finding mr pembrooke: Poetrylandia 1

When Mr. Pembrooke, a high school physics teacher, is eating breakfast on a Tuesday, and he finds that he no longer has the emotional strength to stand up and go to the job he has loved for almost forty years, his principal does not believe that he is actually serious about retiring. He is given a short leave of absence, but Mr. Pembrooke cannot imagine spending one more minute in the classroom. With some time to himself finally, he forms an awkward family with the woman who lives next door and one of his former students who is failing the class Mr. Pembrooke used to teach. He falls accidentally into a life he never had, and he begins to see the world differently in this emotional interlude in his late fifties, as he tries to understand the pain of his childhood and the burnout and secondary trauma so many educators face. www.WapshottPress.org