A While More... Just A While More

My Thursday class is a new class. I always forget what new classes are like. The children are difficult, rowdy, hard to control. One child could not sit still. Another refused to speak up. Yet another ran around the room flapping his hands. One girl began to chant something at a boy.

I went home so overstimulated that I spent all of Friday 3 July, weepy and shaking.

Sometimes, I look around at my friends. Many of them are comfortably retired. Yes... I am THAT old. I stalk them on Facebook and then I wonder if I made the right decision to start up The Collaboration Corner.

I mean, look at them! Their photos place them in South America, Inner Mongolia, Nepal, Turkey. Smiling faces, with wind in their hair and a healthy tan. Friends who used to be fat, in the 40s, now look trim and muscular in the 50s and 60s. Retirement has been kind to them. Meanwhile, I need to wake up at 6am to cycle like a crazy bitch, in order to maintain muscle mass and a flat stomach.

And I spent all of last Friday so tearful that The Husband asked, "Why are you crying?"

To which I wailed, "I don't knoooooooow... I wanna stop work. May I please stop work!?"

The blessed man held me close and said, "Yes."

Then, I had my Saturday class. That class has been with me for about 9 months. They were such a balm to my spirit. They knew how to speak like ladies and gentlemen. They remembered their Ps and Qs when talking to each other. They stepped up to volunteer of their own accord. They silently supported and helped their friends with kindness. They gave in generously to each other. They listened to each other. I looked around at all of them and mentally told myself, "This one, if the parents don't want him/her, I will adopt in a heartbeat." By the time I was through, I had mentally adopted everyone of them.

They were such good children, and so mature that I was amazed, and slightly wondrous that I had somehow changed them from monsters to angels. It takes a lot of God to make it happen. It takes time to make it happen too. I want them to have joy in their hearts. I want them to take charge of their work. I want them to develop self-reliance, kindness, charity. I want them to carry themselves with elegance, speak urbanely and not crudely/roughly. I want the boys to have their own mind, discover their own direction in life, and respect the girls. I want the girls to carry themselves with strength and dignity (as the bible documents women who will become wives must do: see Proverbs 31:25). Those who come through me, I want them to be able to carry themselves on any world stage with class and elegance. Many of them were nothing more than furless monkeys when I first received them in my class.

Then, a father confessed to me that his son was so difficult that he and his wife would hold each other at night, and cry together, wondering what was wrong and how to bring up their child. He further told me that I was the first person in 3 years to point out a direction and let him have methods with which to manage his child, in calmness and in joy.

So, I suppose, a retirement where one gets to travel through families to spread love, is not any less than a retirement where people travel the world. Maybe one day, I will get fed up and decide to ditch it all so that I can go live for a month in a yurt in Inner Mongolia, or a nunnery in Tuscany. For the moment, there might be days when I cry, but I guess I will stick with it for a while more.