I Know How It Goes

We are saying farewell to 4 people at my school, every one of them special to me in a different way, my best principal of three I have worked for. a teaching neighbor with whom I spent many mornings in deep conversation until she moved around the corner to a different team, the aide who was the human heart of the media center and also did several other aide jobs, plus coaching amazingly successfully several academic teams AND organizing a community service group that rocks. A close, close member of my own team who is leaving to enjoy brand new and the unexpected blessing of grandparenthood, younger than me, but feels she cannot waste a precious second of her grandparenting. (I am not wasting mine, my career is shorter than most my age) I have been around long enough now to see that teaching life is so intense that there is often little left over for maintaining relationships that feel so close and full of love and admiration. Maybe I am just a bad and or lazy friend. I am going to try harder. right now. But I, too, am feeling the pull of retirement and concentrating on the grandchildren who are available to me and that involves moving away, in a few, very few, years. I am starting to understand the desire, before the guv took such a public hate of my chosen career, I saw myself teaching until the grand old age of 70, now I am just thinking maximum benefits for survival. and the coolest new living space ever-- a young artist's dream.

I need and English teacher to step in here and help me with punctuation, but you get the point. I am happy and sad, happy for what my friends are ready to enjoy, sad for the loss in my life of daily contact with those same friends. I miss them now, but August will be much worse, because summer is normal separation time, and really, Barb needs a break from me!