May. 21, 2008 - Twelve Years to Retirement
I didn’t sleep well last night. In fact, I was awake for so long during the night that when my engineer turned on the light this morning I mumbled something like “not yet” and hid my face in the pillow. Often when I am this tired I will think something like, “I need a holiday.” But this morning I thought, “I need to retire.” At 7:22 I knew I could stall no longer. I sat up on the edge of the bed and said, “I have 12 more years of this.”
I dragged myself out of bed and let the cool water on my face wake me up. Wait, back up. The cool air between bed and bath began the wake-up process. It was 8 degrees (that’s 8 degrees above freezing, so roughly 40 for Americans) and rainy. Brrr. Remind me again why I live here? Oh yes, because I love my engineer.
Ok, back to the topic at hand. Perhaps the cold, damp air added to my feeling of drudgery this morning. It did, after all, feel very much like a fall morning. An October morning. In fact, it still feels like an October day as I write this. But again, I digress…
The truth of the matter is, and it didn’t take my sleepy mind long to switch to this gear even this morning, that I love what I do. Yes, every day I must rise with the birds (ok, not with the birds, but soon after the engineer) to begin another day of laundry, cooking, driving, disciplining, and most of all teaching. But when I finally retire, I will miss it. In fact, I will probably face some sort of crisis as I transition into my “next life.”
I know this because a realization hit me last week: If my children went to school, this coming fall I would be alone. Yes, my baby will turn 6 in October. Every day, it seems, over the past year I have looked at her and marveled at how she is growing. No longer a toddler, or even a preschooler really, it’s as if I can physically see her growing taller and older. Yesterday I informed her that come August when we buy school supplies for the fall, she will be going with me to choose her very own binder for holding school work. Each one has been able to choose his or her own fancy, zip-up binder as a special rite of passage into the age of schooling. She knows it’s coming, and in some ways she’s excited about growing up and learning all the great things her siblings are learning. In other ways she’s leery of no longer being a baby, although when she climbed up on my lap last week and told me she wishes she was still a baby, I assured her that she will always be my baby.
I feel much as she does. I, too, am excited that my littlest girl will be more officially a part of our learning come fall. She has been listening to the history stories and Bible stories already. She is given the “fun” worksheets my 8 year old does. She really has been part of our learning already. But in the fall it will be different. It will be official. Why that makes it different I don’t know, but somehow it does. I am, as is she, both excited and leery of this transition into having all four children of school age.
But the most startling part of this realization was that IF they went to school, this would be my last spring with anyone at home, and I am quite sure I would be facing some sort of personal crisis because of it. Come fall all four would be going out the door and into the big yellow bus. I’m not sure what I would do with my days when that happened. I suppose I would become more involved in my church, scrapbook more, maybe clean my house more often and more diligently. But I would miss having little people around all day. It is hard to imagine because I’ve always had them at home. I’ve always been their teacher, and I love that job so much and it takes up so much of my life, especially if you count in the hours I spend reading, researching and learning myself, that I can’t imagine not doing it.
Yes, some day the job will end and I will retire. In twelve years, in fact. Twelve years from next month this part of my life – the part I had looked forward to the most and have enjoyed so intensely – will be over.
But for now I will be glad that I can continue to get up every morning to the same old routine. I will be glad that I “need a holiday” and hope that when retirement does come I can handle it with grace knowing that I have done my best to prepare these precious children for whatever God has in store for them. And I imagine that when that day does come, God will have something else for me too. Maybe I can help some of them educate my grandchildren. J
Comments
May. 21, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Jacqueline
Loved reading your musings on this.
May. 21, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Drake
You are one complex individual... :P
www.theweightofglory101.blogspot.com
