All through that long ticking up toward the top of the ride you know it is coming—the rush and the swoop that is your reward for laboring up the hill. The vacation after months of hard work. The publication of the words you’ve struggled over. The performance of what you’ve been rehearsing for hours on end.
How has your labor allowed you to enjoy the downhill slope?
Retirement is my latest and greatest downswoop. After years of teaching and all that goes with it — research, writing, faculty meetings, committee work, etc. — retiring to my garden and my loom with all the time I want to devote to each of these and any other things that strike my fancy, I feel like I’m sliding down a long pool slide on a bright summer day. I also find that teaching doesn’t go away, it just changes shape. Now it is impromptu as I share with a neighbor the joy of the summer birds in the field, or help a struggling young writer to find a way to really know what she wants to say, and thus how to say it in her writing. For me the letting go of the tedious to make more room for the rewarding stuff was the big “Swoosh” on the way down the slide.
Still waiting for it.