Time

When I finished my teaching career, I was nothing but happy. People would ask me if I was going to miss it, and my honest answer was, “no”.

My wife is finishing her school year now, and it taking all of next year off. Up until now, she's had mixed feelings. Mostly, she was sad that it was coming to an end. She isn't even retiring and yet she was a hundred times sadder taking a leave than I had been ending a career.

She's finally turned this around. There is one week of work left, making this her, “last weekend”. She keeps saying that her mind is boggled. She has stopped seeing things ending and started seeing how things are going to change in a positive way.

She is part of several musical groups. They all contain retired people who play during the daytime on weekdays. She has always been jealous, but now she can join them.

She hates the meetings, and getting home late. No more. She really hates doing report cards. No more.

Yesterday we were watching a travel show about the neighbouring city of Vancouver. They kept showing things that we've done, but not in many years.

Chinatown; “can we go there?” Stanley Park; “can we bike ride on the sea wall?” We haven't done these things due to time constraints. We are going to have no such time restrictions.

We are not the kind of people who will go days on end without leaving the house. We have friends who putter in the garden, but I'd literally prefer going to the dentist. Read a good book? Sure, on the ferry on the way to spend the day riding the skytrain from mall to mall and eating Korean food downtown.

I think Helen is going to love living this way so much that she won't be able to return to teaching after her year off is over. This would be OK, as we have enough money put aside that she could take off a second year, or even start an extra early retirement.

She just said again, “I'm so excited.”