Category: Uncategorized

I came to Boston almost 40 years ago for a summer job on the Cape. On that trip, I caught a bus right at the airport and stared out at the city through a grimy window. I’d been in big cities before, but not on the East coast which seemed so much older than out West. I remember the laundry hung on lines between the buildings. Back then we didn’t have cameras on our phones. Or I would have snapped a million shots. I have wanted to photograph laundry ever since.

Maybe that is part of why I have always wanted to come back. There are places we pass through in our lives that stay with us for reasons we don’t completely understand. Sometimes it is a person. Sometimes it is a smell or a song. Sometimes it is something as ordinary as laundry blowing between two buildings.

My trip has gotten off to a rough start. First off, there was long layover in Dallas and then the plane was delayed. When we did board, we sat a pretty long time on the plane waiting for clearance. I am traveling with my son. Mostly, we roadtrip together, because I have more control over things and can give him breaks when he needs them. If I get upset, he gets upset, and being upset doesn’t make the plane move any faster. There was a woman behind me who didn’t feel the same way. She kept dropping the F bomb. I kinda wanted to tell her to shut up, but I practiced my Zen skills.

We made it to the hotel pretty late and didn’t get to explore. I took a walk along the harbor at dawn in the rain. The air here is delicious. Cool and crisp. After the dry, hot air of summer in a high desert drought, it was blissful.

And then there is Shayne. He is still sleeping. Traveling with him is a good barometer for me to see how he is doing. So far he has been remarkably calm and symptom free. He thanked me for bringing him. He did watch Mission Impossible all day and he is wearing a Hello, Kitty t-shirt, but it could be a lot worse.

I suppose that is another reason this trip feels important to me. Forty years ago, I came through Boston alone, looking out a dirty bus window at a city that felt impossibly old and far away. I never took the photographs I wanted to take.

This time, I get to see it up close, not behind a dirty bus window.

And I get to see it with my son.

I am looking forward to finally getting to experience the city that I have always felt that I missed out on.

I have been ghosting my blog. In fact, I kind of feel like I have been ghosting my life.

Retirement was supposed to rid me of all my problems. Make me light and free. Instead, June hit me with a wave of sadness. I didn’t know what it was or how to shake it.

At first, I wondered if it was my new job. I still don’t like the drive, but the job itself is fine. I like being in the space, and it is fun to see the excitement of discovery on people’s faces. I really enjoy the older people. Seeing the amazement in their faces when they touch the sand in the sand table or watch their two-dimensional coloring page become animated is pretty cool.

I like that I don’t have to make big decisions or monitor anyone’s growth or behavior. I’m not even sure everyone I work with knows my name.

But the days I work exhaust me. Being “on.” Being nice. Being present. I have nothing left when I get home. And then I wonder if I will ever be able to function like a normal person again.

Some of my sadness is Pam.

Losing her has been harder than anything I have ever done. I am supposed to be floating in her backyard pool with my sunglasses on, solving all the problems of the world. I reach for the phone still to tell her something.

I feel the tears come every day, but they don’t quite make it out of my eyes. They just brim right at the surface.

Putting her ashes in the ground finally might have brought closure to some of the family, but not me. Pam is just gone. And for the first time ever, I am doing life without her. I still can’t believe we aren’t growing old together on some porch somewhere.

Then there are my kids.

Shayne struggles with his voices every moment. I see it. I know it. We can pretend the meds help. We can pretend the dog helps. We can pretend sports help.

Honestly? I’m not sure anything really helps.

He does the best he can every day. I walk through life hoping the bottom doesn’t fall out for him again, while at the same time waiting for it to do just that.

Darian is another story that I just can’t write about at all. But she floats in my thoughts. I see her in my dreams, on the other side of a glass wall. I miss her so much.

I think at least once a day about just getting in my car and driving to Albuquerque, just to catch a glimpse of her. Just to make sure she is okay.

I wander around this hundred-year-old house and see all the things that need to be fixed. The sprinkler system. The weeds. The paint that needs to be touched up. The projects I thought I would have time for when I retired.

Everything just seems so overwhelming.

