In a week, I will be retiring from a job that I have loved and been passionate about. I am the Youth Specialist at a large and busy local library. Youth Specialist is the same as Children’s Librarian without the Masters degree in Library Information Science.
Our library is a new branch that opened just shy of two years ago. Approximately 700 people walk through our doors daily and we circulate about 1000 items every day.
About 60% (or 600) of those items circulated are from the Children’s department. Clearly, this community was simply waiting for a library to spring up in their midst.
I took Fred Rogers as my muse. I was inspired by his gentleness with children and his ability to explain things to them simply and completely. Storytimes were fun and supportive of early childhood literacy. The job gave me many, many opportunities to be kind to children and their families.
Although I still love my job, my decision to retire was based on several factors. The first was that I turned 65 and qualified for Medicare, and so the burden of Healthcare coverage was lifted. Secondly, just last month, our son and his wife became the proud parents of our first grandchild, Rosemary Jane, known as Rosie. Since they live in California, we will need to be free to travel there so that Rosie will know us. The third reason is that my usually healthy and athletic husband had a year full of health challenges, starting with a heart attack in February, and followed by the discovery that he is a diabetic, and suffering from bladder stones. To quote John Lennon, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” We had bought an RV two years ago with the idea that we would slowly learn how to operate and drive the RV before we launched ourselves across the country, and now that time has come.
My last Storytime was on Friday. Just before we began our goodbye song, the Library Staff surprised me by coming into Storytime, carrying flowers and telling the parents and kids to wish me well. They also said that they would miss me. My tears were real as we launched into singing: “See you later, Alligator, in a while, Crocodile, hit the trail, tiny snail, stay sweet, Parakeet!”
With a mixture of sadness and excitement, I am turning my focus from my job to my new life. I look forward to traveling and I plan to do some volunteer work, too. And I hope that along the way I find many new opportunities to be kind.
Are you retiring or planning to do so soon? Let me know about it. Now that I have more time, I hope to revive our Berner HS Class of 1972 blog.
