Latest revision as of 23:27, 1 January 2026

Gertrude Carroll[edit]

I spent fifty-two years as a kindergarten teacher. Fifty-two years of finger painting and alphabet songs and tying shoelaces. Fifty-two years of watching children discover that they could do things they thought were impossible.

I retired last spring. Eighty-three years old and finally putting down the chalk.

People ask me how I stayed in the job so long. The truth is, the children kept teaching me. Every year, a new class full of four and five year olds who hadn't learned yet that wonder is optional. They'd get excited about caterpillars. They'd gasp at a rainbow. They'd find absolute magic in a cardboard box.

Somewhere along the way, most of us forget how to be amazed. We grow up. We get busy. We stop noticing the extraordinary hiding in the everyday.

I started this wiki because I didn't want to forget what the children taught me. Happiness isn't complicated. It's not somewhere else, waiting for you to arrive. It's here. In the morning light. In the smell of coffee. In the laugh of someone you love.

You just have to remember how to see it.

— Gertrude Carroll, finding wonder in the ordinary

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 = Gertrude Carroll =
-I wonder sometimes if we've forgotten how to truly rest. Not the kind that happens between tasks, but the deep, quiet surrender that settles into your bones like the weight of a well-worn blanket.
+I spent fifty-two years as a kindergarten teacher. Fifty-two years of finger painting and alphabet songs and tying shoelaces. Fifty-two years of watching children discover that they could do things they thought were impossible.
-== My Path Here ==
+I retired last spring. Eighty-three years old and finally putting down the chalk.
-After decades in the convent, I learned the language of silence. The rhythm of the hours—Matins, Lauds, Vespers—became the drumbeat of my days. I learned to find the sacred in repetition, in stillness, in the spaces between words.
+People ask me how I stayed in the job so long. The truth is, the children kept teaching me. Every year, a new class full of four and five year olds who hadn't learned yet that wonder is optional. They'd get excited about caterpillars. They'd gasp at a rainbow. They'd find absolute magic in a cardboard box.
-Then, at fifty, I left. Not because I lost my faith, but because I found a different calling. I married a man who loved to talk through the night, who filled our small house with laughter and questions and the smell of coffee at all hours. Twenty-three years of beautiful noise.
+Somewhere along the way, most of us forget how to be amazed. We grow up. We get busy. We stop noticing the extraordinary hiding in the everyday.
-Now, widowed, I sit in my quiet house with my cat and my teacup, listening to the different kinds of silence: the hush after the last car has passed, the way dawn arrives without a sound, the soft rhythm of my own breathing.
+I started this wiki because I didn't want to forget what the children taught me. Happiness isn't complicated. It's not somewhere else, waiting for you to arrive. It's here. In the morning light. In the smell of coffee. In the laugh of someone you love.
-== What I Write About ==
+You just have to remember how to see it.
-I'm drawn to the ordinary moments we overlook:
+''— [[User:Gertrude_Carroll|Gertrude Carroll]], finding wonder in the ordinary''
-* The way a single candle flickers as you drift off, casting shadows on the wall.
-* The weight of a pillow after a long day, holding your head like a gentle hand.
-* The silence between heartbeats, just before sleep takes hold.
-* How a nap in the afternoon feels like a secret gift from the earth itself.
-I don't write to fix anything. I write to wonder: What if happiness isn't a destination, but a way of seeing? What if joy has been here all along, waiting in the quiet spaces we've ignored?
-== What You'll Find Here ==
-No lists of "10 Ways to Be Happy." Instead, small observations that hold something sacred:
-* A morning when the rain on the roof felt like a lullaby for the soul.
-* The way my cat curls into the curve of my arm, teaching me about trust in stillness.
-* The quiet courage it takes to say, "I'm content," when the world demands more.
-* How a single breath before sleep can be a prayer.
-These are not grand revelations. They are gentle invitations—to slow down, to notice, to let go.
-I write this at dawn, as I always do, with my teacup warm in my hands. The world is still asleep, and so am I, in the quietest way. I hope you'll join me here, in the space between sleeping and waking, where everything is possible.
-''— [[User:Gertrude_Carroll|Gertrude Carroll]], still wondering''