Saying Goodbye

Last Monday I went to the retirement party of a beloved French teacher who has taught at my school for many years. I didn’t expect to, but I cried. I cried after four students played Chopin on the cello and collegues read The Little Prince aloud. I cried during the speeches and the photo montages, cried at the hand-made center pieces on the tables and the group of retierees who surrounded Jack for a photo. I cried at all the mommies and babies in the wings, bouncing and cooing. This school is such a family—it is really hard to divorce yourself from the cyclical ceremony of it all, the comfort of feeling part of something larger than yourself.

Everyone feels the year winding down; it’s like reading the last few pages of the favorite book you want to read quickly and slowly at the same time. Does so much emotion bubble up annually at jobs outside of academia? Do people cry when they leave boardrooms for the winter holidays? When they retire from 25 years of ibanking? When their airline goes bankrupt and it’s time to seek a new management job?

I’m leaving too—off to work at a small private school in Kapolei which, new and unformed with regard to tradition, is the polar opposite of the established school I now part from. So perhaps my tears came partly from selfish attachment, or a sense of personal loss. But I mostly just felt overwhelmed by the evidence that careers unexpectedly end and begin and take sudden turns. Therefore, the time we spend together is finite and must be honored and relished like a dragon fruit devoured with a spoon. I am grateful to have been at my school for two years (the second really helped me to ground myself in the classroom) and awestruck by the opportunity I had to work with such talented faculty and students. I hope I teased the fruit's flesh from the rind, munched through the seeds, and cleaned my plate.