Maybe that is what this sadness is.

Maybe retirement didn’t make me light and free because I was expecting it to take away things that aren’t really problems I can solve. You can retire from a job. You can’t retire from being a mother. You can’t retire from grief. You can’t retire from missing someone. You can’t retire from worrying about the people you love.

And apparently, you can’t retire from yourself.

So maybe I haven’t really been ghosting my life. Maybe I have just been trying to figure out how to live in this strange new version of it.

I’m still here.

I’m just not sure yet what I’m supposed to do with all this freedom.

People keep asking me if I have fun plans when school starts in a couple of days. I don’t know how to answer that. I haven’t given going back to school much thought. I know I spent around fifty years of my life getting ready for the school year to start, but it honestly feels pretty far from my mind.

I did teach a class called “Siege” at the museum to elementary age kids. It was a small group and we studied Leonardo DaVinci’s designs around bridges, catapults, and tanks and tried to design our own versions. It was fun and I enjoyed the experience. It did not make me want to go back in the classroom. If anything, it solidified my absolute conviction that I made the right decision. I realized that the creativity it takes to be innovative in the classroom depletes my creativity for my own projects.

Speaking of my own projects. I am still learning stained glass. I did an address panel and I learned a lot in the process. I drove the panel out to Nebraska to drop it off.

Usually the road is a place of freedom for me. I turn up the radio and just marvel at the beauty of the incredible landscape in this country. This time however, it was a different experience. I really struggled to stay awake. I had a flat tire, got off course, and couldn’t stay on a schedule. Instead of finding peace, my mind couldn’t turn off about what comes next for me.

The two promises I made to myself when I retired were to be healthier in my mind, body, and spirit. And to take my writing more seriously. I think I started off well on that course, but then hijacked myself by getting a job. The job itself is not hard and sometimes it is fun, but being “on” wears me out and I don’t love driving to Pueblo. I thought about quitting, but am holding off for a little longer. Maybe if I really keep the hours to part-time and double down on my goals, it will be okay.

I am still working on my memoir. It’s kind of tough because memoirs are focused on a particular aspect of life. I have had so many things happen that it has been a journey to sort out the story that I want to tell. I am getting there.

I have always wanted to write a comic strip. I guess I kind of tried a little with Charlie, my cat, but that was also when I found out he had cancer and I just couldn’t write about him anymore. I have been playing with the idea of “Storm.” A comic loosely based on my son and his dog. I think the concept of schizophrenia and a pit bull emotional support animal is intriguing. Both are misunderstood and vastly more complicated than usually portrayed. But now that I have started, I am not sure it’s fair for me to write about the voices. I have no idea what it is like to live with them in my head. I only know what it is like to watch them torture someone I love. It’s not really a subject to exploit. But I am still playing with the idea of a comic strip tbough. Maybe in drawing it, it will find its way to what it is supposed to be.

For so long August meant preparing to teach. Lesson plans. Class lists. New pencils. New students. Now August is asking a different question: What do I want to learn? What do I want to create?

I don’t have all the answers yet. I know I want to write. I know I want to create. I know I want to be healthier in my mind, body, and spirit. I know I don’t want to spend all my creativity on other people, before I get home.

Maybe the comic strip will become something meaningful. Maybe it won’t. Maybe the museum job will stay, or maybe it will become another stepping stone. For the first time in a very long time, I don’t have a syllabus telling me what comes next.

That uncertainty is unsettling. But it also feels like possibility. And after fifty plus years of living by the school calendar, I think it’s fair to tear the pages up and let the wind take them.

I was driving to work, and I saw this pile of rubble and a bulldozer actively pushing all the debris together. I couldn’t believe it. That building has been empty and for sale for awhile and has served a lot of purposes over the last fifty years, but it’s always been a reference point for me.

It was at the bottom of the street I grew up on, a furniture store with big show room windows. It is a place of endless memories. I was a tiny toddler when my parents picked out a couch and love seat. I remember walking from room to room, amazed at couch after couch. We were taken up to a storage attic to look at the bargain stuff because Mom asked to see something on sale. They picked out a a black leather set they found in the storage space, dusty, with a broken foot. Dad fixed the foot, good as new and Mom English Leathered the upholstery and I spent my entire youth watching TV and reading books and napping on that furniture.

