Mom's Retirement

About a month ago my mother retired from roughly a million years teaching special education. For the past decade or so I know it had been wearing on her but we were all fairly certain she had a good five more years left in her. That was until our all knowing all seeing governor Scott Walker made some changes here in Wisconsin and she decided it was time to jump ship- literally. (It is a very touchy subject for her but if you want to see her get even more animated than usual you should definitely bring it up in conversation… I trimmed her nails recently so you won’t have to protect your eyes from being scratched out- ha!) She wasn’t even planning on retiring until our tax adviser asked if she was one of the 150 teachers leaving the district this year… it had never crossed her mind. That was until he pointed out to her that she would actually lose money if she stayed employed- which was all she needed to hear- time to get out while she can. The concept grew on her as the summer rolled on, and by Halloween she was onboard. By Christmas she was chomping at the bit and by her birthday in January it was almost torture. Lucky for me I was able to help her clean out her classroom and score some pretty awesome finds for the girls. It was funny because as a public school teacher you have to furnish your classroom- this means books, pencils, highlighters, paper and so on… the school will reimburse you up to 25.00. I think this is why she and I did so much rummaging as a child and even as an adult because of all the treasures she found and stretched her 25 bucks pretty far. The part I found hilarious was that by the last day she didn’t want any of it- she told me just to leave it there for the next “poor soul.” I complied for the most part but I couldn’t leave all those new sticky note pads and highlighters--- they were calling my name! We went out for fish fry on her last day and she wore this silly tiara. Then we ran errands the next week and she was wearing it again. And now when I dropped them off at the airport she was yet again sporting the shiny tiara- I am now wondering if she ever took it off   :)

 

Because my mom was reluctant to retire (but we knew it was for the best) my dad asked her what she wanted to do first in her retirement. Jokingly she threw out the idea of snorkeling and low and behold her retirement present from my father was a cruise! Even her sister Mary and brother-in-law Carlos from Texas joined on the big adventure. I guess it was 10 days or so and they cruised to Belize, Honduras and Cozumel- did some awesome sightseeing and hours and hours of snorkeling. I have yet to hear all the good stories but if I know my parents I assure you there will be many to share.  After an excellent vacation the girls and I picked them up from the airport and we were all happy to be back together. My parents were smiling, re-energized and had a regular glow about them- which may have been their tans… but it didn’t matter because they came back absolutely happy and that is all that matters (PS thank you Mary and Carlos… I am sending them back to you quarterly to get tune ups). The weather here in the Frozen tundra had been nice but nowhere near the 80 degrees they were used to on their trip, so I think it took them a little bit to get acclimated to Wisconsin again. But I guess just like my mother is finding out in retirement… sometimes you just need to close your eyes, plug your nose and jump in and see where you end up (in this case into a snow bank).

This is their picture that was taken on the cruise ship- the awesome T shirts were made by Mary and Carlos