Retrospect made a journalist realize it's okay to write about his own stories and not just the stories of others.
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I came across this story, written 3 1/2 years ago, but never published, the last time the Retirement prompt came up. I’ve decided to publish it now. It is all true today.

Dan went to work for Andersen Consulting on January 3, 1994. This is not to be confused with Arthur Andersen, which was a good thing. They were both under the aegis of Anderson Worldwide, but AC was the consulting piece of the pie, or so it was supposed to be. Dan came in as a full-equity partner, which was quite unusual for a firm like this. Normally one came in right out of business school and worked one’s way up. Andersen Consulting was building an IT strategy consulting practice, which was Dan’s expertise, so they hired senior people. He had to buy his partnership stake, but the firm helped him with this.

He was well-compensated, but they expected much from their partners. He traveled four days a week and had a high sales quota. The company was highly profitable and became the largest consulting company in the world. Arthur Andersen saw this and began encroaching on the territory and confusing the marketplace. AC protested, eventually taking their complaint to the World Court in Brussels. It took years, but the companies separated. As part of the settlement, AC lost the right to use the name Andersen and became Accenture (a made up name). Shortly thereafter, they went public. Dan’s partnership stake became zero-basis shares in the new company, worth a great sum of money.

We also know that during the Enron scandal, one corrupt Arthur Andersen partner brought down the entire company, causing it to go bankrupt. They were later exonerated, but it was too late. The company had folded.

Accenture wanted to continue to make room at the top for well-paid executives, so pushed out partners over the age of 50, making it attractive for them retire. Dan was 51 at the time of the IPO, and there were stock incentives to retire at that time, so he did, in May, 2002. He also had a five-year non-compete clause, enforceable since Accenture held the stock.

At his annual physical that year, he told his doctor that he was about to retire. The doctor said, “Have a plan. Make sure you stay busy”. And Dan thought he did have a plan for the first several years.

Life on the road is difficult. You don’t eat well, you can’t exercise with regularity. Dan had put on a lot of weight. When he looks at the photo from Jeffrey’s bar mitzvah, the month before he retired, he shudders. He was at his all-time heaviest. So his first project was to lose weight, which he did by getting back to regular exercising and eating a bit healthier. Dan’s motto is “calories in, calories out”. He also says that he runs to eat. He does not follow fad diets (or any kind of diet) or even nutritional guidelines. He exercises his butt off, literally. He took off probably 30+ pounds that first year.

We also began a major renovation of our Martha’s Vineyard home, finally implementing the “Master Plan” that Patrick Ahearn envisioned years earlier. We now had the money to fulfill the dream. We pushed out the back of the house, adding space to the kitchen, and moving the laundry to the ground floor off the kitchen, moving the Master Bed and bath to the back of the house and finishing the 3rd floor, which had been unfinished space. This all began when Patrick was in the second floor laundry room at the back of the house one day and commented that it had the best view of our beautiful garden. After years of Patrick’s lobbying, we also added a small pool. I had resisted, but now love it.

All this began only months after we finished a major renovation of the Newton house. I was exhausted, so this became Dan’s baby. We did enjoy visiting over the winter to check on the progress. We stayed a few blocks away in a lovely inn. The kids shared a room that had a TV and were in heaven. “Tea” was served in the late afternoon; so civilized, and books and a chess set were scattered about to provide entertainment on a rainy day. Staying someplace other than our own house was novel and enjoyable.

Dan had the time to play golf, go out west for ski trips (and bring David along). When it was time to look at colleges, I did the local, driving trips, Dan took David on any trips that required a flight. They took a boating course at Annapolis, stopped at the Naval Academy (no, David had no thoughts of applying) but looked at Wesleyan and Princeton on the way home. We spent all summer on Martha’s Vineyard.

As it became clearer that the public school was not an appropriate fit for Jeffrey, Dan and I looked at schools, found the right one, then found a special needs lawyer before Newton agreed to pay for the school, 18 miles away from Newton in Sudbury, MA. A van picked up local students, but during certain times of the year, or as Jeffrey got deeper into his studies, we often found we drove west at the end of the day to pick him up and eat an early dinner with our child out there.