The building also marked the southern boundary of my neighborhood. The smooth concrete and interesting pillars made excellent terrain for bike riding, roller skating and skateboarding. All the neighborhood kids gathered there to weave in and out of the columns or to race on the wide parking lot.

We have a family legacy story about the loading dock. My brother, in his cowboy and lasso days, tied a rope to a bolt on the loading dock and tried to lasso kids as they rode their bikes past. He missed everyone, until he didn’t, catching a girl in my first grade class around the neck. The rope held tight, reinforced by the bolt, and she was jerked off her bike, and nearly strangled. My brother automatically let go of the rope and we all rushed to her to make sure she was okay. She had a serious rope burn around her neck. We all knew it was bad. So we did what all Gen X kids did when we knew we were in serious trouble. We put the evidence (bikes and ropes) away and sat inside playing a board game on a summer day. No squabbling. Picture perfect faces of innocence. But of course the parents brought the girl over to show my parents the bruise the rope had left. It’s sort of hard to explain that kind of damage as an accident, but my brother cried and even today when he tells the story, the shock of actually catching her comes through. I don’t know what happened to that girl. She moved away, but we never forgot her.

So maybe that’s why, all these years later, I always automatically glance at the building in my travels through town. It’s a reference to my youth.

I have been thinking about moving. But I have felt a little paralyzed in that decision. There are lots of places I love. Philadelphia brings me a kind of energy and vitality that makes me feel alive and open to new possibilities. I love the magnolias and history in Virginia and feel so at home and peaceful there. I dream of waking eveey morning and walkimg on the beaches of Alaska or Oregon or New Jersey, throwing driftwood for a designer doodle. And I can even see waking up in my sister-in- law’s A-frame in the Philippines and gazing out at the sunrise on the Pacific. Yet, I am still here in this small town I equally love and loathe in the same measure. It holds all of my history.

Maybe that’s why the tearing down of the old furniture store struck me at my very core. Sometimes everything has to be stripped away before something new can be built. I feel like I have one foot planted in the life I’ve always known and the other hovering over a future I haven’t quite had the courage to step into. A tattered, frayed tether still holds me in place—not because this town is perfect, but because it contains the map of who I have been.

But as I watched the bulldozer push the last piles of brick and timber into a heap, I realized something. The building is gone, but the memories aren’t. My parents are still picking out that bargain couch. My brother is still standing there in his cowboy hat, horrified by the impossible throw he never meant to make. Somewhere, a little girl is still weaving her bike through those pillars. Those places don’t disappear when the walls come down. They travel with us.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been waiting to understand. Leaving doesn’t mean abandoning my history. It just means carrying it somewhere new.

On June 16, 1962 my parents were married. I tried to let the day go by without saying aloud that it was their anniversary. I thought of them with love. I tried to honor their memory silently. I guess I managed to get through the day without mentioning it, but I am not sure why I felt that need. Sometimes it doesn’t feel “right” that I should still be sad about losing my parents. But if have learned anything at all, grief never goes away, so the best way to handle it, is to welcome it when it shows up. Slamming the door in its face, doesn’t work. Grief is like a mouse–it slips through the cracks and skirts around the edges, both elusive and so damn there.

People keep asking me if I have finished painting the levee and the answer is no. I got a job. And it’s partly because of the levee that I am working again.

One day after being on the river, I passed the Leonardo DaVinci Museum of North America and I thought–what’s that? Then that very night I saw job postings for the museum and took that as I sign.

Yes. I am retired, but I always planned on finding a job at some point. It’s no secret that I left teaching pretty beat up. I promised myself that whatever I did next would be creative and fill me with infinite joy. And if doesn’t, well, I will dip out.

