“Sometimes I feel so alive
Sometimes I see so clear
Just like the way we always were
So young and free from fear”

So opens the song of the same name from Joe Jackson…I’ve been struggling with the idea of time and it’s inevitable passing but so much more now that the clock is ticking down to a very few days where things will abruptly change.

I was about 10 years old when I started delivering sample copies of the Journal Home News in the Bronx (earning 1/2 cent per copy delivered) hoping to get enough interest to get my own weekly route (it took about 6 months to get the required minimum response). From that point (somewhere in 1962) I’ve always had some sort of a job, many years it was multiple jobs. Zoom ahead to 2012 and I “retired” from public school teaching and while I was still tutoring and subbing I didn’t have a regular “job” however….then in the fall of 2013, it was back to the classroom having come full circle and I was back at a small Catholic school (my teaching career started in a small Catholic school in 1975 in the Bronx).

Well, as the regular readers know (all 5 or 6 of you 🙂 ) In 5 more work days that will come to a crashing conclusion. At exactly 10:30 AM on June 10th, 2021 both Sue and I will retire at the conclusion of the academic year at ASCS. While I’ve not worked summers for the past 15 or so years, I’ve always tinkered with school things during the summer and occasionally tutored, but this time…..the window is closing…

We will spend the summer equally relaxing (finally taking a week at the Ocean in Rhode Island that we had to cancel last year) and getting things in order with regard to the move. We will spend time with friends and family, we will arrange movers, new furniture delivery, and head out of the only geographical area either of us have ever lived in.

What I’m having the most trouble with is the passage of time….59 of my 69 years having responsibility and purpose, soon to be a rudderless ship. Yes I am very much looking forward to it all, but I am, at the same time, scared shitless….

Every time I look in the mirror I still “see” 19 forever, then of course, I bend down or stand up and feel the stiffness that comes with being almost 69 and not 19.

We are looking very much forward to being able to travel on our own time and not having to be held hostage by school breaks and travel with the huddled masses during very specific times. Hawaii in October or March sounds wonderful. Sue has always wanted to go on a safari and the summer there was never doable since a week (the most we ever have as teachers) in our winter is an impossible trip, now, however, we can go just about any time we want. That’s all great and very, very exciting…(need I mention that Australia, another place we very much want to spend time in, is also on the opposite schedule…so I can avoid even a moderate winter in SC by traveling there at that time)….

Here’s to the closing of one volume and the beginning of the next thread of the next collection…

“You better believe it
You know my dream’s still alive
You can love it or leave it

Cause I’m gonna be
Nineteen forever”