My mom and dad, also called Berta and Mickey, retired from teaching a few years ago and upon watching them enjoy novel moments across their now-shared unscheduled days, I doubled my own monthly retirement contribution. I wanted the security they had, the lack of concern for what tomorrow held, the innocent curiosity of finding new restaurants or taking ukulele lessons together. These are their best years, I’d argue, following a collection of objectively great decades by any account.
They are what may be the last generation of steadfast single-career professionals, both public school teachers (once or twice teaching at the same school), whose promised pensions were in tact as planned. When their school principals suggested, at 60, that they might enjoy retiring, they protested. Teaching was their calling, their bond together. I was heartened they retired within a year of each other, as each is the other’s almost exclusive source of energy and entertainment. Never in a co-dependent way, but more a collaboration. A living, breathing, beautiful dynamic that has shaped how I see my own relationships.
Their the first year of retirement looked much like the idyllic commercials we see from T. Rowe Price or Fidelity or of people who had heeded the advice and actually been talking to Chuck for years. As a son, I felt relief and joy and a fair bit of jealousy—there’s nothing more curious than couples’ ukulele lessons. I also couldn’t stop wondering if a certain dream they’d tried to hatch and then extinguished decades ago might reappear, now with the luxury of free time. If now, they might sink their bank balances and cash out stocks and sell the house and move into a studio apartment a la Silicon Valley idealists to make a final go of this bygone idea I’d clearly never let go of, for them.
This began when I headed off to college. They took a sabbatical from teaching, effectively pushing pause on their careers, paychecks and, frankly, all they’d known, to pursue what until that point was a kitchen-table “what if,” they’d danced around for god knows how long. With my sister in high school and me sustained by the dormitory cafeteria, they saw enough of an opening to walk away from the career they’d known for the entirety of their marriage and chase something new. This something new was called Monarch Early Primary School. It was to be the most progressive, child-centric program imaginable by two people steeped in early childhood education. A novel combination of the best of teaching philosophies and child-centric care approaches gathered from a coterie of countries they studied in their spare time.
They had a logo, a business plan, advisors, an architect and blueprints. A site was selected just blocks from our family home. And with each visit to my university, mom and dad proudly shared the plans and increasingly bigger ideas. The details came together. They explained the advantages of this school over brunches and holiday dinners and I, having no real qualifications to deem it good or bad, saw it as spectacular. In retrospect, I was reacting less to the educational approach and more to the effervescence that bubbled between them. They were in love with the idea and more so, with each other.
I knew more about the project than I did their preparations or thought process of leaving their jobs. I wanted to know what their mornings were like, suddenly free from a starting school bell or set schedule. I wanted to know if they were ever scared, or why they ultimately stopped. After careful assessment of the market and a final, critical cost-benefit analysis, they walked away from the idea and walked back into their teaching jobs (which had been graciously held, though I doubt anyone foresaw their return). I remember this ending as excruciating for me, though I had no real reason to feel any disappointment.
While home for Thanksgiving, now decades removed from what my mother refers to as their “deposit in ourselves,” I asked the questions I never thought to ask then, and questions I have, still, today. Largely to fill in the holes of a time period and process that’s been prominent in my own life—a point of reference—as I’ve taken my own leaps, started my own companies, failed to deliver on my own dreams, pondered risks and enjoyed rewards.
Recorded while driving on I70, in Kansas, to and from a Thanksgiving Dinner
I started our discussion by focusing on presumed regrets.
My mom: “I don’t see it as a regret because it was a luxury to try for this in the first place,” this is a perfect example of the difference between my dear mother and I, and justification for me embracing more of her genes. “I look at it wistfully. The act of doing it was confidence building and enriching.”
My dad, more of a pragmatist and slight pessimist (where I get it) had a surprisingly similar take. “There are times I think, ‘we could have done a great thing.’ Maybe that never goes away. But the experience of doing it was amazing and it’ll always be the highlight.”
Maybe it’s a sign of selfishness, but I’d projected a much different sentiment upon them—on my behalf. After all, they’d left jobs that offered security and deep satisfaction. They budgeted for the burrowing-in of a lifetime of savings to sustain this sabbatical. Moreover, they’d put their own names behind an idea, claiming it for all to see. I mentioned these factors, all in my mind elements of failure, and reasons behind regret. They were unmoved.
My dad looked into the rear view mirror at my mom, sitting in the back seat and they smiled at each other. And in possibly the most Zen-like perspective I’ve seen my parents portray, they returned again and again to the process, the doing, instead of the product or outcome.
“Sure there was a sense of loss”—my dad—“because the we realize this idea, it didn’t happen. But it was balanced with the fact that we were proud we went through the process.”
At this point, it’s probably unnecessary for me to attribute quotes to one or the other of them. Not to be too cheesy, but rather to provide a clear portrait to you, reader. These are two people who share unspoken thoughts, and when those thoughts become sentences, they finish the other’s. More duet than dominance. But you can see, with attribution, how the two did complement each other. Like perfect company co-founders who’d finely tuned what “together” meant to them since they met in high school choir.
“For people with a mentality of the end goal being all or nothing, it would be hard for them to see something not come to fruition.” This is my mother softly correcting my black and white, succeed-or-fail view of the world. “I’m process oriented, I like the process and path of things. And this process was really fun.”
I couldn’t tell if she was truly optimistic or slightly nihilistic. No distinction between good or bad. Very Buddhist.
Their recollection of this time was largely influenced by them doing it together. Relying on the other, growing together, collaborating, brainstorming, holding kitchen table meetings, and learning from the process. They’d gone into it seeing more reward than risk. Any physical manifestation was almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of their monetary and emotional investment.
I wondered, what then is a good or bad investment? Maybe I’d lived forty years seeing the seeming success of my efforts all wrong.
“We budgeted how much we would personally contribute to the idea, how much we could live on each month, what were our basic expenses, so in that sense there was risk.” My dad is not a money guy, and he shows a certain smirk when he talks about money in a smart way.
“We made the decision together to financially take a couple steps backward to take the necessary time to plan in order to take several steps forward with the school.” Dad continued, “To start something this large, this big of an adventure, we needed to make sure we devoted the time needed.”
During an early-career hiatus from teaching, dad was a fundraiser for a small university. He loved the role, and was good at networking, connecting and coaxing money from willing hands. But he ultimately missed teaching. He could tap into those long dormant skills and he flourished: garnering advisors, investors, pitching the idea to potential partners and meeting with people who could poke holes in the plan. Mom spent a few days a week at the University of Kansas fulfilling the remaining hours necessary for accreditation to run a school. “That was a blast,” she recalled. “I was on cloud nine going back to school and getting those hours. Dad was happy doing all this entrepreneur stuff, and you know, it was just invigorating for both of us to be doing something we really, really liked.”
A couple of hours of conversation passed before I finally caught up to their logic—until I allowed myself to see this for what it was vs. what I’d constructed in my own head. It was a luxury, as my mom initially described the time on sabbatical. A luxury to try, to have the ability to explore. Free of regret, loss or failure, it was a time of growth, of development in their own relationship and individual skills. The outcome ultimately being something much bigger than they’d envisioned. Not a physical school, but an education in themselves and the other, for them to take wherever they went next.
And even more than the doing, they did it together.
“We work well together,” my dad laughed, likely at his own obviousness.
“It’s a cool feeling to have another person that you can do that with,” my mom continued. They smiled like teenagers, again, into the rearview mirror
“You know, you talk about a savings account,” Mom concluded. “We were depositing in ourselves.”