Retirement

By Didi Kerler, Retired Director

When my friends began to retire, I heard wild stories of travel, fine dining, home improvement projects, and writing a first novel. I retired in May 2024, after twenty-three years of being the director of a small Jewish early childhood center in Bloomington, Indiana, and I’ve done none of those things – bubkes. I’ve made doctors’ appointments (notice the plural), negotiated with Duke Energy over a downed tree, contacted a few repair people, hosted an oneg at my shul and well, yes, I took my 95 year-old mother to Israel for 3 weeks which went so well I am now taking her to Chicago for a great grandchild’s bar mitzvah (please note that she has over forty great grandchildren. I live in Indiana and she lives in California). But I am retired, and that early childhood philosophy of let’s create the ‘least restrictive environment’ and ‘why not make it happen?’ is now part of my own belief system.

Even more pronounced are the skill sets you acquire as a director that become absorbed into your personality even after you leave the job. Being an early childhood director means being incredibly patient, listening to different perspectives from adults and children, slowing down, and stepping back to observe and reflect. I don’t think that when I started this career, I was particularly refined in any of those skills, but over the years, it has become entrenched in who I am, and I see it manifesting itself in my retirement. How many professions make you a better person?

When I bump into families and colleagues at the grocery store, they ask if I miss going to work. I can honestly say that I do not. What I do miss are the wonderful relationships you build with families, the interesting people you meet, and the odd, quirky children you fall in love with. 

Just recently, an old colleague and friend came to visit, and we spent most of our time chatting about early childhood, comparing her experience in a New York City day school with our small midwestern center – the outdoor space, materials, expectations, families, colleagues (and yes, even pay). Our central nervous system is fine-tuned to think about the welfare of children. I don’t believe it will ever go away, because we enter this profession with the knowledge that this is a career based in love, humility, and hard work and we carry that with us, along with the skills we have developed, well into other stages of our lives.