~on the subject of "change"~

Happy Friday morning everyone on a late-winter's day in March.  So very hard to imagine that the year is flying by this quickly and perhaps you share the same sentiment as I do when I say that "the older we get, the faster it goes by!"  And if I'm doing the math right, seems like it will be only 12 more days until the calendar marks the first day of spring and with the wonderful arrival of the season that I love the  best, lots of changes always seem to make their appearance on this earth.  As for me, my life will be marked with one change after another in the near months ahead.  You can say a lot about that subject of "change"~it's inevitable, it's hard, it's unsettling.  Yet for me, I know that the change that I will be going through in the next few months is just a part of "the plan" and for once in my life rather than "fighting" change, I am opening my arms up wide to embrace it.  Kind of like taking a flying leap off of a high cliff but realizing that the fall really won't hurt you at all.  

Come the next Monday night school board meeting for USD 308~Hutchinson, the board will act to accept my resignation from my teaching assignment at Lincoln Elementary as a Title I Reading and Math teacher.  After 15 years, with 3 of those years "post-retirement", I have decided that the 2012-2013 school term will be my last one as an educator.  When I consider the 20-year teaching stint I had at Haven-USD 312 and do the "math", then I am proud of the fact that I have given well over 35 years of my life in service to the students of two wonderful school districts.  It seems so strange to realize that more than half of my 57-years of life have been devoted to being a teacher.  My desire has always been, from the very beginning, to leave teaching while I still enjoyed what I was doing each day.  I never wanted to be the "grouchy" old teacher who SHOULD have quit but instead hung around for a couple of extra years just to see if she could do it.  I have always wanted to go out at the "top" and  now seems as good a time to do so as any.  When the last day has come and the "final" bell for the day rings, then I know that I will have done as much as I could do in the field of public school education.  I will leave with absolutely no regrets and THAT, dear friends, is worth a lot to me.

By early July, I hope to return to a profession that I have done on a part-time and summer months basis since 2005~being a CNA in a long-term healthcare facility.  Partially of necessity, partially of having way too much time on my hands and mostly because my own mother had just entered long-term care here in Hutchinson, I took the CNA course that the local community college offers here.  I never did so with the intention of spending every available weekend and holiday that I had in this life to work in caring for the elderly.  I just wanted to know how I could best help to take care of my own mom.  Once again in this life, I found out via that wonderful "whack upside the head" that God had other ideas about that, yet a different plan for "Peggy".  Once I saw what was happening to me, I never looked back, a decision that I never regretted, not even once.

While working in two different facilities here in Hutchinson, I found out just how much I truly cared about taking care of the elderly.  Hey actually, come to think of it, my experiences in taking care of the aged taught me first-hand about the idea of the value of "the human touch".  I learned that the "human touch" wasn't only holding someone's hand or giving them a good hug in the morning or a kiss on the top of the forehead as they lay down to sleep at night (although those are very important).  I found out that act of "caring" could manifest itself in many other ways as well~making their beds very neatly, brushing their dentures after every meal, not JUST at bedtime, gently reminding them to use their walkers, combing their hair when the dastardly "bed head" would sometimes set in, or just plain listening to them as they told their stories.  

I would dare to say that, as in education a "4-year" college degree and student teaching experience only just BARELY prepares you for what lies ahead, much of my own learning in taking care of the elderly came AFTER I completed my CNA courses.  If you are willing to listen, the aged can be wonderful teachers of many of life's lessons.  And as in the classroom, each one that is to be cared for is very different.  The needs can be so varied and you always have to remember that you will continually be learning about the job.  Glad that when I was born, I automatically signed up to be a "learner for life".  You know friends, it kind of makes it easier.

It's a sobering but yet exciting kind of thought to realize that I am down to less than 3 months of being a teacher.  When school is out in late May, I'll be leaving here for a new life in Montrose, Colorado.  I'll come back for the Bike Across Kansas during the second week of June and by the time that is completed at the Kansas-Missouri border, then I'll return to Montrose to begin my "future" there.  Upon the advice of one of the dearest and truest friends that I have ever had, I am "not looking back".  

Well, the clock on the wall says it's time to get a move-on and get ready for school.  There's a couple of hundred kids that I know of who will be waiting soon to walk into the front doorways and settle in for yet another Friday of learning.  And since it's not "pajama day", I'd probably better think of getting dressed.  Wishing for you all a wonderful and blessed Friday.  I'm so thankful for you friends and I hope and pray that life turns out even better than you had hoped for.  My future is lying in wait for me~I am more determined to enter into than I would ever be afraid of the change.  This is Friday, the 8th day of March, 2013~a great day to be alive in; a great day to go forward in.

A group of students from our summer-time program.  So much fun to work with kids, ANY time of the year.

My dear, dear friend, the "late" Marion Barnett.  He became like a "second father" to me when I took care of him at a beautiful facility here in Reno County.  I "cried like a baby" the day he passed away.  There are those who would say that you should never get that close to those that you are caring for, but I never listened to that advice.  I will say to my own dying day that I hope when I get older someone will love me enough to take good care of me and cry for me when I am gone.

Looking forward to a wonderful future~filled with lots more experiences than I could have ever imagined.  I wonder sometimes as of late, how was it that I was to become so blessed?  Glad that I didn't give up on a lot of things in this life.  If I had done so, I would have never known the beautiful things and people (one in particular) that would lie ahead in wait for me