Mastery Year 3: Part 3: Post 2: Needs

So, last week I walked up to Steve Bees and told him to pack his bags because we were going to the Island. I figure if I am acting in some sense as his master—under the supervision of Charlie, his actual master—I’m entitled to make abrupt, inscrutable demands. You know, do the whole Yoda thing.

My resolve lasted only as long as it took Steve to ask “what the hell?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I made arrangements for us to join the Island trip. Because you need a vacation in the woods. Charlie agrees. It’s really last-minute for me, too.”

“Was this you’re idea or his?”

“Both. I had the idea, ran it by Charlie, and he said he’d already thought about it.”

“Huh,” said Steve.

“Is it OK? I know you work, and there’s your baby, and everything….”

“Oh, yeah, it’s fine,” he assured me. “I cleared my schedule, I talked to Sarah, she says the Joes can help her with Sean for the week, and I’m already packed.”

“Charlie told you?”

“No, I knew you were going to ask me. You’re getting so much like the masters, you’re predictable in the same way.”

Well, then.

When I was a yearling, we traveled to the Island in two veggie-diesel-adapted vans. But the yearling group was 29 people, then. Now, it’s 41. It’s not that the school is trending larger—its size fluctuates, and this is simply a big year—but it does make travel difficult. Perhaps fortuitously, though, one of the other vans is starting to show signs of needing replacement soon, so the masters decided to go ahead and buy the replacement preemptively. We might get another year or two out of the old one, but we’ll be ready when it goes, and in the meantime we’ve got three vans, enough to getting everybody to the Island.

Which is all a long-winded way of explaining why Steve and I found ourselves riding in a 17-passenger van with Allen’s family (they join him for the trip), Allen himself, Charlie, Karen, and seven yearlings, instead of catching a ride in the Chapman’s minivan like I did in the past. Allen and Karen took turns driving. Charlie is a terrible driver. When it was Karen’s turn to drive, Charlie and Allen sat next to each other and chatted and joked or pointed at things out the window and laughed like boys.

The thing to remember is that this Island trip isn’t just a retreat for the students—an organized group bonding experience for the yearlings—it’s also a retreat for the faculty. All of them but Greg go, and except for the day or two each of them spends with the yearlings, they pretty much ignore and avoid the students the whole time. Charlie and Allen were on vacation.

Steve and I couldn’t stay with the yearlings (they’re on a private retreat), and I had anticipated that. We couldn’t stay with the masters (they’re on a private retreat, too), and I had anticipated that, also. What I hadn’t anticipated was that Steve would be invited to camp illegally with Charlie, while I stay with Lo and the kids again. During the day, I show Steve the Island, and at night he receives wisdom by osmosis from Charlie, or something. I camped with Charlie once, years ago, and it’s an education, though it’s hard to say what it’s an education in, exactly. I’ve never known anyone else o be invited to camp with him, but this year Steve was and I wasn’t. I am insanely jealous. I am trying not to let Charlie or Steve know.

Not that I’m unhappy to stay with the Chapmans. I feel as welcomed by them as ever, and I love it. I’ve missed them.

Allen camps with the other masters, not with us, but spends quite a bit of time with his family—more than the last time I camped with them, actually. Usually they all stay on together and have a family vacation afterwards, but I guess this year they’re not doing that, because of the van thing. It’s funny seeing him, then, because he’s totally out of teacher-mode, and he’s still friendly with me, but he’s friendly in a different way.

The other night he came up to me as I lay in my hammock, reading. Steve had gone off to join Charlie at their illegal camp, and I was huddled in my sleeping bag (May can be quite cold, here) with my book, trying to decide whether to get my flashlight out or just go sleep. I was feeling kind of morose and...stretched, somehow. I can’t explain it. Maybe the feeling is a kind of loneliness. Anyway, Allen came to stand beside me. I looked up at him to see what he would say.

“You miss him, don’t you?”

“Am I that obvious?” I asked. There was no need to ask who he was talking about.

“I have no idea, I’m a psychologist, not a mind reader. Why are you trying to hide it?”

“I don’t know. I feel stupid, I guess. I know I’m not being slighted. I know Charlie can’t pay attention to me all the time, he has other students. But I’m like a needy little kid anyway.”

“Needy is a funny word,” Allen asserted. “Almost a pejorative. If Charlie has noticed, I don’t imagine he thinks less of you for it.”

“I guess not.”

“The impracticality of getting a thing does not invalidate the need. You can need without pursuit. There can just be need. It’s OK.” And then he was gone, off to join the other masters, off to join his wife in her tent, off somewhere, but gone as though he had evaporated into the air.

Of course, Allen is the magician.