Contemplating Retirement

Exactly one month from now, on 8 June 2018, I would go to office for the last time. I will then take 3 weeks of leave and retire on 30 June 2018.

I had always imagined retiring from school, as a teacher. But I have made choices and I no longer have students. I am at what MOE describes as "the pinnacle of the teaching track" - I am a Principal Master Teacher. Retirement is not the bittersweet event I had thought it would be. I am actually looking forward to leaving the office behind.

What will I do after I retire? THE question that almost everyone has asked. I don't have a concrete answer, except that I need to contemplate. Contemplate where God is leading me to, contemplate how  I can be fruitful, contemplate who I want to re-invent myself to be in the next season.

Hold On

I need to re-create myself. A different me for a different season. I've heard this same message said in different ways by different people. Take up a hobby. Learn to bake. Learn to play the piano. Learn to draw. Travel more. Get a pet. Start a project. Volunteer. Be a foster mum. Write a book. Make new friends. Join an exercise class. Give tuition. Read. Watch DVDs. 

There - I think I've listed all that I've been told to do. 

I know buried in that list is the concern of my friends. Concern from years of friendship and honesty. From knowing there was a happier me. What is lacking is will. Mine.

I re-read an old favorite poem this afternoon because I had the vague memory of a stanza:
"If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"…

I first read that poem in 1978. I was a trainee teacher and in charge of the Drama Club. The tutor overseeing the Drama Club wrote the first lines of that poem in a card to me after we had successfully organized a Drama Nite, saying this was my strength - "you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..". I was intrigued enough to go to the library to look for the rest of the poem.

I think it is possible to keep your head so strong that people forget you can lose it too. I think it is possible to do your job every day every month every year so well, people don't give you permission to mess up. That it is possible to hold on for so long that people think you just need something else to hold on to. You can. If.

Quiet Day

My church organized a Quiet Day retreat today. The venue was at OMF which is opposite the Botanic Gardens, so I spent quite a bit of the day there. I had forgotten how beautiful the Gardens were. The spot I found for myself was a hidden bench under a huge tree with aerial roots. Hidden, quiet.

"Come away, by yourself.."

I had looked forward to today, but maybe I shouldn't have gone for the Quiet Day. I already have too much solitude in my life now. Too much quiet. Today, my emotions were all tangled up like those roots. 

Molly

There is an elderly lady whom I see at ARC every time I go there. She is likely to be in her sixties and I've never spoken to her, but she makes me think of Molly. Like this lady, Molly was a Chinese girl who had been adopted by a Tamil family. It was a common practice in the 1950s, I think, but it was startling nevertheless to see a Chinese girl with a pottu on her forehead and speaking fluent Tamil.

Molly was my playmate, my go-to when I needed anything, my smuggler of treats, my story teller. She was also the reason my father first smacked me.

Molly must be in her late seventies now. When she worked as a domestic help for my family she was young, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties. I don't know when Molly started working for my family but she is as mixed up in my childhood memories as my mother is. My day would start with Molly coming to work and my first bottle of milk appearing. My day would end with me sitting with my feet sticking out of the long windows that faced the road, waving good bye to Molly and waiting till I saw my father's car turning into that same road. 

I can't remember exactly how old I was, perhaps 5, and one day, Molly did not come in the morning. My bottle of milk too did not come and instead I was told by my sister I should be drinking from a cup. I remember being sad, I'm not sure if I cried. But one day, my mother put on a nice sari and put a dress on me that I did not like. I remember I cried then, because of the dress. I cried throughout the car ride that followed, because of the dress, until we came to a temple. Molly was there! 

There was a huge crowd and I could only see Molly from a distance and she looked different because she was dressed in a sari that was as grand as my mother's. I remember being thrilled when my parents took me closer to her after what seemed like a long time. Molly was sitting on the floor beside a man, and when she saw me she reached out and pulled me into a hug. I didn't like the smell of the jasmine garland round her neck, I didn't like the roughness of her sari, I didn't like the man sitting beside her whom she made me turn my face and look at, but I liked that Molly was back. 

I remember Molly let me sit on her lap, but my mother made me get up. I remember Molly said I could stay, but my father said we had to leave. I remember Molly telling me not to cry, but my mother didn't care. I remember I cried more during the car ride back than I had cried before. I remember I refused to get out of the car when we reached home. I remember my father carried me out of the back seat. And then he smacked me. For the first time. Because I was crying for Molly.

Dark Mutterings

Crotchety. I like that word. It sounds cross, twisted and scratchy. And it describes my mood today. 

I am crotchety because it poured this morning and I had wet shoes the whole day. Because I had to attend a half day seminar to listen to 2 speakers who didn't give me anything to think about. Because I saw a huge advertisement for a deodorant called "Do:More" and the use of that colon irritated me. Because a mother let her toddler cross a road without holding her hand just because the toddler wouldn't. Because I had left booking a flight too late and paid $180.00 more than I need have.