I don’t know yet if the job will bring me infinite joy. There are a few things I don’t love. One is stupid, but I hate being told what to wear. I think it’s my inner Catholic school uniform girl rebel that awakens whenever a polo dares to cross my path. The first couple of days, I wore a Renaissance costume. Honestly, I preferred that. It was more comfortable and it made me feel more like a person entering the realm of DaVinci’s lair. It also reminded me of Ren Fest and all the great summer days I have had there. It even kind of made me think about buying a pattern and making my own dress. I haven’t sewn anything in YEARS.

The other part of the job, I am not super crazy about is the drive. I know Pueblo isn’t really that far and I enjoy the amazing sky views and listening to the radio, but gas is pricey and there is a lot of road construction. I have thought about moving, but there is no ocean in Pueblo and if I am going to go to all the trouble of relocating there better be a beach in that plan!

That said, the museum is fabulous. It boasts a library of a complete collection of DaVinci’s writings. It literally will draw scholars from all over the world. Artisans of Florence created the exhibits and were on hand at the museum to give lessons about the pieces. Fabulous local artists created the murals in the museum. And there is an amazing STEAM room and inventors’ lab. I have been to a lot of museums in the US, a lot, and this museum ranks high on the best interactive museum list. It truly makes innovation, creativity, and DaVinci come alive.

I watched a twenty- something couple have a date in the museum. They were holding hands when they came into the inventors’ lab and did every activity– colored birds, constructed flapping wings, built wiggle-bots, wrote messages to each other with mirror writing, shot off straw rockets, played in the sand table and more. I watched them say “I Love You,” in the shadow room with shadows they made on the wall. Maybe they will get married and spend the next fifty or sixty years holding hands through all the seasons of love. It actually made me smile, and think of my parents. And filled me with hope.

A lot of kids come into the lab. I am enjoying them–it’s like having only the best part of teaching. Their eyes get big with wonder and they ask questions and are excited to try the activities. My favorites though are the older people. I watched two women, older than me, play with the gear panel for a solid thirty minutes, laughing and having a good time. Some people don’t come into the inventor’s lab because they think it’s for kids, but it’s not. It’s for everyone and there is going to be something that invites, inspires, ignites, no matter what age. So, yeah, being in this space–infinite joy.

I am also super impressed with the people who created this museum. They are examples of passion and hard work coming together to bring a dream alive. The museum they built is a gift both for the community and the world. It’s the kind of place that is unforgettable and it’s exciting to witness the beginning and get to be a small part of its history.

So. I will finish the painting on the levee, and I have a stained glass job in progress, and I am writing. And now there are museum patrons to greet and engage.

Every day I heal a little more from the losses life has handed me. Not because the grief is gone, but because it has found a place to live alongside joy.

Maybe that’s what Leonardo understood all along—that curiosity is its own kind of hope. That making something with your hands is an act of faith in tomorrow. That imagination isn’t an escape from life, but a way back into it.

So Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad. Here’s to imagination, discovery and the pursuit of infinite joy.

A lot of people don’t know that when I came back to Canon City, I joined the school district as the first middle school GATE teacher—the gifted program. It was a half-time position at that point, and it was all very wide open and flexible. Sometimes I just felt like I was making it up as I went.

One of the things that developed out of that program was a summer program that offered short, intense learning experiences for kids. I haven’t taught SPLASH every summer, but I have done a lot of classes. One of my classes is Animals in Art—a tour of art projects inspired by art and animals from around the world. When I retired, I decided to keep teaching SPLASH, so I returned to the classroom last week.

It’s no secret that I felt pretty beat up when I left the classroom five months ago. So much so that I couldn’t even go back to have lunch with my friends. I’d see kids in the grocery store or in a restaurant and get anxiety. But I was looking forward to SPLASH. First off, it’s the best of teaching—small classes with kids who want to be there. I love teaching different art mediums and just turning kids loose to create. And even though I have taught the class many times, we almost always do projects I haven’t tried before.

I couldn’t have had a better class. Ten kids, all happy, creative, and hardworking. Most of them like to draw, and they all actually listen when I tell them about an artist, a history, or a process. They help each other and are kind. And their work has turned out fantastic.

The best thing about this experience is that I can tell I am a new person—more grounded and happier. I don’t want to return to the classroom, but I am ready for creative opportunities that are starting to emerge.

