A Personal Reflection

Where Did the Time Go?
 (A Retirement Poem)
 
Rolling out of bed at 8:00 a.m. --- which has now become a habit ---
I recollect rising at 5:00 a.m. for many, many years.
 
By 8:00 a.m. a bustling ball walk through halls, gathering up
students, greeting colleagues….
 
All preceded by a 5:00 a.m. alarm, a shit/shower/shave, a dog walk,
a lunch made, a bus ride, a stroll to the building (arriving, usually by
7:00/7:15 a.m.) and preparing for the day, the
 
Deluge of at least 100 adolescents and 20/30/40 fellow teachers…
Ready to steam through 7 to 8 hours of organized chaos,
entropic, careening bodies . . . the chorus of hallway chatter and the bustle
of banging lockers, the wending a way to the next class . . .
 
And the days (often) flew by, the seasonal ebb and flow, the “Spring Training”
of autumnal rhythm, the incipient Winter and its holidays, the slog through February
and the always-grim March, with some hope that April will (eventually) arrive.
 
The screaming downhill toboggan of Spring, impending tests, proms,
graduation, “senior slump” . . . If you haven’t lived this life, this Peter Pan-ish
never-leaving-high-school-just-getting-the-Big-Desk situation, you can’t
Imagine what it’s like . . .
 
Taking care of “other people’s children” for a lifetime….enjoying it, indeed,
Loving it --- loving those kids, year after year…..
And now, five years removed (FIVE YEARS?), it’s so hard, rolling out of bed
at 8:00 a.m., to recall all those 5 a.m. wake-ups, all that morning ritual and travel,
all those people every day . . . Almost like a dream . . .
 
Almost . . .

(photos by Bil)