My New Career
By Wendy Kennar
My son, Ryan, started kindergarten the year I retired from teaching. I took it as a sign, a coincidence worth paying attention to. I spent twelve years teaching, encouraging, caring for, and loving my students. As Ryan was about to embark on his own twelve-year public school career as a student, I hoped he would encounter teachers doing the same thing. I hoped my teaching career counted as a deposit in the good karma bank and that Ryan would be on the receiving end of the dividends.
The beginning of my retirement felt a bit like my maternity leave. Both times I left my classroom in March, meaning I had spent about two-thirds of the school year with my students.Both times I made promises to return, and, again, both times, I did. I visited my classroom during my maternity leave, introducing my students to baby Ryan. Then, I knew my absence was temporary. Although there was someone else’s handwriting on the whiteboard during that visit, I knew my writing would be back on that board in just a few months. When I retired, I did return that June for my students’ end-of-the-year musical performance and the sixth grade culmination. However, that visit was different. It was painful to be there — at my school, in my classroom — and felt like I no longer belonged. I knew that visit would be my last.
As a teacher, every summer, I always shopped for school supplies for my students. I went from store to store, searching for the best deals on glue sticks, pencil boxes, spiral notebooks, rulers, scissors, binders, and notebook paper. I went to the teacher’s supply store and stocked up on fadeless bulletin board paper, sticker incentive sheets, and a new classroom calendar. The summer before Ryan started kindergarten, we went back-to-school shopping for him — a new backpack and lunchbox. I spent much less — less time, less energy, and a lot less money. That’s when it really hit me. I was no longer a teacher.
Usually, I returned to school a few days before I was required to be on campus. I came prepared, dressed ready to get dirty. I’d stop at my local Coffee Bean and head into my classroom armed with my favorite blended mocha and CDs to play on the classroom boombox. Then I’d work, and clean, and organize, and make my classroom once again look like my classroom. Prior to summer vacation, I emptied all the bookshelves and packed away all the books. Tables and chairs are piled up and moved to the perimeter of the room so the floors can be cleaned. I’d return and re-configure my students’ desks, write out their names on name tags, and hang bulletin board displays. I’d set out the books, pillows, and stuffed animals in the library corner. The plant I had kept at home during the summer was returned to its spot near our classroom sink. I filled colorful plastic bins with dry erase markers, math manipulatives, and magnifying glasses.
But my first summer of retirement, all I had to do was wait — wait for another teacher to set up a classroom with a place for Ryan. I knew I couldn’t keep comparing my present to my past. I had stopped teaching, but Ryan was starting kindergarten. That was a big deal and deserved to be celebrated. So we developed a few first day of school traditions. I explained to Ryan that apples are a traditional symbol for teachers and teaching in general. I told him teachers are hard-working people, who are always there to help any child, so we would start the year by giving an apple to his teacher. It was a tradition that lasted throughout Ryan’s elementary school years. On the first day of school, from kindergarten through fifth grade, Ryan brought each of his teachers a shiny red apple he picked out himself. Ryan’s kindergarten teacher, Mrs. H, later told me she thought she was going to cry after Ryan gave her the apple. I knew what she meant. Apples may be traditional symbols, but in twelve years of teaching, none of my students had ever started the school year by giving me one.
Each year of my teaching career, the dismissal bell rang on the first day of school, and while my students were done for the day, I headed to a faculty meeting. That year, the bell rang, and I was there waiting for Ryan. It was 2:30 pm, and rather than head home, we went out for an after-school treat, a way to acknowledge the specialness of the start of a new school year. That year in kindergarten Ryan wanted a brownie sundae, but over the years, we’ve gone out for chocolate-dipped frozen bananas, French fries, and ice cream cones. A few years ago, we celebrated with a double layer chocolate cake at home.
On the first day of school, I always sent my students home with “homework” for their parents — informational packets to be filled out, emergency cards to be completed, homework contracts to be signed. As a teacher, I always had my own homework — seating chart adjustments, preparations for the rest of the week, copies to be made, photos to be ordered. I always took my students’ pictures on the first day of school and then again near the last day of school so they could see their growth. The year Ryan started kindergarten, I was the parent receiving the packet of homework, filling out the multitude of forms. That year, I only had one photo to take.
As a teacher, going back to school always meant the loss of a certain amount of flexibility in my days. Another school year meant earlier bedtimes to prepare me for my earlier wake-up times. Once I was at school, I didn’t decide when I ate or used the bathroom — that was determined by the school’s bell schedule for recess and lunch.
