The Decision

When I turned 66 I was prodded to investigate what kind of retirement benefits I had. My intention was not to retire but to agree to become more informed about my finances. I had heard through the educator’s grapevine that if you worked for the Texas Retirement System you might not qualify for social security. Turns out this could be true, but from way back in 1961 when I graduated from high school in New York City and got my first job at the Book-of-the-Month Club I began to acquire “quarters” and until I came to Texas in 2000, they kept adding up. Therefore I was entitled to social security benefits, in addition to my Texas retirement. So, financially it looked feasible.

But for me retirement seemed to mean more than just not working; it seemed like the beginning of the end. On weekend mornings I sat on my couch looking at my wall of ancestors: a compilation of photographs framed over the fireplace that showed those before me in poses younger than I am now. There is a picture of my mother standing on the roof of her apartment building in New York City at about 5 years old with her arms stretched wide and her face beaming with being alive. Gone! A blink of an eye! Now I’m 5 years old…now I’m not. There are my grandparents with my dad when he was a young boy, taken before they even came to this country, when they still lived in Scotland. Gone, all of them. A blink of an eye!

So that led me to thinking that life was a blink of an eye and I became maudlin and depressed at the slap of mortality reality that I was already a goner. My picture would be hanging over the fireplace and one of my daughters would be thinking, wow, mom was here and then she wasn’t. Blink!

I didn’t like thinking about life being over when I could see that there were many years of life to live. So I thought about my friend Laura who just had a baby boy and, predicated on the longevity of my female line of ancestry, (my mother, both grandmothers and great grandmothers all lived into their nineties) I surmised that her son could be in his late twenties at my swan dive. That meant he still had to learn to walk and talk. Developmentally he had to go through infancy, early childhood, school age, and adolescence into adulthood before I head to other side. He might even marry and have children. I knew that in my head but my feelings of “here today, gone tomorrow” wouldn’t let go. What difference did it make how long I had to live; a blink of an eye was a blink of an eye.

As I said, I never really meant to retire; I was just checking the feasibility at the urging of my daughters and friends. This “proof” that I could retire interrupted my comfortable avoidance of the inevitable blink of an eye by being too busy juggling long hours, a ton of paperwork and response to the accountability nightmare.

Then one Sunday morning when I was curled up on the couch with a cup of coffee trying to energize my moping self, who had work to do for work the next morning, I glanced above the fireplace and was startled to see all the family members looking at me. I could see each one of them at the same time even though my eyes moved from photo to photo. I put down my coffee mug and sat up giving them my full attention.

The voice I heard was my mother’s, “Susan, look at what you’re doing on a beautiful Sunday morning. You could be reading the New York Times or having breakfast with friends or sleeping in. God knows you need it with the hours you keep. Up early every morning, spending weekends in your office, doing that ridiculous paperwork.

I felt a collective nodding of heads.

“Your students are lucky to have a principal like you and lucky to have the teachers that teach in your school. You all have created a place where students, who are in residential care, can learn in an atmosphere of love and understanding while you offer them very creative ways to tap into their talents and interests. But at some point you are going to have to retire so why not do it now while you still have energy, creativity, and from where we sit, life itself.” Then she lowered her voice and added, “By the way Susan I think your hair needs a bit of a trim in the back.”

I touched the nape of my neck as I looked at the stacks of folders and papers piled high on my coffee table. They seemed to take on an almost cartoon-like sense of exaggeration. And then suddenly, like a meteor speeding through the stratosphere, I caught a glimpse of another possibility. Like Alice through the looking glass, like Harry on Platform 9 3/4, like going through the back of the Wardrobe closet, I found myself someplace totally unknown, where a sense of freedom sent electric waves of lightness through my body. I saw that my life could be lived in a different way, not regimented by the tick tock of time, but rather an expanse of possibilities. It was an invitation to a place of space.

I picked up my mug, took a long hard swallow and leaned against the back of the couch. In my head began a cerebral you-tube video of the Rockettes lined up along the stage at Radio City Music Hall, kicking in unison, singing, “How ya gonna keep’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?” in an attempt to add some levity to this profound experience, while making the point, that, in a blink of an eye I realized, I was, in fact, going to retire.