My retirement began "officially" slightly more than a dozen days ago. So I still think on "school time." I wake about the time first period begins. I know the teachers are hustling their classes to the cafeteria at 12:05 for a noisy lunch, then recess. I think of them again at 2:15 when the kids board the buses to go home.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I'm not there, although I am still there in my head . . . a little. I visited the school website yesterday and looked at the daily bulletins. Same old, same old: meetings, fundraisers, and the lunch menu. I clicked around the site a little more. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to work there.
Last night I had a dream. I was in school watching all the hustle and bustle as teachers prepared their classrooms and gathered supplies. I chatted with them as they scurried around. I was glad to see everyone, but aware that my roll had changed. They were involved and I wasn't. They had work to do. I didn't.
One teacher was high up on a ladder picking books from a shelf. I climbed up to talk. I can never make it past the third rung in real life, but I climbed to the rafters. So this is where they keep the books now, I thought. Then I looked down and froze. I was dream high, impossibly high, and scared stiff.
I needed to get down, and fast. So I closed my eyes and stepped off into thin air . . . and floated, soft as a feather to the floor.
So . . . I guess I've stepped into retirement and landed on my feet. I wonder when it will feel real, and not just a dream.
~~~~~
Nothing happens unless first we dream.~Carl Sandburg
Comments
Peace - D
Welcome to retirement my friend.
You're separating from the old life a thread or two at a time. I think we all do that. It doesn't end at the retirement party and signing up for Medicare, in fact, I suspect that it doesn't really end. We just incorporate our experiences to the point where they become part of us, like taking in food which then becomes muscle and bone, that we don't even notice, but upon which we depend.
But, then, who am I to say. Haven't had a single dream that I remember about the place where I worked for 22 years, and it's just as well.
I know that once you get your sea legs, for it is a new voyage on a limitless sea, you'll make the most of the wind.
Alice
Alice~ I should pay you for your reading. You've gone deeper than I did.
Of course, I'm not retired, some days I feel I've jumped out of the frying pan into the fire with my new responsibilities. But I could well relate to your mental check in with the rhythm of school. I find myself doing that at times as well.