Letting Go of the Past, Embracing the Present

November 2007: A friend introduces me to presidential candidate and governor Bill Richardson as “Elenore Freedman, the dean of education in New Hampshire.” I laugh, the candidate shakes my hand, and later, as he leaves, he remembers, as a good politician, to say, “So long, dean.” I corner my friend and ask her about the “dean” stuff, and she says, “You did so much to reform the schools in this state, working at so many different levels. None of us ever knew how to refer to you, so we started calling you ‘the dean of education.”

I had become somebody else now. But, it hadn’t been easy to let go.

I had always been active in something, starting as a twenty-something mother of two who helped form a new chapter of the League of Women Voters. Ten years later, I went from stuffing envelopes for a newly formed organization, the NH Council for Better Schools, to become its fulltime, unpaid executive director. This role was the platform for my move into paid positions over the next 21 years, all of which involved leadership in working for school improvement. I led the state organization of school principals and remain especially pleased with establishing a liberal arts, humanities-related weeklong summer institute for principals, many of whom had never had a liberal arts education. While in this position I also had the satisfaction of mentoring young women. We sponsored networking organizations, and the number of women administrators changed dramatically in the following decade.

In September 1986, my life changed forever. My husband Peter died of lung cancer. I was truly desolate and lost. We had enjoyed a good marriage for almost 40 years. We were close friends, lovers, partners. We were both very proud of each other. When he died I felt as if half of me, of my identity, had been severed. What saved me from totally falling apart were my children and working.

During this very difficult time in my life, a small group of us had been studying new research into effective schools. This effort led to the formation of the NH School Improvement Program (SIP). I applied for the directorship and was, to my surprise and delight, selected from a large, highly competitive group of candidates. This position was the culmination of everything that I had been doing for 32 years. We worked with numerous schools, writing profiles, and facilitating reform. As I was preparing to retire, a changeover of governors threatened the program. Out came my old grassroots campaign experience; the contract was saved. I could leave. The University of New Hampshire, at a graduation ceremony, gave me an award for outstanding public service. I had become a big fish in a little pond and was now ready to retire.

The Retirement Years: Transition

Inevitably, my retirement wasn’t cold turkey. I wrote a successful million-dollar grant proposal (for SIP) to the Pew Foundation. A colleague from Massachusetts and I did consulting with school districts doing strategic planning. I was also still connected as a volunteer to a number of nonprofit organizations that had been an important part of my life since the early 1970’s. For example, I was the first Jew and non-wealthy person on the board of the NH Charitable Foundation, becoming the first woman chair. I was also on the governing board of NH Public Television and, for 24 years, a trustee of the Currier Museum of Art.

I recite this to illustrate the obvious: it was hard to stop driving myself and to “tend my garden” as I had thought I wanted to do in my retirement. All my life I had always felt the need to reach out to others and to work for some good cause beyond the personal. Now that I was fully detached from my hands-on involvement with NH’s education and politics, I was faced with making a transition to a new identity.

The Retirement Years: Losses

Owing to medical problems I had to stop consulting. During the first ten years of retirement, I had two major back surgeries, two knee replacements, and a cracked pelvis that put me in the hospital and nursing home for over six weeks. I also suffered other unspeakable ailments, and what felt like a general falling apart. I sold my beautiful, six-level Frank- Lloyd-Wright-like house in the woods—the center of so much social and political entertaining and therefore a big part of my identity—and moved into an ordinary apartment in the city of Manchester, NH, expecting it to be temporary. The Wellfleet cottage where our family had spent so many magical vacations became too expensive, as was traveling, which was also physically demanding. I missed Peter with revived intensity.

Somewhere during those years, NH education and political leaders changed. I was definitely out of the loop. The SIP program died four years after I left it. The Principals’ Association stopped doing the humanities institutes. I suffered feelings of defeat. The losses piled up, the greatest being a loss of identity: Who was this elderly woman, walking with a cane, her hands shaky when eating and writing, this woman who was no longer needed, putting on a cheerful front but feeling quite lost inside? How could I work at not needing to be needed? Not needing to be admired? Not needing—let’s face it—to be that big fish in the little pond of NH?

The Retirement Years: HILR

A year after retirement, I joined the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement. My close friend Ellie Porter and I drove together from NH to Cambridge. At the beginning, it was just something interesting to do to keep busy. In those earlier days when there was less traffic, Ellie and I solved the problems of the world and exchanged our personal worries during the hour-and-a-quarter trip. I was taking courses in subjects I knew nothing about. That was a great luxury—no tests, no grades, no diplomas. Little by little, HILR became more and more of a focus in my life. Although our traveling schedule made it difficult to get to know people very well, I always enjoyed the give and take in the classroom discussions and at the lunch tables. HILR members are very stimulating, intellectually alive.

