Officially Day #1 of Retirement......

Way back in May when I retired, I couldn't decide what the first day of retirement would really be. It wasn't that Memorial Day, the Monday after my last day of school, because I would have been off work that day ANYWAY. It wasn't any of the days after that, because I would have been off (theoretically anyway) for the whole summer.

Ultimately I decided my first official day of retirement would be the day I WOULD have gone back to school if I hadn't retired. I'm sure both of you were agonizing over that with me.

I couldn't decide if I would feel a tremendous sense of freedom as the day approached, gloating (even if only in my mind) over the fact that a whole bunch of people had to go back to work and I DIDN'T. Or if I would feel nostalgic, missing my friends and wondering what I'm going to do with myself now that a huge part of my identity is finished. Kaput. Out of here.

When it was all said and done, how I felt was .....

I almost forgot. The day completely slipped up on me.

One of my former co-workers called last week to ask if I could come to school and perhaps answer the phones some this week (more on that in a moment), and I readily agreed. I pictured myself sitting at the front desk, watching the Olympics on the computer (what were they gonna do, fire me?), and asking the new principal the answer to every single question that came through the door or on the phone. I thought it was the next-to-the-next-to-the-last week before teachers came back.

I didn't have to go after all, and it's probably a good thing because I took my mother-in-law to YET ANOTHER doctor. I'll wait to talk about her ongoing medical issues in another blog post. Bless her heart, she feels terrible about my having to take her up and down the road and back and forth to doctors. She asked today if I regretted having retired. I said, "No, if I hadn't retired, I would have had to quit anyway." She just laughed.

The reason I might have had to go to school and fill in this week was due to the tragic death of the daughter of our bookkeeper/registrar/keeper-of-things-running at school. The 22-year-old was in a terrible car accident last Friday morning when we were on the way home from Wisconsin, and she just couldn't pull through. She was a sweet girl who was also a student in our program for a while. She wasn't motivated enough to be successful in a program like ours, even with her mom in the building, and I'm ashamed that I don't remember whether she dropped out or if she went back to the traditional high school.

I consider her mom one of my dear friends, and my heart breaks for her. It isn't natural for a parent to bury a child; I never understood how my mother managed to go on living after my brother died. (I realize it's not a choice, I understand all that, but I still cannot imagine how one actually goes about doing it.) The funeral home visitation is tomorrow night, and the funeral is Thursday.

I want to kick myself for thinking I have problems. Ever.

Disturbing......

We (Katydid, Rozmo, Deb and I) witnessed a rather disturbing scene at BikeFest this weekend. It has been on my mind ever since, but I didn't want to spoil the happiness that was the bike ride with this scene that was ... not happy.

I noticed a group of people down below us, on the Riverwalk, because there appeared to be some tension. Then a container of ... something ... french fries? ... onion rings? ... went flying. There was a little girl involved, probably about two and a half years old. There was a young woman, an older woman (holding the child), and an older man. The older two appeared to be parents of the young woman and grandparents of the child.

Their voices became louder and I could hear them clearly all the way up where we were standing, probably about a hundred feet away. (Give or take ... I'm terrible with distance. Which probably explains why I continue to choose to ride the century route when I could be watching football.)

I could clearly hear the young woman (who wasn't teenage young, just younger than the other woman, obviously, since that turned out to be her mother) saying, "Show me the paperwork. Show me the paperwork. Show me the paperwork or give me my child."

It was obviously a custody dispute, and I wanted both to turn away because I felt like a Peeping Tom and to watch as closely as I could in case the verbal dispute became physical. I had already heard someone ... maybe BOTH women ... saying, "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!" The little girl, thankfully, was not crying, but I couldn't stand the thought that she might get caught between these two seemingly irrational adults. Well, one was more irrational than the other, but the situation was getting out of control.

Enter Rozmo.

She had gone to take pictures down on the Riverwalk, and the argument moved down her way. The father had come up the steep stairs to where we were standing, presumably to wait for police to arrive. Rozmo had stumbled upon the two women arguing, asked if everything were okay, and when one said "Yes" and the other said "No," she tried to mediate.

That's Rozmo. That's the way she rolls. She has SUCH a way with people, and especially children. She was able to calm both adults and get them to walk up to where we were standing, and she kept the little girl engaged in conversation the whole time.

I won't bore you with ALL the details, but the woman had lost custody of her little girl because of a drug issue, and the grandmother DID have paperwork, which she was only willing to turn over to law enforcement. I have no idea how this scene came to be played out on the Riverwalk, unless there was an issue with visitation or something. It seemed a strange place for such a situation to get out of hand, without any social services or law enforcement people around to keep things under control in the first place.

Sadly, I didn't find the situation with the mother and the drug habit and the loss of custody surprising at all. It's what we hear all the time these days. What I DID find surprising was that the mother who has lost custody is an OB/GYN but has no job now because of her drug habit. She has no right to have her child now because of a drug habit.

How tragic. It's tragic for ANYONE, I realize, but to think someone with the intelligence to go to college, complete medical school, survive the internship and residency, and become a practicing medical doctor could throw everything away like that just because of drugs just boggles my mind.

I hurt for the little girl. And the grandmother. And the grandfather.

And the mother.

My Heart Hurts....

My heart hurts tonight for one of my co-workers, whose step-son was killed in an automobile accident this morning.

There are only 6 of us on our staff, so when something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us.

He was only 22 years old.

I know bad things happen to everybody, but she's had more than her fair share in the past few years. She doesn't deserve the heartache she's had lately.

I just don't know how any parent buries a child.

It's just not right.