On Vacation from Retirement

Saturday, October 11, 2013 – On Vacation from Retirement

I haven’t written in a while because I’ve been on vacation – on vacation from retirement, that is.  Four days of subbing at Annandale High School this past week, and I’m still recovering.  At the end of each day, every cell in my body was exhausted, and my brain was on the verge of numbness.  Each morning, bolting upright to the alarm at 5 a.m., walking into the kitchen before I was fully conscious – it felt just like the good old days.  When Elliott’s gravelly voice cut through my mental fog to wish me a good morning, I wanted to growl at him.  Like an automaton, I went through my morning routine.  Most importantly, I packed up all the containers I’d stuffed the previous evening with nutritious edibles to carry me through the seven hours of the school day.  (I managed to avoid buying lunch in the school cafeteria for twenty years, and I wasn’t planning to start now.)  Of course, there were some compensations – being able to see a dazzling array of stars in the pre-dawn sky, listening to Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac on WAMU as I drove into work, and seeing so many friends and former colleagues at AHS. 

This past week was also the week of my group presentation in the art history class at George Mason University.  Our subject was Gerald Murphy, one of the many American artists and writers who became a transatlantic during the 1920s.  Through a study of his paintings and relationships with other avant-garde figures, we gained a better understanding of social trends and cultural modernism in the years following World War I, prior to the Great Depression.  Rather than stand up and simply lecture with a slide show for our presentation, I borrowed a classroom strategy I’ve employed in the past as an ESOL teacher and wrote a Readers’ Theater piece with Gerald Murphy, his wife Sara Murphy, Gertrude Stein, and Fernand Léger as the main characters.  The research and writing were time-consuming, but I enjoyed it tremendously. 

The academic world, whether high school or college, is clearly where I feel most comfortable.  I’ve already started looking at the courses being offered at GMU during the spring semester.  And I’ve lined up several more sub jobs for later in the month.  But in the meantime, I’m looking forward to a long weekend at home with Elliott.  No special plans, just working on some wedding-related activities, doing some cooking (more experimenting with grains, perhaps), visiting my mother, and getting over to the gym if the rain keeps me from walking out of doors.