As Dan described it, he “had the band-width” to devote to Jeffrey’s needs as it became clear he was willing to work hard at his schooling to get into a good college and his special ed school couldn’t offer the curriculum he needed. Dan found a college chemistry professor to come twice a week to Sudbury, after school, to tutor Jeffrey so that he would be prepared to take the SAT II in chemistry. Dan found a pre-calculus tutor from Martha’s Vineyard High School so Jeffrey was prepared for calculus in the fall. That tutor wrote a letter of recommendation for Jeffrey. And Dan found an on-line physics course for Jeffrey his senior year, and supplemented with a tutor who came to our home. Jeffrey got into Brown, early decision. Dan did the tactical thinking. I sat with him to ensure the homework was complete and gave him the emotional support he needed.

Shortly after Dan retired, he looked for someone to manage our newly-acquired wealth. He interviewed many different people, but settled on a pair of brothers working for Lehman Brothers, as described in Mama, Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Cowboys.

It all went well for a while. We had fun, the market rose, Dan didn’t pay close attention. Then, in September of 2008, the market crashed and with it, Dan. We lost a huge amount of money. Dan went out of his mind. We tighened our belts, rented the Vineyard house one season (I hope to never do that again). Changed money managers. Slowly, things got better, but it took a huge emotional toll on Dan .

With the children launched, we had the time to travel. We took some interesting golf cruises (I don’t play, but they provided good touring options for the non-players).

Our children live far away. We don’t get to see them often, though with a young granddaughter in London, our trips now tend to revolve around visiting her. We try to take about one other interesting trip a year, now that it seems to be safe to travel again. Dan continues to exercise and play golf when he isn’t injured. He does a bit of volunteer work at the Brandeis International Business School, though even that seems to have ground to a halt. We see a lot of movies, get together with friends. But he watches the money like a hawk. He fulfilled his “plan” long ago.

I think we could write this retro Retro piece in synchronous serendipity, so I won’t dwell on a nostalgic past. But Retrospect fills an enormous need and has created a deep and profound community where none had existed before.

The timing could not have been better. I joined Retrospect on the eve of the 2016 election, an inflection point for all of us. Within months, the fat, incontinent child descended the escalator in his gilded cage, the sphinxlike Svetlana by his side. “I don’t really care. Do you?”

A manipulated national election slid The Loser into power despite a 3,000,000-vote majority in favor of the popular winner.

Covid carried its mystical terror into our households and our respiratory systems, its handling bungled by hubris.

Through all the hubris, mendacity, and corruption, we built a community based on reflection, recollection, deep thought, the hard work and pleasure of revisiting our past and shaping our jumbled thoughts into articulate clarity.

I hope we don’t let this community fall. It will rise and fall, wax and wane, but any living organism — and I do catch a glimpse of Retrospect as a large, amorphous, but purposeful organism — goes through metamorphosis.

Carrying Retrospect forward in oxymoronic fashion will require revamping. Our leaders have operated mightily to maintain Retro’s impressive momentum, but the burn-out phase of any self-starting effort can be wearing and ultimately conclusive. But I do hope we will continue. I would miss you terribly. We’ve all suffered enough loss.

Until we meet again…

"A farm family ambience, sifting compost piles of memory, tilling soils of a late lamented culture..."
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Writing for Retrospect

Altho I’ve RetroFlashed about my feelings for Retrospect,  there’s more to say about this wonderful website!

In September 2019 at the urging of my friend Betsy,  and after some transcontinental calls to Suzy with tech questions,  I wrote my first Retro story for the prompt Road Rage.  It was about an accident I had with my husband’s beloved T-bird,  a car that had been his mid-life crisis gift to himself when he turned 60.  And by the way he’s now 79 and the car now 19,  both still running fairly well with the occasional tune-up.   (see Fender Bender.)

Since then I’ve written over 200 stories,  in fact several more about my relationship with cars,   see Smash-Up,  Rainy Night on the Highway, and The Chain Letter and the Fender Bender.

I enjoyed writing those as well as some other humorous stories evoked by other prompts,  see The Corpse in the Office,  Spoiler Alert!,  17 Gas Stations,  and Words with Suzy.

And I enjoyed writing to prompts that reminded me of beloved pets,  see Missing Pussycats,  ASPCA, The Puppy in the Waiting Room,  and Mr Bucco and the Ginger Cat.

And prompts evoking childhood memories , see My Heart Remembers My Grandmother’s Hotel,  Our Special Guests,  Blizzard,  and Skate Key.

Looking back there were also Retro prompts that evoked some painful memories of loss,  and writing about them was cathartic,  see Take Care of Your Sister,  Piano Man: Remembering Herb,  Cantor Gladys , and Comfort Food for Renee.

