Gap Year

I was spending time thinking of what I had done in the past decade. I was trying to account for all the years and the days and even the minutes of how I had been occupying my time. Why was I doing this? I think because time flew by in some ways and much like my current life, it also dragged as if lugging a dead body uphill. So there I was, sitting with my coffee in hand trying to account for my time, trying to figure out how I got here, the place where I am trying to figure out what work would best suit me at 50. Someone recently told me it was not a good idea to mention my age so much. Befuddled, I asked why. Her answer included all the stereotypes about what it means to be 50. Fifty, she determined meant old, unemployable, over the hill, and falling apart. As I adjusted my very smudged reading glasses, and wiggled in my seat, so my legs didn't cramp up and my back didn't hurt, I felt indignant at first, but then I knew she had a point about the age thing. She had referred to me as middle aged, but I know even with a longer life expectancy, I am now on the back thirty. Even at forty, I had a work expectancy of at least twenty more years, but now when I tell people I am fifty, I get the idea from the expression on their faces that I have a better chance of convincing people that I escaped from a home than I do of getting a decent job. It's too bad, since I have all this experience with people. I have gotten really good at being patient, and listening to people. In my work prime of my thirties, I was always in a hurry, trying to pull information out of them as if I were extracting an abscessed tooth. I just wanted to get on with it, so I could bustle on over to the next task. I retired from nursing because I was becoming burned out on medicine, or actually the process of medicine. Diagnosis, prognosis, therapy plans were still fascinating to me, but I worked in geriatrics where getting an order for a routine blood culture had turned into an act of God. My patients needed to be on their death beds for me to get anything done. Either that or have a really good lawyer who was chomping at the bit to go to court. I had been a nurse for nearly twenty five years and the constant banging of my head left me feeling exhausted and weary, which in turn left me being less than a good nurse. So far every time someone finds out I retired from nursing I get sort of shamed about it. I mean, if I had kept my license up, surely I would have a job. I suppose that is true, but I never wanted to be that person who stayed too long. My analogy is the girl in the corner at a party with a little vomit in her hair. I didn’t want to be that girl. I knew if I didn’t let it go, I would have ended up in the corner. O.K., so back to accounting for the last decade, so there I was racking my brain for how I have spent my time in the last ten years, and the results astounded me. This isn’t a revelation of how I wasted my youth. That can come another day, but what I realized as I tallied up days, and years is I spent eight, count them eight years in high school. Now before anyone thinks I was a slow learner, those eight years were with my children. I had four children in four years, and yes, I was aware of what caused it. My kids have always been my first priority. I made it clear to Michael long before I got remarried, that they came first. The good news is he got four kids in the deal; the bad news is he ended up with four teenagers for eight long years. I hadn’t realized how many years were taken up with Homecomings, proms, dances, driving lessons, detentions, band concerts, cross country meets, youth groups, college visits, broken relationships, friend drama, drug and alcohol lectures and general high school mayhem. Eight years of not sleeping, dropping off, picking up, shopping for, cleaning up after and letting go. Actually, with four years apiece it equals twelve years, but there was some overlap so I have whittled it down to eight. Mike and I had agreed a long time ago I would be doing the heavy lifting when it came to the kids. At first it was out of respect for my experience as their mom, but in the end, it had more to do with my ability to multi task twelve items at a time. So when making my account of all my high school years, I was thinking about all the self shaming I do about not making a living right now. Maybe I can think of this as my gap year, the year after high school before college starts. Truthfully, I haven’t had a kid in high school since 2010, but I haven’t taken a break since then either, so this might be the exact time and the right place to do just that. Since the kids graduated from high school, I haven’t really taken a breath. Until last year they were all home. Now, with only one working adult left in the house, maybe I can sit back and take a breath and let some things sink in. Once I realized how many years I have given for the cause, I count high school as a triple score since aneurysms are a side effect, I could not help but think of this time as my graduation gift. Tomorrow is Mike’s Friday, even though the calendar says it is Monday. I was supposed to send out more resumes to anyone with an address, internet or otherwise. But I think what I might do instead is put myself down to be a volunteer somewhere. Maybe, instead of spending my mornings wincing at the latest list of rejection letters, I will send out my information for an organization that would be glad to have me. I mean, it’s my gap year, and in a gap year philanthropy is usually what comes to mind before one goes off and starts their “real” life. Now that I have graduated and the world is my fifty year old oyster, I can prepare for the road ahead, like any good student of the world.