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...

Killing time~

I'd woken feeling stuffy headed, slightly allergy-ish, puffy-eyed, and a tad grumpy. Lots to do, little time in which to do it, school issues keeping me in a state of angst, I considered not going to David's game. But it was Saturday, the game fairly close to home-- Salem State College-- an hour or so north through Boston to the town of Salem, famous for the 1692 witch trials that saw 19 suspected witches, many of them social outcasts, hang on Gallows Hill. A change of pace was what I needed whether I wanted it or not, so I went. I squeezed in a walk around the block that enclosed Salem State's O'Keefe Center while waiting for the game to begin. Just to kill time. I get so few chances to do that. Others walking, too, passed with no eye contact, no greetings, just sharing the same planet. Two were coming toward me. Still unfocused in the distance . . . one was tall, the other short . . . two men . . . loose clothing . . . like army clothes, camouflage . . . beard and lon...

Missing Becky~

Becky~ August 19, 1991 to April 26, 2010 She was so loved, this gentle pet of mine. And how she loved us back. I've been alone in my house before, of course. Those days when my husband took the kids out for the day, being able to vacuum without a baby in one arm and a toddler, riding the vacuum cleaner like it was a bronco, was solitary pleasure. Later there were quiet days as the kids were at camp and my husband at work. And then came the bittersweet aloneness when kids left home for college and a life apart. Still, I'd always liked being alone, knowing it was short lived. This morning, after my husband pulled out of the driveway with a day full of plans, I stood in the living room feeling alone in a way I never had before. An unfamiliar emptiness and silence surrounded me. Yesterday we put our 18-year-old cat, Becky, to sleep. The decision to do so was surprisingly easy. The vet had told us Becky would let us know when it was time, and somehow she did. But ...

~Upstream and Down~

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