And stories evoked by prompts about home –  see 2026 McGraw,  My Beloved Basement,  Parkchester, Celebrate Me Home,  and Magnolia, The Story of a Garden.

And other prompts that elicited emotional responses and stories about family ,  see My Game Mother,  My Father, the Outsider Artist,   Call Me by Their Names,  Around the World in 80 Days, Hermine’s Morning Joe,  College Girl: for Aunt Hannah,  My Cousin Rick,  Aunt Miriam, Diva,  White Shoulders for Aunt Frances, and Family Photo.

And my college years,  see The Fortune Cookie Candidate and Theatre Dreams.  And my dating years,  see Cherry Coke,  The One Who Got Away, and Playing with Fire.

And marriage,  see Bed and Breakfast,  Flowers on the Windshield,  Both Sides Now,  Valentine’s Day in Foggytown, and New Leaf.

And politics,  see Getting Woke,  Birmingham,  What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?,  and The Naked Emperor.

And the joys and trials of parenthood,  see The Great Hampton Babysitter Heist,  Our Noisy Nanny,  Aruba Nights,  Reading with Hattie, Baking with Julia,  and Three Noahs,

And stories about my long, rewarding library career,  see My Snowy Year in Buffalo,  Magazines for the Principal,  and The Diary of a Young Girl.

And just as meaningful as writing my own stories has been reading those of my fellow Retro writers across the country.  Sharing and commenting on our stories has meant more to me than I could ever have imagined,  we have truly become a family and I thank you all.

And to our tireless Retro admins Suzy,  Barbara,  Laurie and Marian I send my love and deepest gratitude!

– Dana Susan Lehrman

2026 McGraw

Leaving Manhattan recently on a wintry Friday afternoon we hit rush hour and my husband turned off the highway to avoid the traffic.   We were taking a detour through local Bronx streets when I realized we were about to pass my old neighborhood,  and we decided to drive down my old street.

I’ve written before about 2026 McGraw Ave,  the house I grew up in,  and that I last saw a dozen years ago when I went to a wonderful neighborhood reunion.   (For more about my childhood home see  Reunion,  Parkchester, Celebrate Me Home,   Magnolia, The Story of a Garden,  Mr Bucco and the Ginger Cat,  and Fluffy and the Alligator Shoes)

But it had been heart wrenching then to see the changes to the house since my parents sold it in the 1970s,  and now I was sorry to see there had been even more changes.

Our property had spanned two lots and we had a large garden with a lovely stone birdbath,  a garage and tool shed,  a charming grape arbor that bore fruit,  and on each side of our front door a beautiful magnolia tree –  but now all those were gone.

And that recent winter day seeing the house again,  now painted a garish yellow,   I regretted that we’d made that detour.

But maybe Thomas Wolfe had it wrong,  because lying in bed that night I saw the house once more  –  it was painted a warm brown,  it was early spring,  and our magnolia trees were in full bloom.   And I went home again.

– Dana Susan Lehrman

What’s Your Story?

Knowing I write,  my friend Betsy invited me to join Retrospect.   I was already blogging,  but writing to weekly prompts sounded intriguing.

Yet little did I know how special Retro would become for me and writing would be only one part of the experience;  reading stories by fellow writers another;  and building friendships across the country as we commented on each others’  stories the best part of all.

I’ve met some of my Retro  friends in person,  and hope to meet you all to share more of our stories,  some laughs,  and even a few tears.

So my friends – keep writing!

RetroFlash / 100 Words 

– Dana Susan Lehrman

It was the dark winter solstice of December 2020.  Everything was shut down because of COVID, and vaccines were a mere glimmer.  Life was suspended.  Work had stopped abruptly one day in March—I was too old to risk showing up in person, and virtual options were poor—so de facto retirement came more suddenly than I expected. All travel plans cancelled.  Lots of walks in the park with the dog, now with plenty of time for ruminating over life.  Reading. Lots of time on the internet, catching up on e-mails, signing up for book clubs and meetings and zoom sessions.  At Suzy’s urging, I said yes to Retrospect.

I didn’t know what to expect, and after sending in my first story was surprised to get comments on it.  Then I figured out how to read the other stories early in the week and comment on them, and started to recognize the names and styles of frequent contributors.  For someone who has avoided social media, this felt different and seemed like a safe space, and I valued the new connections and interesting stories.  I still do.  Life has taken me far from early days, geographically and socially, and there is nothing else that fills that ecological niche in my life.

