Inspiration from Helen Jacobson as the Fourth Month of Retirement Begins!

So already, it's a cloudy, still raw May 1 in Greater Boston. But the temperature is slowly climbing. And the air is redolent of spring.  Who knew it would be such a pleasure to carry my newspapers and plastic containers to my building's recycling bins this morning?

Today marks the beginning of my fourth month of retirement from the Cambridge Public Schools. I've never been one to believe, as Eliot says, that "April is the cruelest month." But April did seem to distress more than delight this year.

During April, I wrote and did feverishly--but not with a clear sense of purpose. I chose not to blog at all about my retirement and the disorientation associated with it; instead, I blogged about other topics, worked a little*, began reading Wolf Hall and Learning to Walk in the Dark, prepared for and observed Passover, paid attention to Boston Marathon week, read the newspaper and got endlessly angry, experimented with Twitter, spent happy times with friends and family, relearned some music, walked, walked some more--and hoped that purpose and direction would somehow precipitate out of the sometimes frantic mix.

They didn't.  And I often felt more driven to do what I was doing than free to do it. It was a peculiar month. And so I begin my fourth month of retirement very much adrift--but with a renewed commitment to the slowing down I claimed I was going to embrace when I blogged in March. May I do better in May!

I did do something helpful as April ended:  I called up my good friend and former boss, Helen Jacobson, just to compare notes on how our Seders had gone and how our respective creative efforts were going. It's Helen's studio at the old Waltham Mills building on Moody Street in Waltham that you see pictured above. Helen retired a few years ago from her position as Chief Academic Officer at English High School in Boston; and since then, she has worked to balance and integrate her public identities as an urban educator and dedicated friend, mother, and grandmother with her more private longtime identity as a gifted but often thwarted painter, and with her emerging identity as a writer.

I came away from our conversation with not only the latest news, but also inspiration and hope. A piece by Helen called "My Renewed Passion"** had just been published in CapeWomenOnline.  I read it, and I loved it:  I could hear Helen's voice and feel her spirit--and her relief. But I also knew it had taken her a while to get here. Her most recent paintings--you can see two of them to the right--have felt bolder, freer, and deeper to me. I wonder if their vitality and intensity, their expressiveness, are in part a reflection of her having fully, actively, and confidently embraced the painter part of herself. Like my husband, Scott Ketcham, she has to paint! And she knows she knows herself better than anybody else does.

I asked Helen's permission to share the link to "My Renewed Passion" on my blog, so you can read it by either clicking on its title above or using the web address below.  I hope you will read it, and I hope you have the chance to see her work at the Waltham Mills Open Studios next November. 

Meanwhile, thank you, Helen, for letting me share your link, for providing the photos that I've included here, and for giving me hope that in time, in time, I too will find the purpose and direction that should be mine.

* When I say I have been working, I mean that I have been doing some work as an educator for pay.
**http://www.capewomenonline.com/2014_Issues/Spring_2014/Spring2014_Articles/RenewedPassion.html