Retirements, Layoffs, Sabbaticals & Skid Row
“Dad retires from the U today,” a Feb. 26, 1993, journal entry reads, “It’s the End of an Era.”
It’s an interesting entry to find as it’s buried deep in a bottom-page paragraph. If you blinked, you’d miss it.
At that point in my life I was into my latest adventure, my second move (in three months) to Cathedral Hill in St. Paul, and trying to find my way in freelance desktop publishing. As intoxicating as it all was, it felt more like a sabbatical from corporate life than a firm new direction.
And the journal’s next page lobs another bombshell: On March 1, 1993, it reports that the previous Saturday I had a call from my brother Brian: “—his employer at Central Parking gave him the boot—he couldn’t transfer south to Texas as they wanted him to, so they said March 31st would be his last day! When I meant the End of an Era I didn’t mean all my family!”
The journal doesn’t go into any details on Dad’s retirement from the University of Minnesota, but I do recall that my brother and I planned a surprise retirement party for our parents with help from their pastor at the United Methodist church in their Minnesota hometown of Mound. Friends from all over showed up, and the folks were astonished and pleased.
When I think back to this time I must’ve been distracted by my new life in St. Paul, even though I disliked living so close to the “nightmare mansion” on Summit Avenue. I was nervous about the future and whether I’d made the right decision leaving a cushy corporate job and apartment in Hopkins. While waiting for funds to come in, I had to convince myself I’d done the right thing after all.
By March 9th my retirement account distribution arrived along with the year’s tax refund, so I felt like I had some financial breathing room while I looked for gigs and managed my new life. I also volunteered at Cable Access St. Paul, helping out with a children’s show called “Docksides,” and making a new friend in another volunteer tech guy, Ben Simon.
Reading over all this now, from the vantage point of 2019, is refreshing because it reminds me that renewal is possible for anyone at any time. It’s still scary, that’s true, but I’ve always had an oddly chummy relationship with ambiguity—not sure where that comes from, but it’s deep in my psyche, a fundamental part of who I am.
And the events of early 1993 probably tie more closely to 2012, when I left corporate life again—when I was desperately unhappy but older and wiser and probably seeing ambiguity as a one-way ticket to Skid Row: poverty and never-ending want. Dad was a hardcore advocate for financial security, which is why I was surprised to realize he’d retired before the government-sanctioned age of 65. Then again, he and Mom had just come from one of the major shocks of their lives together—the fire at the farmhouse where they’d intended to retire for the rest of their days. They hastily went for Plan B—building a retirement home in Southwest Florida.
Later in March 1993, after the money had come in and before my court date with the previous landlords, I drove north to Duluth for a spring “vacation,” staying mostly in Grand Rapids, Minn., and rewriting my screenplay The Wandering Moon. “Staying another day at Forest Lake Inn,” I wrote on Sunday, March 21, 1993, “It’s so quiet and cozy here. I’m gonna hate being back in the city. Maybe this summer I’ll move out of state. But will I find work if I do?”
I was only 33, but I felt really old. And totally aimless.
By month’s end, Brian had landed a new job with another parking management company, Mom and Dad’s Florida plans went off without a hitch, and I found a long-term contract job with a creative services company in downtown Minneapolis, along with establishing a copywriting partnership with Lakewood Community College buddy Pat Ciernia and his company, Four Eyes Design.
On Sunday, March 28, “I stopped Uptown to see Hollingsworth and we walked down to Dunn Brothers where we chatted and sipped coffee. It was lovely out, people were already breaking out the rollerblades around Lake Calhoun. Cycles repeating.”
It’s so good to read that now.
“Cycles repeating.”
Yes; yes indeed.
Completely in the Dark 