Mastery Year 3: Part 8: Post 2: New Years

When I think of New Years' and school, I always think of that giant parade we had in the snow, it seems so inherently like us to do something like that. But it's only happened once, that I know of. This year, I won't even be on campus for New Years--I wasn't for Christmas. I was with June's family, missing my family and school, because the alternative would have been for her to miss hers, and she did that already at Thanksgiving.


June's family doesn't quite celebrate Christmas, which sometimes makes me wonder why we can't spend Christmas with my family (who do) instead, but I can see why she doesn't want to miss her non-Christmas, either. It's this low-key, unofficial, non-religious day with a big, yummy breakfast and everyone getting and giving little stocking-stuffer type things with everyone else. It's lovely. It's family time. And I seem to be welcome. I could see learning to miss this myself, if one year I couldn't go.

Is this what growing older is just like? The more people and places you connect with, the more you wish you were somewhere else no matter where you are?

June's family was similarly low-key about New Years last year--we all just stayed up to toast at midnight with Champagne  in nice glasses, then we went to bed--but I hear they're planning a party this year. I'm looking forward to it.

And I'm thinking about things on campus, about the party they're gearing up for, and about which of my friends will be on campus then and which will not.

I'm thinking about something Allen said to me the other day.

June and I were on campus for Yule, of course, before leaving for a week and a half with her parents (including travel time--it's a long way), and in the evening, before the masters withdrew again to wherever it is they go outside of the school year, I asked Allen something about whether he was going to Charlie's for Christmas. And, I guess, there was an edge to it when I said it. I didn't mean there to be.

The thing is that I've always wanted to be part of what these people have, and there's a sense in which I always feel excluded. There are things students aren't allowed to join, there is Charlie being prickly and growling to keep others--sometimes me--and there is the fact I'm just not as close to them as they are to each other. I'm not really being excluded or rejected, but somehow it just feels like I am. Allen would say I'm being emotionally needy. And sometimes it shows.

And Allen can always tell.

I said whatever I said and he grinned at me fondly.

"I'm always amused," he said, "That you yearn so deeply for that which you already have."

Mastery Year 3: Part 8: Post 1: Yule

Merry belated Yule!

Last year the weather was awful, to the point that we couldn't go up the mountain to watch the sunrise. This year, the weather made up for it (not that Charlie would appreciate such anthropocentrism) and our trip up the mountain was gorgeous--clear and cold under fading stars, and just enough cloud at the horizon to turn red and gorgeous. The was after, of course, we stayed up all night partying in the Great Hall.

And, as per tradition, when we got back after seeing the sun up, we found the Great Hall transformed by the Sprouts, who had appeared from seemingly out of nowhere (they'd been up in the master's dorm all night having a separate party with the masters), putting out gift bags for everyone for us to run around and find and all the fixings for a lovely breakfast. Then we sat around for most of the rest of the day eating, drinking hot cocoa, and playing with our new toys--yes, toys. Mostly stocking-stuffer type things--Rubix cubes, playing cards, novelty socks, candy, slide whistles, and so on. They weren't random, each of us got things we actually liked. Among other things, I got a new mini tape measure, because my old one I use for plant ID has started to lose its paint. June got a second-hand deck of Goddess cards.

Also, we sat around taking naps. I think most of us crashed out on the floor for at least a few hours. A few people went upstairs to bed. Greg zonked out sitting up on the sofa with a cheap Santa Clause hat pulled down over his eyes. I sat with him for a while, him sleeping, me sitting there staring into a mug of hot cocoa, wondering if I'd be asleep soon, too. I was sitting there when Greg woke up.

He gave a start, though I can't think why--there was no particular noise to wake him or anything like that--pulled the hat off his eyes, and looked around in a rather confused way for a few seconds, then realized where he was, I guess, and smiled.

"Um, good morning, Daniel," he said. "What time is it?"

"Around 11:30, I think?"

He nodded, still putting himself together.

"It feels later," he said.

"Greg? People don't nap this much after Litha, do they? I never really thought about it before." Litha, you may remember, is the summer solstice, another occasion we mark with an all-night party. Greg shrugged.

"I don't think as many people stay up," he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose behind his glasses. "The summer dance is spread out across the campus, so it's harder to notice if someone drops out to sleep. And we don't really spend the next day together in the same way, so again who is doing what is less obvious."

