Over the past several years, I’ve watched a pattern unfold. A colleague retires, disappears for a while, and then—two years later—reappears in the writing center as a volunteer. On paper, it looks noble. In person, it looks something else.
They don’t return with ease or quiet confidence. They return looking unsettled—eyes fixed forward, posture stiff, like deer caught in headlights that never turn off. I’ve seen them alone on the writing lounge couch, staring straight ahead, as if waiting for something that never quite arrives. The impression is hard to shake: retirement didn’t liberate them; it hollowed something out. And so they came back to the place where their sense of worth once had structure and witnesses.
Students, however, are not sentimental. They don’t greet these returnees as beloved elders. They approach them the way one approaches a last option—politely, cautiously, and only when necessary. The exchange feels inverted. Instead of giving value, the retiree seems to be extracting it: a little affirmation, a little proof of continued relevance, a small ration of being needed.
The idea of volunteering after retirement sounds admirable in theory. In practice, it reminds me of Lot’s wife—turning back, unable to release the past, even when the mandate is to move forward.
And I say all this with some unease, because I’m about fifteen months away from retirement myself. My job has kept my mind engaged for decades—lectures, lesson plans, essays, the constant friction of thinking. I can’t pretend I’m immune to the same forces that seem to have pulled my colleagues back: the slow creep of isolation, the loss of structure, the quiet erosion of purpose. Sloth and complacency don’t arrive dramatically; they seep in.
Still, I’m fairly certain of one thing: I won’t be returning as a volunteer tutor. I see too much of Lot’s wife in that gesture and not enough of a forward-facing project that justifies it.
There’s also the matter of audience. Students gravitate toward youth. My own teen daughters regard “Boomers” like me with a mix of mild embarrassment and occasional alarm, as if we are well-meaning but out of date. I’m not eager to test that perception in a room where attention is already scarce.
If pride is a vice, it’s at least an honest one here. My read on younger students, combined with my own instincts, tells me that the writing center would not be my best second act.
There may be other roles. I’ve entertained, half-seriously, the idea of working part-time at my local Trader Joe’s. I know the staff. I could use the income for health insurance. And I have a skill set that would actually translate: I can talk to people, keep a line moving, and bag groceries without turning it into a philosophical crisis. There’s dignity in that—perhaps more than in hovering around a former life, waiting to be needed.
One thing I do know: wherever I land, I don’t intend to sit there staring into the middle distance, hoping someone will give me back a version of myself I’ve already lived.
Cinemorphosis 
Leave a comment