Today is the fourth anniversary of my retirement. Since Labor Day 2009 my husband has always stayed to celebrate NEVER having to leave the Cape again and go back to NY for another school year. Now, make no mistake, I thoroughly enjoyed every student and every school year for over thirty-five years, but at the end of each summer my heart was ripped out when I had to leave my beloved beach. Every Labor Day my hubby and I left the beach and packed up my life and brought it back to NY. My profile pic is of that momentous day in 2009, the first year we didn’t have to do that.
Labor Day 2013 finds us with a warm, but overcast day, with intermittent showers. Not a day to spend on the beach like we have for the past three years. Yesterday we did manage to make a “sunset looking” drink and walk to the beach to set awhile. My hubby took this pic of me for posterity sake:
I like to think I haven’t changed much since my profile pic four years ago, but that would be wishful thinking. I did change. I had my heart scrapped clean and I learned and learned until I have a whole new heart and a whole new way of thinking. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, this is what I would say to you:
I got that quote out of the book I was reviewing yesterday, The Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank. Toady I’m coming to the end of the story and the impact of the end is just as forceful as the beginning that hit my heart yesterday.
And so, as another Labor Day goes by, it is definitely the end of another year of retirement, but so it is also the beginning of another year of retirement, I aim to make it the best yet, and …I have written.
Enjoy your day tomorrow, I’ll be thinking of you as I go back to my 18th year of teaching. Someday I’ll be on the beach too.
I’m just living proof it DOES happen! Lol! Best of luck on your new school year!