I fear I'm going to become one of those crotchety old ladies who push people out of their way, mutter under their breath, hit offending elbows and glower. Oh Lord, help me be a nicer person tomorrow.

Anticipation

I'm looking forward to this weekend, particularly, to this Saturday. My church has organized a Quiet Day and I need one. I like the venue that has been chosen - it is opposite the Botanic Gardens and I hope we will be given time for solitary walks. That is one thing I miss about not being in College Park, MD, anymore - the long, winding, quiet paths around the lake. 

I walk here too, but in all the paths around my neighborhood the traffic noise is never absent and that distracts me. 

I'm looking forward to this Quiet Day. I have a number of things on my mind and I know what I need is uncluttered time with God. There is a restlessness in me, a disquiet. A longing for open space. I don't understand it. The house has enough silence, but the silence of my home is a sad one. I need to escape it and to listen to God without my regrets whispering in my ear. 

After A While

A poem that speaks to me...

"After a while, you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans.
And futures have a way of falling down in midflight.

After a while, you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure . . .
That you really are strong.
And you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn . . .
With every goodbye you learn.

                                                                - Veronica A. Shoffstall 

God of My Tomorrows

When I accepted Christ in 1991, I was the only Christian in the family and I struggled to even keep the faith. Yet I wanted to do BIG things for God – to serve, to lead, to do mission work!

The everyday reality, however, was that after teaching and completing my administrative tasks, I had only enough energy to tend to my own young children. My life was divided between my students and my children and it did not seem as if there was any more that I could fit in. Daily quiet times were mostly 10 minutes before the children awoke in the morning and I had to get ready to go to school myself.

When I first read the paean of the Proverbs 31 woman, I decided that God made some women Super Women and the rest, Just Plain Ordinary. And I knew which category I belonged to. I could barely keep things together and just reading the list of tasks this accomplished woman managed to do exhausted me. Make bed coverings? Please. I was prepared to pass up on all the accolades. It was okay if my children did not rise up and call me blessed, so long as they rose up and went to school. The unnamed woman of Proverbs 31 made me feel inadequate.

Yet one line stayed with me - “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” (Prov 31:25)

This was the one quality I envied. To be able to ‘laugh at the time to come’. How does one do that? In the days ahead of me were school exams, an incomplete post-graduate degree, a strained marriage, paycheck to paycheck budgeting. I didn’t think I could serve God, let alone laugh at the future.

A shift in my understanding came when the pastor of the church I was attending at that time introduced the congregation to the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. This connected deeply with me because as a Literature teacher, I had taught the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest. Suddenly, a favourite poem, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” made deeper sense to me.

“… the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.”

There was no special work that God blesses, no special work that meant I was “serving God”. 

In God’s eyes, I was Christ! All I was called to do was “keep all my goings graces” – my teaching, my interactions with my students, my parenting, my daily chores. Scrubbing stains, reading to my children, correcting my students’ essays, invigilating exams ... All my “goings”, “to see God in all things”, doing whatever I was doing each day of my life.

In waiting to be called to do “big things” for Jesus, I had neglected to notice that many women who had an encounter with God were just going about their daily life, doing what their roles called them to do that day. The Samaritan woman was just going about her daily chores (albeit at an unusual hour) of drawing water for her household. Then she met Jesus. Lydia was meeting with other women at a riverside (Acts 16: 13 – 15). Then she met Paul and came to know God. Just every day happenings, but God moments.

At that season of my life, when I was longing for grand plans, God had called me to serve Him by serving my family, my friends, my students. Serving small. There came a time when I could do more – teach Sunday School, lead worship, edit the church newsletter, and later after I moved to SJSM, to mentor young adults, to write, to facilitate the ‘Search for Life’ course. Recently, I started a book club with some women; we meet once a month and we share our lives. But I did not do all those things at the same time. As the seasons of my life changed, the tide of service ebbed and flowed.

There were some months when I could not “do” and just had to “be”, when I just needed to tend to myself – to be the hurt traveller by the road and be ministered to by the Good Samaritan. Then in other seasons, I obeyed God when He said “to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Cor 1:3-4)”.  I learnt through the years, that “Christ plays in ten thousand places / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his”.

Twenty three years later, my family has changed. A 30-year marriage ended. Babies grew up and became brides. There are still tomorrows ahead of me that I wonder about. Work and parenting that defined so much of who I was have changed. But my God has not changed. He is still the One who taught me that Peter walked on water only when he kept his eyes on Jesus. The One who bends down to listen to me (Ps 116:2) while I tell Him my fears, my wrongs, my dreams, my hopes and cry my tears. The One who keeps account of my tears, erases my slate clean and gives me a new morning every day.