When Ryan began kindergarten, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the freedom I now had. How did I fill those hours? Yes, I could now eat and pee at my leisure. I ran errands during non-peak hours, and it was definitely easier to schedule doctors’ appointments when I no longer had to fit them in after school hours. But with this free time came a sense of shame and confusion. Who was I if I wasn’t a teacher? I was always proud of my profession and proud of the work I did. I felt like what I did each day mattered. Teaching was important, honorable work, impacting the present — and the future. Now I didn’t feel any of that. I felt like a misfit. Retired, but not in the traditional sense of having reached a certain age. Disabled, but not in the stereotypical way many people expected.
It was my rheumatologist who had finally provided the diagnosis we had searched for for almost a year-and-a-half. Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease (UCTD), a rare autoimmune disease, was the cause of my pain, weakness, and fatigue in my left leg. My doctor described UCTD as having some symptoms of lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and myositis without it being any of those more well-known illnesses. And it was my rheumatologist who mentioned I look into retirement. At each appointment he asked if I was still working.
“Of course,” I said. I was a teacher. Period. Nothing was going to change that.
Except, I found out, daily chronic pain.
A year after receiving my diagnosis, I began the paperwork that allowed me to “retire due to a disability.”
It took a while for Ryan to adjust to kindergarten. Morning drop-offs consisted of tearful good-byes. As a parent, I wanted to stay, sit with my son, comfort him, let him know it was okay. As a former teacher though, I knew the best thing for me to do was to say good-bye without drawing out the process, give Ryan his hug, kiss, and nosey-nosey, and then leave, trusting that his teacher would look out for him the way I had looked out for my students.
Ryan’s teacher told me he spent many recesses by himself, not playing with his classmates. I didn’t tell her that sounded familiar. It’s what I was doing at home, too. My husband was at work. My friends were at work. It was only me, who suddenly didn’t have anywhere to be. I tried to keep myself busy with domestic chores in an attempt to “earn my keep.” I organized our closets. I baked cakes. I cleaned — the kind of cleaning I always planned to do but never did. The type of cleaning that required me to stand on a step stool and involved me taking everything off a shelf, dusting the shelf and each item, and putting everything back. The type of cleaning I now had time for but found physically difficult to accomplish.
It was during this transition time, when Ryan was growing accustomed to kindergarten and I was trying to find my way as an unexpected stay-at-home mom, that my primary care physician referred me to a chronic illness support group. The group was small, just three of us. Each of us had different medical conditions but we all lived with chronic pain. We met twice a week — once as a group, once individually. Being a part of the group gave my days structure. Sessions were fairly long; we met with a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, and a psychologist. It was the psychologist who helped me identify my new job. I felt out of sorts, no longer teaching, no longer capable of doing what I loved, and conflicted that I wasn’t more excited about my new role as a stay-at-home mom. It was the psychologist who helped me reframe how I looked at my current situation. She asked if I received monthly disability checks. I told her I did. She told me to consider those monthly checks as my new paycheck. I was no longer teaching, because I had a chronic illness. If I felt I needed to earn my pay — my disability checks — then there were things I needed to do. Doctors appointments. Stretching. Walking. Resting. Taking care of myself was my new career, she said.
I’m not happy for my autoimmune disease. I can’t say it has been a gift. However, I can say it gave me the opportunity to experience a role I never would have known otherwise. I am a stay-at-home mom. I am able to be there for Ryan in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if I was still teaching. And, one of my closest friends is a woman I met in that chronic pain support group. A group I was only able to join because I had my days free.
I no longer feel out of sorts while Ryan is in school. I have plenty of things to do to fill the time — essays to write, classes to take, books to read. Not to mention, doctors appointments, phone calls with the insurance company, and trips to the pharmacy.
All these years later, I’m able to see my retirement with a bit more perspective. Many people, for one reason or another, have multiple careers during their working lifetime. Teaching was one of mine. Though my twelve years as a teacher was much less than the thirty I was aiming for — my dad worked for the phone company for thirty years — it was still significant. Now, I’m eleven years into my second career as a writer.
Wendy Kennar is a mother, wife, writer, and former teacher. Wendy writes personal essays as a way of teaching about the wide-ranging experience of living with a disability. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications and anthologies, both in print and online, including the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, TheMighty.com, HerStryblg.com, and Chicken Soup for the Soul, among others. You can read more from Wendy at www.wendykennar.com. Wendy is also on Instagram @wendykennar. Wendy is currently researching publishing paths for her memoir-in-essays.