66 does not seem as if it should be a momentous birthday. Except for those of us reaching that age now, it means we are eligible for our full Social Security benefits (except I chose to begin to receive mine at the start of the calendar year, taking cash now and taking a small hit over time).
I am also this weekend heading to a college reunion, also not necessarily a momentous one. This will be the 45th of my original class.
And yet, for many of us, whether we are 66 or more likely 67, we are at a major transition in our lives. Many of my classmates have preceded me in retirement.
And yet, we are not yet done. I know I am not, even as I remain unsure of what the future may hold.
As this day has approached, I have reflected, as I do each year.
I choose to begin this day by sharing some of that reflection.
Regular readers have followed along with me as i explored options beyond remaining in my current classroom. As I explored options that did not work out, it became ever more clear that I was ready to move on, even if I was not sure I was ready to stop teaching.
Tuesday I administered a state test. I was with the students for 3.5 hours, between instructions, distributing materials, breaks, the three sections of the test, and collecting materials at the end. Being unable to do anything constructive during that time, I looked back at a number of things. One of those was the jobs I have had, not counting military service nor summer employment.
I began working full time when I dropped out of college the 2nd time, when I in my very early 20s. Since then I have had more than 20 employers. The 16 years I have spent with Prince George's County Public schools (13 of which at my current school) are the longest I have worked for one employer by far. The current 10 year span at my high school is the longest I have been in one place.
In a sense, that is not surprising. After all, Leaves on the Current and I have now been together pretty much since Sept 21, 1974, and have been married since Dec. 29, 1985. We have lived in our house since June of 1984. As I settled in other areas of my living, perhaps it is not surprising that I also eventually settled into teaching.
Teaching has helped me develop as a human being. Each school day I have dozens upon dozens of interactions with young people. That reminds me of the importance of the work I have been doing, of why I have been so passionate about it.
Word about my forthcoming retirement has begun to spread. I am now receiving notes and electronic messages from former students, and in a few cases parents of students I have taught. It helps me remember the lives that have intersected with mine, which have enriched me.
I have looked back at some of the pieces I have offered on this date in previous years. I am especially moved when I reread this one from six years ago, so much that I have decided to share it with my students today - I try to be open with them, to show them I trust them and care for them, and perhaps this may help them in part understand why I have made the decision to retire. We'll see.
I have always been a somewhat restless person. I take on new things - learning, or responsibilities - on a regular basis. When I was younger I did not understand this about myself, so that I changed externals in self-destructive ways - relationships, where i resided, places of employment. Teaching has always provided me a chance to sublimate that motivation in more constructive ways: new students, periodically changing subjects taught, responsibilities outside the classroom. Teaching government and politics has meant that the content for which I bear responsibility was also constantly changing, sometimes in pretty significant ways. I have as a government teacher lived through the impeachment of a President and a Presidential election that would not end. My classes have gone through the election of our first President of color and several swings of political control, both within the state(MD) in which I teach and in Congress.
When I was younger I thought my restlessness was because I had not yet found my metier, my life's destination if you will. During the 14+ years I was in the Eastern Orthodox Church, my three sojourns among the monks on Mount Athos in Northern Greece helped me begin to understand - in religious pilgrimage the journey is at least as important as the destination, which is why I decided by and large to walk the old wooded footpaths between the monastic houses.
I can see my life as a kind of pilgrimage. If I do not attempt to project beyond this lifetime, I know that I am now far closer to the end of that journey than its beginning, although as of yet I have no idea when or how it will terminate. In a sense that no longer seems to matter. Instead, each day provides me with opportunities to look back and reflect, as well as look ahead and wonder what might yet be possible.
It is not just the forward and backward glances. Sometimes it is simply stopping in the present moment.
Our four-footed creatures will remind me of that, should I be tempted to forget.
So will a sunset, or the sound of a mockingbird outside our house. The smell of a fresh spring rainfall. The sounds of a familiar piece of music. So many things provide an immediacy of the moment that can be incredibly intense.
That happens in the classroom, and with what is produced in the classroom. A sudden look of recognition on the face of a student who has been struggling when s/he "gets it." The flash of insight in a piece of work, written or artistic. The change in body posture, or tone of voice . . .
