The Music of Lifelong Learning: Con Moto, Expressivo

My inner image of life is a musical metaphor: a whispering piano of childhood, then the crescendo of growth to maturity, a fortissimo of fully realized adult life, followed by the diminuendo of aging into another whisper. I’ve avoided thinking about the absence of sound after the final coda. Just when I first “saw” this graphic I can’t remember, but it was about 20 years ago, when I was a youngster of 50.

My professional life was in full forte. I was chief of an oncology department at an academic health maintenance organization. My personal life provided the accents, the cymbals of day care crises, the drum rolls of teenagers with issues I could barely imagine, the ominous pedal tone of my elderly parents’ failing health. Introspection and a sense of choice and control in my daily life were not even an aspiration.

In 1990 my husband had a brief sabbatical in London. I went along, with no professional commitments except to take a look at St. Christopher’s Hospice and figure out how to bring it home to my department. I was, for the first time in my over cluttered life, alone for hours at a time, a long fermata.

Panic. I had never realized that free time, which I was always chasing in a futile attempt at a normal schedule, was the scariest thing, my “Room 101.” Resisting the urge to make lists of things to do until hubby came home at night, I tried to put aside my need for comforting structure; I followed my feet. This was London, where there was a free concert in some church every noontime, tantalizing glimpses of royal pomp, and the tempo of an international city, all waiting for me to stumble on them. Possibility and relaxation beckoned. To my surprise, the panic faded. The month was too short. Going to St. Christopher’s, while interesting, was an unwelcome interruption in an otherwise delicious unprogrammed day.

Maybe I didn’t need to be the CEO of the world, or conductor, diva, and choir all at once. Was I creating the chaos in my life out of my own fear of silence? Of hearing my own voice? Could I tolerate the anxiety and leave some spaces in my life for … what? Is this the beginning of the end? Do I start the diminuendo and wait for the ultimate silence? Over the ensuing decade I worked part time, and began to develop the answers that would permit me to plan for life beyond the practice of medicine.

My cherished friend Jeanne and I thought about creating a women’s group of 60-somethings to discuss aging. We’d already talked our way through the challenges of middle age, child rearing, losing parents, and relationship stresses. “Let’s do it as a book group,” she said. We started reading memoirs with a few like-minded, age-appropriate friends. One day, Jeanne, who had started taking courses at someplace mysterious called HILR, said: “I’ve met a really interesting person at HILR, you’ll like her. She’s a retired doctor.” Madeline joined the book group. A year later, Madeline said, “There’s a live-wire retired attorney, a New Yorker, in one of my classes at HILR. Can I bring her along?” Carol joined the monthly meetings. We spent a generous portion of our time examining emotional and practical aspects of retirement from fulfilling careers. “Aren’t you ever going to discuss the book?” my husband would holler from his study to the group giggling in our living room.

My part-time practice began to feel like the trip to St. Christopher’s Hospice. Echoes of the concerts at St. Martin’s in the Fields sang to me. There were new things to learn, a new community to join. It was time to leap, to retire from medicine and investigate HILR. Mentally drooling over the intellectual feast awaiting me, I fretted over my application like a college-bound high schooler. My interviewers were reassuring, supportive, and willing to discuss my concerns about participating in study groups far from my own field. They radiated optimism about the community and the joy of learning at all stages of life. “Yes!” I whooped when the acceptance letter arrived.

In January 2004, I tapered my work to one day each week, hired and trained my replacement in cancer genetics, and packed up decades of medical memorabilia. I could only manage one course for my first term at HILR; I chose Suzanne Pemsler’s “This is Your Life: Writing Memoir.” In the nurturing environment of that study group, I began to transform wistful introspection about retirement, aging, and separation into a creative process. By the next semester, I dared to branch out, joining study groups in Civil War history and British sculpture. At first, insecurity about my scanty background in the humanities inhibited me, but the leaders and participants in these groups helped me understand peer learning and grow into each new topic. With an enthusiastic cohort of HILR art lovers, my husband and I traipsed to London to learn more about modern British sculpture. St. Martin’s was still there, but my eyes and ears were not the same as those I’d brought to London in 1991.

At HILR, I found dedicated, forward-looking, enthusiastic, supportive companions. I relished the opportunity to grow into a new space, expansive and accommodating. Choices—how much structure, what direction of study, what degree of participation in curricular and social activities—all were mine to act upon. Here was a new crescendo, modulated only by my own capacity to follow my feet into fresh and familiar places. It’s four years later. I’m 70, a baby compared to some HILR colleagues who are leading courses in areas I can barely understand. I have role models again. Last year, I taught physical diagnosis to eager second-year med students. Exhausted after our sessions, I rushed to HILR for my afternoon study group, feeling the relief of coming home. This year, I skipped the med students to lead an HILR study group on evolution and study the late Beethoven string quartets. I co-chair the Teaching and Learning Committee, hoping to help orchestrate the give and take in study groups.

OK, so it’s mezzo forte now, but the diminuendo has barely begun.

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