Life after retirement~

Seven years ago I increased my contribution to the teachers' retirement system and bought five years off my career in a move known as "taking early retirement."

When summer vacation ends, I'll have 180 days left in the profession I chose when I was in first grade.

Maybe because this is my last summer vacation that will end when school bells ring, maybe because retirement is finally close enough to count the days, maybe because I can hardly wait, I've begun to think more seriously about the question I've been asked so often: What are you going to do when you retire?

Here's all I know:

I want to write more, read more, take more pictures. Exercise more, travel more, and sleep more, or at least better. I want to live more. I want to slow down and absorb the life I've been rushing through, rushing because I had to, to get it all done.

What I don't want to do is to plan my retirement. I have done enough planning in 36 years of teaching.

I want to step softly into the years ahead, letting each day open like the morning glories under my window, feeling its promise, following its lead.

But I am a realist. I have a little packet of seeds I've been sowing, releasing them here and there into a wind that takes them somewhere to lay dormant for the time being. An idea, a thought, a hope, a wish . . .

Maybe in a year the first sprouts will appear, tender, yellow-green and full of promise. Maybe there will be a harvest I haven't anticipated.

Maybe there will be drought. I can't know this. I won't worry.

Life will happen. I have sown my seeds. I await the garden.
~~~~~
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow, which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Crowfoot

To this I add, "Life is in the smallest details that await only your eyes, and your appreciation."

For Alice~ She's home!!!!!!!

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Sometimes it's all about knowing that loved ones and friends stand behind you, knowing that support is there on the down days, the worry days, the days when you feel off-center, out of sync, bedraggled emotionally, and in pain, but knowing all the while that you're not alone. You're not alone... Alice is an online friend--she lives in Hawaii-- who belongs to the writer's workshop that I do. We've only "met" online, but those who have online friendships know that they can be just as strong as those in-person relationships. Alice was hit by a car while walking, and is in the rehab phase of things. She's working to regain mobility after a broken pelvis, a broken arm, and a broken nose. It's scary to realize how, in the blink of an eye, life can lurch and our plans for a time are displaced by survival and healing. We&#

This retirement thing~

This retirement thing . . . it seems like it should be so easy, so effortless, so thrilling, to stop the daily grind. It is thrilling; at least I think it will be come September when I'm not following the school buses to work. But it's not easy. I had a plan book on my desk for 35 years, one I filled in weekly, scheduling new lessons at 45-minute intervals, meetings, parent conferences, and field trips. I knew what needed to be done and when. I got up at the same time everyday (5:45 a.m.), ate lunch at the same time (12:06 p.m.) and watched the kids pack their bags for home everyday at 2:15 p.m. I'm not sorry to give up that regimentation. But three weeks into the summer, I find myself making lists of things I need to do, and there is so much to do that I can't imagine how I managed while I was working eight hours on top of it all. There are the household chores, gardening, exercise (aren't retirees supposed to get fitter?), freelance writing, book reviewing, readin

Lesson from a Weed~

If dandelions could talk, here’s what I think they might say: " Bloom where you’re planted, sink your roots deep. Smile in the sun, soak up the rain, and let the wind take you to new places." Dandelions are an early spring food for bees. They are often the first flower a young child picks for his mother and they provide a sweet moment for a mother to teach her child to make a wish and blow away the seeds. They speckle landscapes with lemon-colored glory. Common, and often disliked by those in favor of perfect lawns, we trample over them with hardly a thought. All this crossed my mind as I stood in this field of dandelions, most having gone to seed. I had an hour to myself at a retreat at a beautiful family farm on this day of unexpected sunshine and warmth. I was looking for a moment of stillness. I’d watched two swans, visited the alpacas, chatted with the chickens, tried to coax a kitty closer...

~Upstream and Down~

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