"I'm sorry, Greg. I shouldn't be questioning you, you're asleep."

"No, no, it's OK. You can question me while I'm asleep." And he sat back on the couch again and closed his eyes. I thought he was indeed asleep again until he opened one eye quite suddenly and looked at me. "I don't promise to answer, though," he said. And then the eye closed and I think he was indeed asleep again soon.

I got up again and wandered around with my hot cocoa until I found June at the Yule tree looking intently at one of the glass bird ornaments.

"They really should put a warning on the hot pepper candies," she said, without looking up at me.

"Fire and sweetness," I said, "the themes of the holiday. The day itself is a warning."

"My mouth sympathizes with Icarus." Icarus flew too close to the sun, remember.

"Want me to kiss it better?" I offered.

"No, and you don't want to, either. Your mouth would end up hurting. You can find me some alcohol to cut the heat, though."

"I actually can," I said, and went off to beg a shot from a novice who had brought a flask. Later, June and I sat at a little table looking out together.

"What are we going to do next year?" I asked.

"Anything we want to," June hazarded.

"I mean about Yule. You remember celebrating it with me before I got back here? No, you don't, because we didn't. Because I always forgot, every single year I was away from this place. And I missed it so much. I missed Yule. It's just hard to do without the community."

"We could visit campus for Yule," she pointed out.

"That's not really my point. Anyway, if we don't come here for Yule, we'll be able to visit your family for Christmas. And if we do come here for Yule, how will we remember to prepare for it and set aside time for it if we're not on campus in the run-up to it? It's like...neither of us celebrated Yule before we came here, and I didn't celebrate it when I left. How do we take what we learned here and bring it with us? I want to stay involved with the community, I don't want to be dependent on it. I don't want to feel institutionalized." I have no idea where any of this was coming from. My feelings about getting my green ring, something I've been thinking a lot about lately, are complex.

"Coming here wasn't my first time celebrating Yule," June said, still looking outside through the big window.

"Oh?"

"It was the first time I'd done a big production of it, but there was this time--I was in grad school, the year before you got there, and I was just seriously overworked, exhausted all the time, and a bunch of self-doubt started coming up, and it was just bad. So I did a couple of therapy sessions, you know, with the psych students?" Our grad school also had a psychology department and lots of student therapists looking for practice. "Well, this one day, everything was just going wrong. My car broke down, but I had to get to campus because I was supposed to have a meeting with my study group from some class, so I biked it, but it was raining, one of those long, slow, cold rains, you know? and I get there soaked to the skin and freezing, except my study group isn't there because I'd written down the date wrong or something, and then I try to go to the store to pick up some things, except I discover I'd lost my wallet, so I went back to campus to look for my wallet, maybe it fell out of my bag when I was looking for my notes on the meeting, and I spent so long looking for my damn wallet that by the time I remembered I had therapy that day my session was half-over, which was just awful, because I really needed some therapy, and--"

And I had no idea where this long and grammatically inconsistent tale of woe was going or what it had to do with Yule, but June usually does have a point when she talks, so I waited and listened and tried to keep track of all the twists and turns of the plot.

"So I finally get into therapy, find my therapist still waiting for me, hasn't cancelled or anything, and I just fall into her arms blathering and sobbing about everything that's going wrong. And after listening to me go on for a while and letting me calm down, she said 'There's a reason why today is the worst day of the year.' And I say 'what's that?' and she said 'Because it's the shortest.' And so we talked about what that meant for a few minutes and she takes me through this little ritual thing and I start to feel a little better. She offered to give me and my bike a ride home. I accepted--I was still cold and wet--and on our way out I found the rain had turned to snow."

I said nothing. I understood her, but I couldn't think of anything that needed saying. I took her hand and thought about things. I wasn't worried as much anymore.

Mastery Year 3: Interlude 7

Hi, all, Daniel of 2019, here.

I sometimes struggle with what to write in these interludes because I have no particular news to report, but this time I have the opposite problem--I have news, BIG news, only I'm not going to tell you what it is, not yet. I will tell you eventually, probably in February.

I do have a major housekeeping note; this will be my last interlude as such. It's been planned that way for a while now, but the actual fact of it has crept up on my and I've only just now realized that's what this is. Bittersweet, isn't it?