I have learnt how one laughs at the future. It is by doing the one thing I can do now, for one person, today, in the name of Christ. It is by trusting the God of my yesterdays with my today, and my tomorrows. I've made my peace with the Proverbs 31 woman :)

My Pride

I got to thinking about my daughters today and wondered when I was most proud of each of them. 

I remember being proud of J when we were all at the Changi chalet for our then-annual family holiday with the extended family. I don't know how the conversation got to the topic of mobile phones. It was a sore point with J because she wanted a mobile phone and was among the few (perhaps even the only one) in her class who did not have one. My rule was that she could have a mobile phone when she was 17, in Junior College. I can't remember why I had that rule. It was the 90s, mobile phones seemed like the newest distractions and I had decided that she could not have one. 

I remember we were sitting in a circle and she again asked for one and I became angry because she was challenging my rule in public. Her cousin actually said, "Why do you even need permission? Just go get yourself one!" And I was shocked. But my harshness was directed at J because I did not like my rule being questioned. J was embarrassed and she ran off crying. The topic of conversation turned to something else but I couldn't sit there. I felt sorry I had hurt my daughter. Yet I was also angry. Then I remembered what her cousin had said - it was true. She could have gone behind my back and bought a mobile. She could have asked her dad. If she had really wanted to, she could have gotten herself a mobile despite me. But she hadn't. She was 16 years old. Yet she had obeyed. That was the moment I remember about J. And what makes me proud of her is her innate sense of integrity. That she keeps her word. She would rather go without than cheat. 

What makes me proud of R is her tenacity. It started out as stubbornness, but she has a steel inside her that makes me wonder sometimes. I remember she was 8 years old and she had been registered for a singing competition by her Tamil teacher. It was an inter-school competition. R had no proper training and she had rehearsed a song with her dad. On the Saturday morning of the competition we sauntered into the classroom where the competition was and I was shocked by the intensity of the competition. The children there were practicing, some of them even singing ragas with their mothers. I was sure R was no match for them. One child after another began to sing and it soon became clear that the song R had picked was a very popular one. I felt really bad because the others obviously had classical song training and I just wanted to take my baby and go home. Then it was her turn and she stepped up and began to sing a song she had not rehearsed at all! I waved at her frantically thinking she had mixed up her songs but she gave a dismissive wave as if to say "I've got this" and proceeded. When she came back to us I asked her what had happened and she said that when child after child sang the song she had prepared, she had decided that she would just sing something else so that it wasn't so boring. She didn't win that competition, but I learnt something about my child that day. It would take a lot to faze her! I was so proud of that 8-year old I could cry.

My daughters are my blessings. I have made mistakes, punished them perhaps wrongly at times, taken out my anger on them. But they are gems. They are strong, trustworthy, generous and loving. If it were true that God opens a window when He closes a door, my daughters are the windows God opened for me. 

My Sadness Is Mine

I have decided that there is one thing I will never say to a grieving person: "There are others who have it worse than you".

One of the many things I appreciate about 'Search For Life' that I facilitate is the wisdom of letting a person "grieve her grief". This means I sit quietly, I don't reach out to hug or touch the person, I can put a tissue box within her reach, but I don't put a tissue in her hand. Instead I wait and then I ask permission before offering a tissue or a comforting hand. The first time I heard this instruction, I felt it was a cold, heartless thing to do - to let a person sit there crying. But I have since learnt the wisdom of this. Many times, we don't allow people to "grieve their grief". A tissue is pressed into your hand and it sops your tears. A touch can inhibit. But sitting in a circle just grieving gives a person freedom from pretense, freedom to mourn. 

Telling someone "think of others who have it worse than you" diminishes the grief, negates it, trivializes it, infantalises it. It is a way of telling someone, your grief doesn't matter. But it does. Every sadness matters. Whether the pain and sadness come from a lost wallet, a grazed knee, a divorce or death, that pain matters. 

Yes, there can be disproportionate grieving, and yes, sometimes we do have to help a grieving person 'move on' as too much grief carried for too long can cause serious harm and take its toll on us as well as others around us. But knowing when to do this requires discernment. 

I think, maybe, we carry a mental checklist that decides some sadnesses are lower on a scale than others. Maybe even that some sins are on a lower scale than others. But just as a sin is a sin and the gravity of all sins is the same in the sight of God, I believe, every tear is the same to God as well. When the Psalmist says "You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in a bottle. Are they not in your book? (Ps 56:8), I believe that means every tear I cry. That  God did not pour out the tears of anger, or tears cried over harsh words and saved only 'big" tears like those cried over losing a loved one. 

So, yes, I have many blessings and much to be thankful for. Yes, there are people who have lost far more than I have. Yes, there are people who have experienced greater injustices and pain than I have. I will cry for them too. But for now, for a while, I need to grieve my grief.