At times I simply worried I was losing my memory. One of the sad moments on any college campus is when a long-retired professor gets Alzheimer’s and begins showing up in his old classroom, waving a sheaf of yellowed notes and pushing his way to the podium, threatening to flunk anyone who gets in his way. I’ve watched that happen twice on campuses where I’ve been teaching, and it’s a reminder of not just of the dangers of being human and mortal, but of how a college can become your whole reality, especially when your neurons are getting tangled up in the blues of old age.

It’s worrisome when an institution becoming a complete cosmos, providing all the structures of time, space, and purpose needed for existence, but it happens, and not just on college campuses. It can be Hewlett-Packard or the Marines or the Republican Party or Evangelical Christianity or the pizza joint that you started with a loan from your father-in-law and which now has franchises in 77 countries. But when the institution becomes the universe it’s terrifying to imagine yourself existing apart from it.

That’s why the current state of semi-retirement has been a little scary. When Julie and I quit teaching we took a huge drop in income, but that hasn’t been the issue. Our expenses took an even bigger drop, so food is still on the table and clothes are still on our backs and gasoline, God bless it, is still in the car. I give readings in Idaho high schools and do some recruiting for Albertson College in return for medical insurance, so the black-hole of an uninsured medical emergency hasn’t threatened our sense of security either.

What’s frightening is not having an institutional identity at a time of life when people are usually ensconced in one. Julie’s doing technical writing on the Internet, working with a team scattered all over the world but mostly in Singapore. Her title, if she has one, is editor, and a few dozen people know that. I teach in a low-residency MFA program based at Pacific University, but my students call me their advisor and not Professor Rember. My academic robe is hanging where the moths can get at it, and they will, as soon as they figure out how to eat polyester. My academic bearing has given way to a less rigid posture.

I admit to being the official Writer-at-Large for Albertson College, but being a writer carries with it the awful knowledge that you’re only as good as the blank page you’re facing, and all those laurels you thought you’d sit on turn to poison ivy the minute you’re asked, “What are you working on next?” And the at-large part carries the image of an orange jumpsuit stuffed into a garbage can.

So what I’m working on now is rejoining the physical. I had thought, for awhile, to retire to a life of letters. I’m still hoping that’s part of it. But more important is catching up on those skills that atrophied to nubbins during my life as an academic. That’s why two of my fingernails are blue, and why I don’t use my waffle-head hammer as carelessly as I did a couple of days ago. It’s why my back is sore from shoveling ditch, and why I’ve been picking rock off the fields, even though when I pick one rock there’s another rock underneath it. I’ve been building cross-buck fence where the avalanches have taken out hundred-yard sections. It’s all cheaper than joining a gym, unless you count the self-inflicted injuries.