QUICK NOTE:  In Hebrew each letter has a numerical value and the word “LIFE” comes out to the number 18.  L’chaim means “TO LIFE”.  So raise a glass of whatever tastes good to you and let’s drink a toast together: l’chaim!!  To 18 months!

It’s spring again.  Another season.  One that’s bursting with new life and growth.  Every time I walk through my backyard I stop to look at the trees – a corkscrew hazel and two variations of Japanese Maple.  Are there buds?  Are they looking healthy.  Oh yes, I must remember to spray the tree on the front-lawn before the beetles eat the leaves again.  Shoots, red and yellow and green, are popping up.  Everything is exploding with energy and I feel that there’s this life force reaching out to me almost everywhere I go.  So it seems like a good time to pause for a moment 18 months into my retirement to contemplate where I am and where I want to be. I’m going to try to organize my thoughts into the six categories that I notice seem to have run constant since even before I retired: Finances, Logistics & Time Management, Relationships & Expectations, Identity, Aging & Health, and All Kinds of Growth.  This think-through might take a while so it could very well be that I’ll start here and carry on over the next couple of weeks.  Hope that’s alright with you.  Ah – that brings up something right away so if you don’t mind I’m not going to address those categories in order.

I’m going to start with IDENTITY – PART A because that’s been on my mind quite a lot lately.  There are three things that I’m trying to pursue and I really need to dig a little deeper in figuring out the best balance of them in my life now.  Keeping  - and extending – my identity as an educator is still important to me.  I’ve just begun the travel planning for workshops at an educators’ conference in Kenya in October that I’ve been invited to.  I’ll likely be able to use these again – with some revisions – the following year when I’m presenting in Panama City.  I’m hopeful that word will spread among the international school world and I’ll be invited more places .  Perhaps you’ll pass my name – and my professional website Sylvia Bereskin: Educational Illumination -   along to anyone who has influence in education and I’m happy to go wherever I can and try to remind people that we need to do better at preparing our kids to live in peace and real prosperity; the kind that fills your spirit and not just your bank account). Meanwhile, I think I’ll drop in on some old friends at the Ministry and get updated on what they’re doing these days before I start preparing.  I’m hoping to find a way to visit Kosovo on my way home but that depends on how much teaching I’ll be doing at Ryerson University in the fall.  I did contact them this week about next fall and perhaps I’ll teach two courses – the Social Justice course I love and the Foundations course I’m getting comfortable with.  This is all still something that I enjoy; it charges my spirit and fuels my hope that if I can get through to just a few people each time I speak … and hopefully to a few people who aren’t afraid to influence change … then I’ll continue to make a difference for kids.  As always as I sit on the brink of developing the workshops for Nairobi I’m filled with insecurity and a sense of “oh my goodness, when will I ever stop pretending that I know anything about anything!”.  That feeling’s an old friend; it’s been shadowing me for years and years.  I’ve learned how to welcome it because I know that once it’s finished doing its number on me I’ll start actually working on the manuscript and all will be well.  In fact I’m half way there already; I’ve made a couple of attempts and done a lot of thinking.

IDENTITY – PART B is me the writer.  That’s very much wrapped up right now with the writing of this blog, thinking about what the whole process of creating a new retirement life is all about, and how I can make it easier for others to prepare and traverse this tricky territory.  You see, the writing is really a second layer to the teaching.  It’s what I need to do so that I can develop the experiences that will help other women figure it out for themselves.  There’s really even a Part B (i) and a Part B (ii) I’m afraid now that I think about it.  Writing the blog (B-i) and writing the book/refining the workshops I’ve been developing (B-ii).  About the blog.  I recently watched an episode of House (called Private Lives) which had the team was trying to diagnose a blogger who insists on publishing her life on the Internet, often much to the regret of her partner.  All the same, they find the cure by reading her blog for hints of what might be killing her.  The clue, though, lies in understanding what is not revealed in her blog, what  she doesn’t blog about.   This episode raised a couple of questions for me.  First, if you’re blogging about your life, what does it mean to leave out pertinent things?  That selectivity in what is shared – keeping parts of the experience out of the blog, parts that are perhaps very painful or just particularly confusing – is really a challenge.  As someone who rails against the kind of manipulation that’s subtly done through the selective process of choosing what information gets shared … in the blog or in what used to be called a newscast … there’s something about this that always leaves me a little uncomfortable.  It also leads to the other House-induced questions:  Am I blogging for the love of it – for the love of the writing and the communicating and the comments and dialogues and friendships?  Am I blogging because from the get-go it seemed like a really interesting 21st century way to track my thoughts?  Am I blogging as a venue for reflecting on and processing my experience, or am I blogging for an audience?  There’s no question – and this is a blogfession (is this the first confession by blog to you think?) – I do check the number of “hits” each day and am encouraged when it’s a big number and discouraged – and launched right into self-doubt – when it’s a small number.  Yup, writer is a part of my identity that I need to keep  … perhaps reframing it as a writer/presenter/workshop leader/sisterhood member (as defined by VirtualThesaurus:  a society of women linked together by a common interest).

And then – and not necessarily as easy a part to honour – there’s IDENTITY – PART C. I could say that I’ve had a number of big projects in my life.  The first was just growing up in a household that offered far more incertitude that most.  The second was preparing for and having a career which was done concurrently with the third project (and I mean this as a planned undertaking) which was having and raising children.  Really I held my own professionally while my children were young and only left the classroom once they were all pretty much teens.  Those years were focused on things outside of myself.  Now, with retirement, I see the opportunity for a fourth big project which is focused on my inner self.  More and more I’m learning to relax.  I’m enjoying my mornings of sipping a latte while watching the news and doing needlepoint, going to my exercise class, sitting in a cafe with the paper, and meandering home so that I’m showered and ready for the rest of the day by lunch time.  Singing in the choir; we had a benefit concert to raise money for Haiti last night and although it’s been an incredible amount of work and stress it was just so much fun to be singing last night.  Meditating.  Just sitting and looking at the blue sky.  Watching the leaves grow on my trees.  Being with friends.  Cooking.  Tending my garden … and just sitting outside and enjoying my garden.  Being with family. Dancing.  Walks along the beach (yes, we do have one in Toronto along Lake Ontario but it shouldn’t be confused with a Pacific Ocean beach) with my sweetheart David.  Gazing at photos of my grandchildren and dreaming about their futures.  Revelling in the beauty of a sunset or the tang of a grapefruit.  Imagining.  Learning to be, and through that, learning – or trying to learn – how to be … better.  Better in the ways that are important to me now; better in caring for myself and others, better in living my life.

SUMMING UP: So here’s where I think I am right now with identity.  I want to teach.  I want to write.  I want to grow.  I want to create.  I want to be.

The good news for me is that I’ve eliminated a lot of things that, in the end, weren’t enriching my life or likely the lives of others. I do a lot more things in my neighborhood so I’ve eliminated a lot of travel-about-town time. I give myself the gift of time to just be without requiring that something “be produced”. I walk slower these days.  I do a lot of things slower come to think of it; I guess I’m sort of becoming a spokesperson for slower living.  Hhmm.

In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath wrote about babies “doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world “. For me, that’s a been there, done that.  Now I want to figure out what it takes to grow, step by step, into a calm and settled and caring world.  Step by step.