How Will I Know?

It’s April 15th and we have 43 days of school left until Summer. How are we already beginning the fourth quarter of the school year?

While I’ve always enjoyed the cycle of school years throughout my life, I’m also wondering if time will slow down a bit in retirement, when I’m not marking its passage by days off, weeklong breaks, grading periods, and due dates. In retirement I imagine one day being very much like another. Not in a Groundhog Day kind of way, but in more of a what-plant-shall-I-grow-today sort of way.

But ask the average retired person how they like retirement and many will say they are busier than ever, or at least busier than they had expected to be. Or they might start listing the various activities they participate in, as if you’d asked them what they do in retirement, rather than who they are in retirement. Yet I’ve noticed that no one ever regrets having retired. 

How does a person know when it’s time to retire? It’s certainly more of a temptation when a spouse has gone out ahead of you, even if they are older. Watching a close colleague slog through the various tasks in preparation for her retirement this Spring is oddly tantalizing. Even when I’m feeling committed to at least one more year in my current position, if not also one more year after that.

When people ask me about retirement plans, and they are beginning to do so now and then, I just say I’m on a year to year basis at this point. As long as my school continues with its strong admin team, solid co-teachers, and the technology is not outpacing me, I’m good to keep going. Even though I wear reading glasses now, and sometimes fear for my safety while rounding corners in our overcrowded hallways.

My cautionary tale is Grandma Kathie’s reflection on her own decision to abruptly retire several years before she’d originally planned to: “We were leaving the theater with our friend group one Sunday afternoon, and I noticed that Burt (her husband) was lagging behind everyone else. I remember thinking to myself that those next three years I’d planned to work could be the best ones we have left together. And you know what? They absolutely were.”

I think maybe that’s how you know.