This is the first word on the first page of my new life.  Today I submitted grades, cleaned out my office, returned the keys, and walked out.  This time I mean it.

 

I retired today—for the second time.  You might say it didn’t quite gel the first time, or you might say that I wasn’t ready to let go, or you might say that like anything new, retirement takes learning.

 

Perhaps my retirement is like Hodson’s Cycles Therapy:  expose the client to the range of life choices (the life equivalent of phonological patterns) but don’t expect real progress until you return for a second round of learning.  Year one was my exposure to the world of retirement, to a life of open time and freedom.  I tested the waters of a life of too little structure, sleeping late and lazing about.  Then I reversed course and created the opposite.  As I noted in my previous entry, finding that middle ground of balance is no simple matter.

 

I returned to teaching in spring and summer.  At the moment I agreed to take on teaching again, I was remembering the pleasures and forgetting the drain.  I was remembering how it feels to talk about topics I believe in but forgetting how tired the commute makes me.  I was remembering the fun of meeting new students but forgetting how much time it takes to prepare classes.  I was remembering the excitement of having students share their successes with me but forgetting how much I dislike preparing tests.  I had ample memory retrieval for the joys of teaching and a convenient amnesia for the very demands that pushed me towards retirement in the first place.

 

As my teaching progressed through the summer, my perceptions began to shift.  As if creating a terracotta bas-relief, the pleasures of teaching moved towards the background, and the costs moved into the foreground, forming a pattern that stood out three-dimensionally.  I saw the reality: the pleasures were still there, but so were the costs, and together they created a picture that would not change.  

 

This time the learning began to stick.  I understood that I was not tired of teaching, but I was tired of both its cost—an amazing amount of time and energy--and, consequently, what I could not do because of giving that time and energy to the class.

 

I had agreed to teach again in the hope that I would finally get enough, finally be tired of it, finally be ready to let it go. I wanted the hard part to be done for me.  Like wanting a boyfriend to break up with me because I didn’t have the heart to do so, I wanted the teaching to go sour on me.  I wanted to be so “done” with teaching, I would find it easy to let go.

 

I realize now I may never be tired of teaching, at least not the courses I really love (my counseling course, naturally).  Despite numerous hassles with the course logistics and a late-Friday time slot to discourage the most devoted among us, I felt connected to the course, and the sea of faces turned into individuals I came to appreciate.  I was happy to be teaching, even when I was exhausted and questioning the wisdom of my decision. How ironic to realize that I had been hoping for it to be otherwise!  Now I know the truth I needed all along:  teaching will not abandon me or reject me; teaching will not break up with me.  The best I can do is make a choice in my best interest and accept the sadness that comes with it.  

 

I was trying to avoid the loss by being sick to death of it, but all I managed to do was remind myself that I love to teach and hate to grade tests, that I love to meet new students and hate the commute, that I love the ideas that emerge and hate the fatigue after a long day.  What was true before remains true now.  I’m just willing to see it.

 

Today, after clearing out of my office, I went into an empty, dark lecture hall, Eagleson 001, where I’ve spent so many hours teaching.  I stood there in the quiet, feeling even then the promise of a class not yet taught. Then I walked out, sad but ready.  This time I really mean it.