My story proper ends on Brigit, this coming Brigid, so I won't do a pre-Brigid interlude. But Brigid will not be my last post--I'm going to do an epilogue because I want to tell the story of what happened in our community between my earning my ring and the beginning of this blog, plus there's this news I've been alluding to. Because I was not in constant contact with the school during those years, the journalistic format I've been using won't make sense. Instead, I'll simply take several posts--probably three or four--to tell you what happened. And that will wrap up the blog.

It will not wrap up the entire project. The blog will remain where it is so anyone may read it, in whole or in part, and links will still be posted to social media so new people will find out about the story and come read.

I am also seriously considering reformatting the entire thing as a book, in which case I'll use this blog to help publicize the book once it approaches publication. We'll see.

So, it's been a long, strange trip, and it's not over yet. Thank you for taking it with me.

-best, Daniel

Mastery Year 3: Part 7: Post 6: Kris Kringle

The winter holiday season is in full swing, now. The Great Hall, as always, looks lovely.

By “winter holiday” of course I mostly mean Yule, that being the focus around here, but Christmas—or at least its penumbra (or would that be “corona,” given that Christmas is bright?)--is unavoidable, and then there’s Hanukkah and New Years and Orthodox Christmas and at least a nod to Kwanzaa (though I’ve never known anyone who actually celebrates it) and Zappadan (in honor of Frank Zappa) and so on and on. It all becomes a big, sparkly muddle of good food and music.

There are a couple of major events here on campus that characterize the holiday season, and two of them have happened already.

One is the first and last year party, for yearlings and graduating students and whichever of the masters who want to show up. It’s usually held sometime in November, though occasionally it’s earlier. It’s semi-secret in that nobody but the first- and last-year students (and the masters) seem to know about it—nobody ever says it’s secret, but nobody talks about it, either, and it seems to happen when nobody else is looking. Both years I was a novice but not invited it happened without my knowing at all, and even as a candidate I proved oblivious to it once.

This past year I spent time asking questions about how and why the school runs as it does, and I finally learned that the reason for the secrecy is pretty prosaic; the organizers simply try to keep the party out of the way of those who are not invited, and to avoid drawing attention to a party not everyone can attend. As to the how, Sharon quietly taps a graduating student who is good at organizing things. Of course, the party is a good deal better hidden than that, but people do have to be mysterious around here….

Now that I know how it works, I found it curiously easy to see the party. I didn’t attend (I don’t remember candidates attending either year I went), but it was just as obvious as any other large event one’s housemates might throw.

The other event is decorating the Great Hall.

The Great Hall is always decorated for the nearest holiday, except for Brigid, when the lack of special ornament is itself a decoration, but usually the transitions are gradual and accomplished with no special drama by the landscaping group and the janitorial group. Yule is an exception in that the transition from Samhain to Yule decoration is accomplished in a single night while all but a group of volunteers (who are never yearlings) sleep. Everybody else wakes up to find the place decked with holy and whatever else as if by elves.

I was such an elf three out of my four years as a novice, and loved it. For the past two years, though, I’ve been more or less preoccupied with my wife. I’m not complaining—her first year, my job was to distract her so her observant nature would not spoil the surprise, and I distracted her quite well. Last year, she wanted to continue the tradition. This year, I wanted to be an elf, though, and I wasn’t sure how to ask without seeming, well, unappreciative. Finally I just had bite the bullet and said it; can we please help decorate the Great Hall instead of going to bed this year? June found my awkwardness amusing, as she always does, and when she stopped laughing at me she said sure.

And so we were elves. With Charlie and Karen and a dozen or so students we wove and hung garlands and wreaths of cut evergreens interspersed with sprigs of winterberry holly. We filled the room with candles in ornate silver holders and little cut-crystal bowls of candy and fruit. And we put up the tree and decorated it with strings of white lights, tiny silver mirrors and little prisms, long ribbons of cream-colored satin edged in gold, strings of bright-red cranberries, glass balls of red, orange, and gold, and a flock of tiny, blown-glass birds in fantastic shapes and colors. On the top we placed a fairy doll with long, golden hair, a red, green, and silver-blue dress, and large, dragonfly-like wings.

The next morning, the novices were all suitably amazed. The morning sunlight glittered in the tree and the candle sticks and the candy bowls, and the dark evergreen foliage lent the whole place a mysterious, woodsy feel. With breakfast we had hot cocoa and complicated coffee drinks with cream and sugar and all sorts of flavorings and we sat around and admired the place. And then we all went about our day.