I got a job. I am working part time at the brand new Leonardo DaVinci Museum in Pueblo, Colorado. I will be in the STEAM Center, helping visitors engage with fantastic displays that inspire imagination and creativity.

For the first time in a long time, I feel like I am moving toward something instead of away from something. Teaching SPLASH reminded me of what I loved about education in the first place, and this new opportunity feels like a natural next step. I may have closed one chapter, but I’m discovering that there are still plenty of ways to teach, create, and connect with people. That feels like a pretty good place to begin again.

When my son was twelve, he decided he was going to start training for the cross country team. Every morning, he’d get up early, leash up our young blue heeler/lab dog, and head out to the hills behind our house. I’d always say, “Watch out for mountain lions,” and he’d say something like, “I am a Leo, so lion-proof.”

Running was his obsession. He read books, kept a training journal, ran everywhere. He did join the cross country team and made varsity his freshman year.

I don’t know when the voices came. I sometimes wonder if running kept them at bay. Because when Shayne stopped running, some of his behavior changed. I didn’t know schizophrenia was even a possibility, so I wasn’t looking for it.

The voices have taken so much from my son, from me, from our whole family. One piece of advice I was given early on was to read as much as I could and learn about his illness. I did, though I have to say the reading was discouraging. Even though only about one percent of the population has schizophrenia, about ten percent die by suicide. The drugs only work for about eighty percent of people and often come with intense side effects. Success stories are few, and long roads of addiction, jail, and violence are not uncommon.

At first, when I started reading, I was hopeful that maybe we could have a different story. But as our journey continued, and we lived through one dark stretch after another, I wasn’t sure there was hope.

Maybe running was an early clue—fixation becoming obsession. At least it seemed healthy then. Better than being consumed by some unknown creature stealing his soul, or becoming convinced Elon Musk was coming for dinner.

The meds don’t take the voices away; sleeping does. He self-medicates to sleep. I have watched every drug take its toll on his body. The pharmaceuticals have aged his kidneys. The THC has given him the cough of an old man. The beer has left him with a round belly. Watching someone live addicted is its own kind of hell. Many times, I have felt powerless. Watching my son slowly kill himself in front of me is torturous.

Recently, he said he wanted to quit drinking. I didn’t react much. Words are cheap.

But then I saw him carrying one of his old running books up from the basement. He leashed up Stormi. Apparently pit bulls are not natural runners, because he came back carrying her, saying she refused to jog after three minutes. So I sat on the porch with her and watched him jog away.

He doesn’t move with his old easy gait, but he is out there, doing it.

Maybe he will stop after a few weeks. But maybe not. Running was his high for a long time, and I’m hoping it will be again. Maybe it’s the one thing that can save him from himself.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BHUMMm2zs/?mibextid=wwXIfr

A couple of weeks ago at the school district retirement dinner, one of the board members gave speeches about each of the retirees and handed out gifts with fun but special meaning. I got a jar of Skittles and a metal sign that outlines a move to the beach, because I always say I want to live near the beach. One of my friends recently asked me what I am waiting for.

A few things:

Is there a beach I can afford?

What about my house in Colorado?

Will Shayne be okay?

I have some obligations:
a. Finish the painting on the levee.
b. Update the mural at the Baptist church.
c. Finish my memoir.

I have been concentrating on my obligations first. I am writing three hours a day. That seems like a lot, and I should be able to finish the project. But a lot of that time is spent trying to figure out how to write a section of my life—like college—in a paragraph or a page. I haven’t started the church yet, because I have used my two ideas and I only like painting animals, not people, and there are way more people than animals in the Bible. That leaves the levee.

A few years ago, I blogged about my experiences painting a mural above the Arkansas River in Pueblo. I was so excited to participate in the Pueblo Levee project. I felt like painting a giant mural suspended on ropes would give me mad street cred as a muralist. During that time, though, my son had one of his worst psychotic breaks and was missing for days. Painting on the wall became how I coped. Every time Shayne disappeared, I wondered if I would ever see him again. That time I really did think he might be dead, and I wondered if that would be a relief for him. Living with the voices screaming in his brain is pretty horrible. Then I had all the mom guilt for even thinking those thoughts. So I would go down on the wall and paint my fish and try not to think or feel.