Retrospective writing was new for me, though I wrote for work all the time.  Each week a new prompt goaded me into recalling some bit of history to share–sometimes difficult to find or reveal, but the discipline was good.  I wouldn’t have gone those memorable places otherwise, and if not now, when?

Two years later, I have a sheaf of stories in a drawer, travel is fraught but open and I have even met a few fellow Retrospectors in person.  The site has had some technical issues and enthusiasm is apparently waning after seven years in operation.  I am late to the game so it still feels fresh to me, but the future is uncertain.  For me, this would be a great loss: loss of encouragement to write, loss of camaraderie on line, loss of connections.  I hope this is not the end.

 

 

 

 

302 stories. Seven years. Probably thousands of comments on other people's stories and replies to their comments on mine.
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It’s a daunting task to put my experience with Retrospect into perspective. To say it’s been meaningful is a huge understatement.

A little background, already familiar to some of you, to others not. Although I never considered myself a writer, some time in 2016 I got it in my head to write a memoir about my nutty life. I felt like I had something to share that might help others who wondered why their lives seemed to have gone off track and blamed themselves for being “less than.” I also wanted to get to the bottom of why I’d had such a hard time finding happiness and security when everyone around me seemed to have nailed it long ago. I got pretty serious about the project, read everything I could about writing a memoir, and in 2017, at 70, even took a weeklong master workshop in Maine, which in hindsight turned out to be one of the highlights of my life.

Here’s a photo from our farewell dinner, a real live classic lobster boil where we fledglings mingled with real live published authors (not boiled) which I’m including here just because I think it’s such a fun, dynamic shot.

But, to get published (by a mainstream house, which is the route I had in mind), you need an agent; to get an agent, you need to (a) already be somebody or (b) already have some publishing credits under your belt. Much like the acting profession, it’s a Catch-22 situation. My experience was that most literary submission sites (or lit mags, as they’re known in the trade) weren’t all that interested in works written by baby boomers of my ilk.

Hungry for feedback, though, in 2019 I happily stumbled upon Retrospect and jumped onboard, at first mostly editing excerpts from my memoir and molding them into suitable fashion to fit the prompts whenever I could, but also writing fresh stories when that wasn’t feasible. Before long I was asked to become an administrator working behind the scenes with my wonderful co-administrators on writing prompts and finding suitable images to complement them and, the most fun of all for me, tweaking them in Photoshop as necessary. I think you’d be surprised at how many hours have gone into that, but I’ve enjoyed every minute!

Here’s one of my favorite projects from our Feathering the Nest prompt . . . what started out as just a photo of a birdhouse. The fun — and, to me, magical — part was then finding a photo of a bird with a feather in its beak, combining the two photos in a way that looked natural, and finally adding tiny bird legs so that it looked like it was indeed perched on the birdhouse.

Thoughts of getting publishing have ebbed and flowed, but have pretty much petered out at this point. Having run out of suitable material to poach from my memoir, I’ve just ducked behind the scenes where I’m most comfortable and have continued to do the work I enjoy the most, both for Retrospect and for myself. An artist at heart, I make some form of art (by my very broad definition) almost every day. Here’s a little video clip I made the other day…my typical morning.

Quirky, right? You’re the only ones to have seen it yet (except for my featured husband), and you may remain the only ones. And anyone who recognizes the soundtrack gets a high five.

In the larger life process, issues have been resolved, lurking demons vanquished, I believe at least in part because I’ve received so much incredibly positive feedback from you guys! I think that’s the true heart of Retrospect . . . all that team spirit! I’ll probably never get my memoir published; honestly, I just don’t have the tenacity to get it published. It’s hard to try to “sell” my story, my self.

Now 75, I no longer feel less than. I just am, and with many, many thanks to you here at Retrospect, I’m definitely okay with that. And thanks for sharing your own stories so openly . . . I have very much enjoyed getting to know you! I’m just so impressed by this community, by all your caring and supportive words for each other.

Special thanks to Suzy, of course, for all her hard work, for bringing me onboard, and for being so gracious when I ran out of steam and stopped writing and commenting. I love you, Suzy!

Cheers to the new year, my friends . . . all best in 2023! [Clink]

/ / /

Note: I did want to mention that during the process of submitting to literary agencies, I was advised that no one would take my memoir if pieces of it had been published elsewhere, including online blogs or the like. I’m not at all sure if that’s written in stone, but in a flurry of perhaps misguided optimism, at one point I removed all of those stories from Retrospect. All that remain (90 counting this one) were written specifically for Retrospect.