That night, after everyone else had retreated to their dorms or wherever else they went, June and I, Steve Bees and his wife, Sarah, and the two Joes collected in the Great Hall to admire the tree—the room was dark except for the tree lights.

I haven’t talked about the Joes in a long time. They’re a male couple, both named Joe. The shorter of the two, Security Joe, used to be the head of our security team around here before he retired. Cuppa Joe is like Sarah in that he was never a student here but lives on campus as the spouse of a community member. Security Joe is very stern, very gruff, very much on his professional dignity, but every so often he makes an exception, and he made one now by sitting curled up in his husband’s lap.

“You know who we don’t talk about enough?” he announced after a few minutes of silence. “Kris Kringle.”

“You mean Santa Clause?” asked Cuppa Joe.

“Maybe. I mean from Miracle on 34^th Street.”

“You mean the one who’s a little older than his teeth?” said Steve.

“I love that movie!” exclaimed Sarah.

“Isn’t everybody older than their teeth?” asked June.

“Not if they’ve always been toothless,” I said. “Like an anteater. Don’t anteaters not have teeth?”

“Only you would wonder about that,” said Steve, though I don’t think he’s right.

“Why do you want to talk about Kris Kringle?” asked Cuppa Joe.

“Because he’s so thoroughly magical! Like the kind of magic we do around here. Where does he ever, in the movie, do anything that can’t really be done? He doesn’t. When does he even give anyone a physical gift? He doesn’t. He’s an old guy living in a nursing home, he doesn’t have any money, he can’t buy a whole bunch of stuff. All the Christmas gifts happen in that movie are other people giving each other stuff because he somehow manipulates them into it—and not in a bad way. People just get more generous when he’s around. He's in exactly the right place at the right time to make a difference. And that's what we do, here."

The thing is, he's right.

Mastery Year 3: Part 7: Post 5: Thanksgiving

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving.

As per our usual, we went to my parents' house. We'll go to June's parents for Christmas and New Years, she got enough time off for that. I've always kind of wanted to stay on campus for Thanksgiving, just to see what it's like (I understand that, as with Christmas, there's nothing formal planned, but sometimes there are informal gatherings), but it appears that won't happen. Every year when I have the choice, I choose to do something else.

My brother and his wife and kids came too, and all the various aunts and uncles, and all in all it was a fairly mundane good time. Nobody comments on my weird school anymore--in fact, I'm not sure my aunts and uncles know I'm still a student, since I'm not in a degree program anymore. When they ask what I'm up to, I explain I'm working part-time for a landscaping company while teaching a few courses as an adjunct at my old school. It's not un-true, and while it's not the whole and complete truth, it gives them a more accurate picture than the complete truth would. I've gotten much better, more graceful at explaining myself, just as Allen said I would. My immediate family knows the whole picture, and they've gotten pretty graceful about it, too.

So we ate and played and cooked and cleaned (not in that order), and not much that's specifically memorable happened.

Except.

Towards the end of the evening, after the aunts and uncles left (I mean the older aunts and uncles; June and I and Cecilly were all still present) and before the dishes and such started, the kids talked us all into playing hide and seek. Not that I needed much persuasion; I always liked hide and seek as a kid, and the only reason I don't enjoy it more now is that I've gotten so tall that it's hard to fit myself into any decent hiding space.

Anyway, I ended up seeking the first round, so I didn't need to hide anywhere. I expected to find my brother first, because he's bigger than I am and has the same problem but worse. Instead, I found him next-to-last. Where was he?

He was standing in a corner on a bucket facing the wall. I'd walked right by him dozens of times.

I've gotten fairly used to feeling stupid over my obliviousness at school, but I hadn't thought it would follow me home. I thought I was on vacation from that particular kind of mortification. I'd thought wrong.

Curiously, one of my nephews tried a very similar trick, standing still in a corner behind a bookshelf. He hadn't known where his dad was hiding, so I guess maybe it's genetic? But I found the kid instantly upon walking into the room where he was.

What was the man doing that the boy wasn't?

Answer; my brother wasn't behind anything. He was in a place where it was literally impossible to hide, and so I hadn't bothered to look there. That is, he was using Charlie's trick of being where nobody was looking, but he was doing it in a circumstance-specific way. Had I not been looking for anyone, and therefore focused narrowly on the kinds of places where it is possible to hide, I would have seen my brother.

Hmmmm.