Part 2 — The Clock I Never Set
The first morning I didn’t wake to an alarm, I still found myself staring at the ceiling at 5:12 a.m.—the exact time I’d risen for 36 years.
It was too quiet.
No rustling of lunch boxes, no shuffle of tired feet on linoleum, no NPR hum in the background. Just birdsong and the faint tick of a clock I never set.
I lay there, hands folded on my chest like I was bracing for something.
Maybe I was.
The second day of retirement doesn’t come with balloons.
The sympathy casseroles have long since cooled, the teacher’s lounge key is deactivated, and the mailbox no longer holds handmade cards in crayon.
I made coffee too early, poured it into a mug that read “World’s Best Teacher,” and stood barefoot at the kitchen sink, watching condensation bead on the glass.
My husband, Thomas, used to joke that I never let a morning pass without writing a mental lesson plan—whether for kids, our garden, or the church ladies’ bake sale.
Thomas has been gone eight years.
Lung cancer. Too fast. Too cruel.
He died in the fall, when the leaves turn traitor and everything smells like endings.
Back then, I didn’t have time to fall apart.
I had 26 first-graders with crooked teeth and spaghetti-stained shirts who needed spelling words and security.
Teaching saved me.
Gave me something to hold onto when grief threatened to pull me under.
But now?
Now there’s nothing to plan. No bulletin board to staple. No folder to mark.
Just a woman in a house that still smells like lemon cleaner and library books, with no bells to chase or voices to answer.
I wandered out to the garage.
The old Plymouth sat under a tarp like an unspoken memory.
Thomas loved that car. Said it drove like a poem—long, slow, and full of truth.
He used to take it out once a month just to let the engine feel loved.
I hadn’t started it in years.
I pulled the tarp halfway, ran my fingers along the hood. Dust. Dull blue paint. A crack in the passenger mirror like a vein.
Then I opened the glove box.
A faded gas receipt from 2013.
A small Bible, pages curled from summers past.
And a photo.
Me and Thomas at the lake.
He had a fishing pole, I had sunburned cheeks. We looked like the kind of people who thought time was endless.
I sat down on an overturned milk crate and cried.
Not loud. Not messy.
The kind of cry that just leaks out of you when you’re tired of being strong.
Because no one tells you what to do after you’ve given your whole life to something.
Not just years. Not just hours.
Your heart. Your body. Your identity.
And now it’s gone.
Like summer break that never ends, only without the hope of fall.
I spent the afternoon on the back porch, watching sparrows dip through the wind.
At 3:04 p.m., I checked the time again.
School would’ve been letting out.
Somewhere, kids were sprinting toward buses, flapping backpacks like parachutes.
Somewhere, a teacher was erasing a whiteboard, humming to herself, maybe feeling just a little proud.
Somewhere, someone was still doing the work.
That used to be me.
I thought about driving to the library. Volunteering. Joining the quilting circle.
But I couldn’t face small talk today.
Couldn’t bear to explain what it feels like to lose something that used to need you.
So I sat.
Let the sun slide down the horizon, let the silence hum around me like a lullaby I hadn’t earned.
Eventually, I went inside and made soup. The kind you stir slowly, like you’re trying to remember something.
I ate by the window. No TV. No phone.
Just the scrape of spoon on ceramic and the weight of a day with no bell.
Later that night, I opened an old cardboard box I’d tucked away in the hallway closet years ago.
It was labeled “Too Much.”
Inside were pieces of me.
Letters from students. Some barely legible, written in red marker.
“Thank you for teaching me to read.”
“You’re the best because you always smiled.”
“I love you more than pizza.”
There were newspaper clippings—an article about a school play, a photo of me in front of a science fair trifold, grinning like a fool.
There was even a broken pencil, chewed beyond recognition, with the name “Lily” scrawled in Sharpie.
I’d saved it all.
Not because I’m sentimental.
Because I needed reminders—proof that it all meant something.
That I did.
I sat on the floor, knees stiff, and read every letter by the dim light of a floor lamp that flickered when it rained.
By the time I finished, the house was quiet in that deep, middle-of-the-night way that makes you feel both sacred and terribly alone.
I stood up slowly, put the box back, and whispered:
“I was never useless.”
Not to Lily.
Not to Jeremy, who stuttered until second grade.
Not to Anna, whose mom used to forget to pack her lunch.
Not to any of them.
They don’t remember the data points or the standardized tests.
But they might remember how I looked at them—like they were enough.
Like they mattered.
And maybe that’s all anyone wants, really.
To be seen.
ENDING:
The next morning, I slept until 6:03.
A full fifty-one minutes longer than I had in decades.
Progress, I suppose.
I poured my coffee, stepped outside, and sat on the porch swing that Thomas built the summer we almost gave up.
The air smelled like cut grass and rain on concrete.
I didn’t feel useful.
Not yet.
But I felt something else.
Still.
Here.
And for the first time in a long while, that felt like enough.
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💬 “I found her name carved into the underside of the desk. The little girl who used to hide peanut M&Ms in my drawer when her dad forgot to pick her up…”