When the project was over, I just sat at the edge of the river and looked down at my work. It felt anticlimactic. I had done this big thing and I wasn’t even really sure that it mattered.

I went on with my life. Shayne was found and we started our dance of him trying a new medicine and me pretending that he was doing better until the next episode. I had some ideas about painting on the levee again, but I also thought it might be a one and done for me. It was expensive, the drive was a lot, and honestly, my last years in the classroom took such a toll on my emotional well-being that I was just mostly surviving. I didn’t have the creative energy for much beyond occasional humorous quips on social media.

Last year, though, I decided that maybe leaning into my creativity could help me get through the hard stuff, and I agreed to do another mural. I did a watercolor sketch of horses thundering in the sunset. In my mind, it represented power and freedom. I got the paint, but when I went to the levee, I couldn’t step down on the wall. Fear froze me. I forgot how the equipment worked. Panic set in. Three times I tried. All the memories of Shayne lost came flooding back. All the feelings I hadn’t let myself feel came rushing back. I didn’t want to be on the river or remember any of it, and I didn’t want to paint the mural anymore.

However, part of me did want to paint. I wanted my horses up there. I wanted the mural to live somewhere. I didn’t want to walk away and regret not painting it for the rest of my life.

I met another artist working on a mural. She is from Oregon and only here for another week, but she has made painting a kind of community and helps other people. I always work alone and I hate asking for help, but I also knew that getting back on the ropes was something I wasn’t going to be able to do without an intervention.

She walked me through it. I felt the fear on my first trip down, but then I relaxed enough to be able to go up and down and side to side, and then I painted a little. Then I painted longer, and now I feel ready to start my painting.

To be honest, I don’t know where the beach fits in my future. I just know the ocean calls to me. I don’t know about Shayne or my house. I don’t feel like my list is an excuse or postponement. The list feels like finishing what I started.

All I know is I got on the wall again. Fear isn’t controlling me. The horses are going to run on the levee, and then I will be ready for whatever comes next.

I spent a good portion of my late thirties and early forties riding the hell out of my bike. I had the fancy clothes, clip shoes, aerodynamic handlebars, speedometers, and little black pouches stuffed with Allen wrenches and an extra tube. Sometimes I rode with friends. Mostly I rode alone.

I started riding because I wanted to lose weight. I abhor talking about weight. I once heard that more women my age struggle with eating disorders — diagnosed or not — than breast cancer. But anyway, my son told me the best way to lose weight was to find an exercise I loved as a kid. I chose biking because it seemed more realistic than roller skating.

I always had this idea of riding somewhere epic. The Oregon coast. Something cinematic.

I rode to Alamosa once. It was hard, but it wasn’t the mountain pass that nearly broke me — it was the long, straight gunbarrel highway. Mountains at least give you a rest. On flat roads, if you stop pedaling, you stop.

I drank enough water, but I let myself get hungry. By the end I felt weak and sick. When I finally reached Alamosa, I peeled off my shorts and found saddle blisters despite all the expensive gear. Even with sunscreen, I felt baked alive. The next morning I woke with a fever and caught a ride home.

So much for epic aspirations.

Then I was attacked on a ride.

It was early evening on the riverwalk in spring. A young man walked toward me, dressed all in black with a winter beanie pulled low. Something felt wrong immediately — wrong for the season, wrong for the trail.

As I passed him, he lunged. He grabbed my handlebars and wrenched me to a stop. I yelled — I think I yelled — and he spit in my face, hissing like a wildcat and calling me something filthy. Fortunately other walkers rounded the bend, I shouted again and he disappeared into the trees.

The fear came afterward. My hands shook all the way home.

After that, the trail didn’t quite feel like mine anymore.

My riding partners moved away. I stopped riding every day, then stopped riding regularly, and eventually I stopped riding at all.

