanted to express "How is." How is the path from having lived in a pressure-cooker environment for decades to having no deadlines, no external expectations, years of time stretching forward?

Trausch learned after some "groping," struggling, and a great deal of self-reflection that retirement for her was a time to really be with people. She was in the communications business, she says, but had had no time to communicate. Now she could linger over lunches and listen and talk, not a luxury she had as a journalist.  

She could open windows, smell the fresh air, watch the deer in her yard. She could spend treasured time with her beloved mother-in-law, Alice (a chapter in the book) in the last year of her life. She could be "In the Zone" (another chapter) where she could experience "fusion with the present, being there, being alive, connecting." Unlike many newly retired who pride themselves on being so busy they cannot imagine how they ever had had time to work, she relishes quiet, meditatively taking in her experience, and then writing about it so that she can share what she is learning.

Groping Toward Whatever tells the story of a transition that huge numbers of baby boomers are experiencing or anticipating. Trausch neither glamorizes nor prescribes solutions. She tells it like it is, full of false starts, confusions, insecurity of not knowing, but also the pleasure of finding a new way. A delight to read.

Comments

[Cara Larose]

What a beautiful way to retire! I think every wife would love to have a strong home. And I guess every person will love to live as a freeman. No busy days at work, no traffics - no hassles. Staying in the house is a lot different - with more feelings of life.

[Frank Damon]

Retirement is like a job in one's life. Eventually, we have to change our pace for the better, to experience the fun and beauty of another chapter in life. It doesn't have a few things that a professional job has, but that leaves plenty of room for doing good and other kinds of work.

[DanImports2]

Both my parents have stopped working only a few years ago, it was kind of sudden too. I taught my dad how to export goods from home and it works well for him.