I am now about halfway between the ages of my parents when they died. Mom was 47, passing about a week after I graduated from high school. Dad was 84, but his mind had been failing for several years, and the last time I saw him, about a year before his death, he had trouble recognizing me. Dad did live long enough to see me happily married. Neither lived long enough to see me finally find some meaningful footing in life as a classroom teacher, although Dad had a taste of it in the 6 months I was a teacher intern in a Quaker secondary school in New Jersey in 1974.
My sister taught for a while. Both of her children also taught, my niece overlapping with me for two years in my first school. As I leave my current classroom, no one from our family will be in a classroom unless I find another classroom to which i can go. While that may happen, it seems ever less likely.
I am a teacher by nature. That is because I am a constant learned by nature. I have found learning to be the most social thing I do. Otherwise i am isolated.
I remain shy. Perhaps that is why I am so open about myself in my writing - it is a way of reaching out without my social awkwardness interfering.
Those last two sentences are the hard-won insight of many years of self-doubt.
As I write these words, I sit in what we call our "music room" although years ago the upright piano which gave rise to that title was sold when I brought north the baby grand with which I had grown up when we closed out my Dad's apartment in Florida when he went in to custodial care. Now it has hundreds of dvds and videotapes, because the television is in this room. There are lots of books, although in this house that is not unusual: everyroom except the bathrooms has lots of books, and there are more in boxes in the basement and in piles on the stairs. We both read a lot. Books have always been my friends - as they often are for those of us who are shy.
Yet it is appropriate that we still call this music room. As a look around, most of the books from my studies of music history and music theory are in this room. So are scores, piano scores, choral scores, sets of chamber musics, and tons of piano music. Even though at the moment there is no music playing in thehouse, I can glance at the spine of, say, a piano version of the Brahms 3rd Symphony and feel the sensation of my fingers on the keys of the baby grand and hear the music in my mind, going back and forth from the piano sound to that of the full orchestra. Were I to go take a piece of cello music, even the line from a symphony or string quartet, my right arm remembers the bowing and the fingers of my left hand feel the vibrating string. As with the piano, it is almost as if I hear through my fingers.
And thus other parts of what I have learned through my life journey make their appearance. I can say with Thomas Jefferson that I cannot live without books. But I also must say that a world without music would be to me barren and soulless.
I remember when I first walked into the Strand, a large used bookstore in New York City. I wept, because I realized that there were so many books I would never have time to read. Now I find at times I want to reread books. I still want to explore new books - I am rediscovering poetry as I age, and there are new poems by poets I do not yet know as I do Shakespeare, or Eliot, or Yeats, or some of my other favorites.
I am 66.
I am officially a senior citizen, and had I any doubt, the mailings from various health care plans still come to the house unceasingly.
I feel some physical limitations.
What hair I have left is now all gray, and approaching white.
At times my bones creak and my muscles ache.
A single raisin can still, if I focus, explode with taste in my mouth.
I may yet find myself so immersed in a novel that I have no awareness of the passage of time.
If I allow myself, I have the riches of memories of lifetime to which I can turn, upon which I can reflect.
Or I can accept the invitation of a feline who choses to share the warmth of his body next to mine, just because.
Another year has passed. There are things I did not accomplish. There are things dones and said that would have been better had I not done or said them. That's part my humanity, which is far from perfect.
There are also the good moments. There are the times when my words have made a difference for someone else, whether written here or spoken privately.
I am never fully satisfied, because there is always more I could do. But I no longer obsess about my failings, because slowly, ever so slowly, especially over the 17 years I have been a classroom teacher, I have come to learn that I actually do some good.
It is my birthday. To the cats there is nothing different about this day.
Most of my students know it is my birthday. So do my colleagues. So do many with whom I am in contact electronically.
My sister will call this evening, probably while Leaves and I are out for a leisurely dinner, meaning she will leave me a birthday message.
And me? Today - and tomorrow - my students will be exploring the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Because we have some excellent video, and it is an important part of our history. The school will let me have a free lunch in the cafeteria. I will enjoy the day, because I am lucky to have another day of life.
Thanks for being patient with the words I have offered.
If it is your birthday, as it is for several my students, current and former, enjoy it.
If not, may you have a very merry unbirthday.
Peace.