After about six years, I put my toe in the water and led a study group on aspects of twentieth-century American history. When I look back now, I think I did a mediocre job, but it was popular, and I was asked to repeat it. I learned so much as a study group leader. I thought, “I should have been a historian.” Then I co-led another group in the history of the reform of public education. Just a so-so job, I felt—maybe because I already knew that topic, and I didn’t learn as much. Then in 1999, when NH was in the midst of its two-year process of a presidential primary, I led a course in that. Wow! I loved that. Four years later, this political junkie did it again, this time co-leading it with Jim Fenn. Even more fun than the time before. I thought, “I should have been a teacher. Or a political consultant (oh no, not that!).”

Then I co-led with Selma Eigner a course on the history of the First Amendment during wartime. This was the most challenging and exciting learning and teaching experience I had ever had. I thought, “I should have been a lawyer.” As an amazing consequence, Selma and I were asked to help edit Dr. Geoffrey Stone’s shortened version of the book we had used as a textbook. He took 95 percent of our suggestions. In that heady atmosphere and after many revelations about the abuse of civil liberties going on by the Bush administration, we formed a civil liberties club at HILR to continue the discussion. During fall 2008, I co-led with Anne Pirrera another presidential politics class, broadened to include much more than just New Hampshire. Anne was wonderful to work with, and the class members were extraordinary. It was surely the most lively and rewarding of all of the political courses that I’d taught, and certainly in the most amazing and exciting political year of my life.

When I joined HILR, 16 years ago, I vowed to myself that I would not get involved on any committees. I’d had my fill of that. At first I was part of two task forces. They were temporary, after all. Then I agreed to be on the Teaching and Learning Committee (appropriately called TLC) because the peer-learning and discussion-leading role of the study group leader was something I had experienced in my career. Soon I agreed to run for Council. I had given three Friday morning lectures, and all my life I had given speeches, and testified before state and national legislative committees. But this vote-for-me-because speech was the hardest to do. I am now in my second year on the Council.

Coming to Terms with Aging: The Cane

When a group at HILR started discussing the process of aging, I went to one meeting and decided I was not interested. However, when I read the five essays in New Pathways for Aging, I started thinking more introspectively of the similar path I had been traveling. Writing all of this down has forced me to think through the problems of retiring and aging that I had already experienced. It forced me to think about the stage of aging I am in right now.

I thought about my cane. Carrying a cane changed my relationship to everyone I met. I hated it. When offered help, I reverted to being three years old: “I’d rather do it myself!” But at HILR, others carried canes. It’s no big deal. I don’t know exactly when my attitude changed. But about two years ago, I accepted that the cane was a permanent accessory. So I changed the hospital one for a lively one that looks like a candy cane. It’s a conversation piece, and I have learned, when offered help, to say politely, “Thank you.” Writing about this, I now realize that this brightly decorated cane symbolized a major change in my attitude toward being old.

I am in a reasonably good place emotionally and mentally right now. (Can you hear me knocking on wood?) I am close to my daughter, son, daughter-in-law, and two delightful granddaughters, age 14 and 5. They are terrific human beings, and I feel much fulfilled by their achievements and by our loving relationships. I seem to have adjusted reasonably well to my walking and other handicaps and the limits that they have imposed. I’m getting to the point where I can almost shrug off my losing names, nouns, and some other words. If given time, as when I am writing, I can usually grab at them as they fly by and get them onto the paper, quickly.

Except for Alzheimer’s, I don’t dread illness. Of course, I can’t be certain how I will face up to a painful, terminal illness. Even though I am not at all religious, the thought of death does not fill me with fear. I do not know why. Perhaps all the major losses in my life, starting at a young age, have made me calm about facing death. My mother died at age 49, when I was 16. Like others who have experienced this phenomenon, in my forty-ninth year, I nervously expected to die. So here I still am at 83. My father and husband died at age 66. I never expected to live so long. Every year is a gift, an unexpected one.

Clearly, HILR is the focus of my life now and it is absorbing my passion and my energy. I love learning for its own sake. I work very hard at it. I love the peer-learning system—it fits my style of learning and leading. Without any question, HILR has helped me to move on to this next stage in my life.

Plans and Uncertainties

For more than four years I have had my name on a waitlist at a three-stage retirement community in Massachusetts. I want to be nearer to my daughter and to HILR. I never want to be a burden to my unmarried daughter. We have a very close relationship, and I want it to stay that way. The long wait to get into the retirement community is because I want one of their tiny cluster houses, set among the woods and with my own front door, patio, and garden. Those are the things about my house I miss the most. And I now know that I really don’t like living in an apartment building. I want easier access to the outdoors. It will be a passage from living alone and independently for 23 years. I worry about the major adjustments involved in this next move at my advanced age: What if I don’t enjoy eating dinner with other people every night? What if I don’t like other people’s company as much as I like my own? How will I remember all the new names? What about money? What if I get the call and then I find that I can’t afford it? What if I outlive my money? How will I feel about leaving New Hampshire?

I now have some good friends at HILR, and it will be wonderful to be nearer to them. Except for Ellie Porter, all my old, close NH friends have died. Still, New Hampshire is in my bones, and I may miss it more than I realize.

For all of us, a lot of uncertainties lie ahead. There always were, only we’ve lived through so many losses and troubles that we now know there are more coming. For some reason, I can think about these without worrying. Carpe diem is a cliché for a good reason. It’s excellent advice.

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