When?

The question, now, comes all too frequently. “When are you retiring?” they ask. Is it my grey hair? Is it a sign of retirement. If they stopped dying their hair, would they get the same question? Did I just write that?

It is a question that I can’t and won’t answer. Because I don’t know. I am able to retire. My age and years of service have reached the required guidelines. I could easily notify the powers that be, come April.

But I still love being with kids. I still love watching kids that thought they couldn’t, find that they can. I love seeing interest spark in a student that believed the subject would be boring or learning something new about an area he or she thought they knew all there is to know.

And I still love the challenge of learning something new myself, to take back and tryout with my classes. To try it with the first, and retry with the second. Mixing and folding, kneading and rolling. Watching a lesson take shape and come to fruition through my students.

Until I lose that wonder, that enjoyment. The concocting like a chef in a five star kichen, I will continue on.