Today was my last day at work, I brought in 75 home baked cupcakes (lemon, marzipan, chocolate, apple cinnamon, banana, nutella flavoured), handed over my keys, wrote the necessary last messages, emptied my email account, deleted tons of files incl. all waste folders from my work computer, hugged many people, picked up my mug and my bits and pieces, had a long conversation about working part time for the top boss for another six months (I'll wait and see what his offer looks like on paper) and went home in the rain.
Now it feels like everything is all over the place. As soon as the rain stops, R will bring me for a long walk.
Night Bird
Hear me: sometimes thunder is just thunder.
The dog barking is only a dog. Leaves fall
from the trees because the days are getting shorter,
by which I mean not the days we have left,
but the actual length of time, given the tilt of earth
and distance from the sun. My nephew used to see
a therapist who mentioned that, at play,
he sank a toy ship and tried to save the captain.
Not, he said, that we want to read anything into that.
Who can read the world? Its paragraphs
of cloud and alphabets of dust. Just now
a night bird outside my window made a single,
plaintive cry that wafted up between the trees.
Not, I’m sure, that it was meant for me.
Danusha Laméris
9 comments:
you may feel a little disoriented, a little at loose ends, a little nostalgic, a little what the hell do I do with my days and time for a little while. but you will fill those days with other things you enjoy before you know it. even if it's just sitting in the garden with nowhere to go and no time to be there anyway.
A whole new world opens up now. After I retired I bought my first camera, looked up at the sky and clicked my first photos. I hope all the free time you have is filled with wonder and beauty, peace and delight.
The retirees I know luxuriated in no alarm for a couple of weeks, then tackled the house projects that had been on hold, then started planning how to just please themselves and enjoy their days. Go you!
Yes. A long walk with R, after the rain stops. It's raining here, too. Much-needed rain.
Thank you for the introduction to Danusha Laméris. I found her website:
"How lightly we learn to hold hope, as if it were an animal that could turn around and bite your hand. And still we carry it the way a mother would carefully, from one day to the next.”
And her Substack, Fleeting Temples:
"And that, I think, is the second round of innocence; when we love the world even though we know better, even though it will sometimes break our heart. We love it because it feels good and true to love it. Because it’s what the heart does best. I like to think the heart waits for us to arrive, however long it takes. To show up, at last, on our own doorstep, dreaming of our feet planted exactly where they are."
I agree with Ellen and Robin- you are such an interested human being that those interests will now become more open to you. I have a feeling that you may soon wonder how in the world you had time to go to work.
Which is not to say that things may not be a little weird at first.
I am reluctant to congratulate you but only because I look to retirement a bit like a cat to a bath. I will, however, wish you good health and lovely things to fill your newly acquired free time.
I'm envious!
Congrats! Welcome to the best time of your life.
That poem captures exactly how I'm feeling these days. What a momentous thing, the last day of work. I can barely wrap my mind around it, as I am realizing that so much of my identity is bound up in work. I want to say congratulations to you. Does that salutation feel right to you? Kudos in any case, for work well done.
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