During the pandemic I bought a cross bike for fifty dollars on Facebook Marketplace. I met the seller at a Sinclair station in Denver. She looked skinny and homeless-y and walked the bike toward us. My son raised his eyebrows and said, “This is how drug deals go down. That bike is probably stolen.”

Maybe. But I love that bike.

It’s faster than a mountain bike but sturdier than a road bike. I started riding again a little, mostly with my sister-in-law when she visited from overseas each summer. She’s strong and serious about cycling. After riding her state-of-the-art bike, I decided I needed a new road bike too.

Here’s the absolute truth about me: even if I were a millionaire, I would never feel good paying full price for something I could get on sale.

So I waited for a pandemic bike — one of those expensive purchases abandoned by optimistic urban cyclists. Eventually I found one in a bougie Denver neighborhood. I bought a nearly new road bike for a tenth of its retail price.

It was so fancy that I brought it inside the house instead of leaving it in the garage.

I rode it twice.

The idea of doing something epic never really left me. I imagine riding across the country and writing a blog every night about the day’s miles. I also imagine moving to Philadelphia and winning the lottery.

I have done none of those things.

Yesterday, though, I put on my biking clothes. I filled the tires. I rode about fifteen miles. Mostly flat miles, but still.

And somewhere along the ride I realized maybe epic doesn’t mean crossing a continent. Maybe epic is just getting back on the bike after everything that made you stop.

I wonder how many times life will offer me that lesson before it finally sinks in.

People keep asking me how retirement is treating me, and the easy answer is—great. But the truth is more complicated.
I left the classroom four months ago, yet it feels like a lifetime ago. Teaching is so distant in my mind that I wonder if I have dissociated from the experience, like a trauma I just can’t think about. I feel as if I am emerging from a giant battle, struggling to remove the armor. Each day a little piece comes off. I am lighter and a little more free, but the sensation is so unfamiliar that I don’t always trust it or know what to call it.

Every day I wake up and lean into this new life, taking a few tentative steps while my creative soul is completely unleashed and ready to run. So I’ve been letting that part of me have free rein.

I started a stained glass project. I have fused glass, worked with a torch, and done mosaics, but stained glass is a new art for me. Still, I have complete confidence in my ability to do anything artistic. So I planned an eighteen by twenty four design of a horse, chose my colors, and started cutting glass.

The process became mesmerizing for me. Cutting, grinding, designing my own puzzle pieces. When a piece didn’t come out right, I’d try again. I learned about tools that I didn’t know existed-like a table top foiler. And I cut myself and stepped on glass and realized that stained glass is incredibly messy and should be done in a workshop or a studio and maybe not in the dining room. When I was finally ready to solder, I realized I needed some expert advice. Fortunately, I knew the perfect person.

When I began tacking the glass together and small beads of silver formed along the seams, I worried I might ruin hours of labor. My friend assured me it would come together.

My friend is Beki Javernick, the owner of Driftwood and Clay. I met her a number of years ago and I had been aware of her talent, but didn’t realize what a great teacher she is. She was patient and helpful and we laughed at my complete unorthodox way of tackling a giant project. Mostly, she just gave me the space to do my thing. It was exactly what I needed…an eclectic atmosphere of music, art, and a respect of creativity in all its forms.

As I drew lines of liquid silver, I wondered how I had lived so long inside systems that never quite fit me. My art went from glass shapes to a unified flow of mane, head and neck of a majestic animal. I was sort of shocked to set down the patina brush and see this brilliant transformation.

Usually, when I finish a piece of art, I give it away for someone else to love. The joy for me is the process and the gift of sharing. But this time, I fell in love with the end product itself.

Piece by piece, I trusted the process—making mistakes, starting over, accepting guidance without feeling diminished. I surrendered to the work and trusted my intuition. My creative self has been waiting patiently for space and light.

I might be still setting the armor down. It’s not easy because it took half a life to put it on. But I am determined to get it all off and step into freedom. So that’s what retirement has been for me–not really an ending or a rest, but a slow return to myself. And that is great.

Soon the horse will be in a window and sunlight will pass through it. Maybe that’s the real work of this season: learning how to stand still long enough for the light to find its way through me too.