Mastery Year 2: Part 1: Brigid

Happy Brigid! A new year, a new group of yearlings, several newly-awarded Green Rings, and, best of all, I think my wife is going to talk to me again!

I exaggerate; June never stopped talking to me, but I think she considered it. She's still angry.

She's angry with me, of course, for not telling her about the Ordeal which, in case you have forgotten, involves an about-to-graduate student being more or less kidnapped and stuck in a dark room alone for three days. Of course I didn't tell her; for the Ordeal to work, it has to be a surprise.

It's not hazing, it's the thing that hazing is a debased echo of--an initiatory experience. The word "experience" here is key. It's not an initiatory ritual or an initiatory event, it's an experience, and the experience does not occur if you're not in the right head-space for it. Not all forms of initiation require surprise, but many do. You can't be braced against the change you're about to experience.

Then, too, you have to decide real fast whether you trust your teachers when one of them pops a black-out bag over your head.

The thing that separates what we do from what many college fraternities and such do is that our initiation is not meant to be unpleasant or degrading. The person undergoing initiation is always reminded that they are free to quit, and they are encouraged to do so if they run into any sort of physical or mental trouble. They are closely monitored, offered plenty of food and water and opportunity to sleep. They are asked to trust, never to submit.

And yet being taken out of your day-to-day life and hidden away for an undetermined about of time is no joke. And to have it done by the masters--who have always obviously been up to something, that's part of the point--while to realize that your spouse is complicit is something else again.

She must be wondering whose side I'm on. She'll realize eventually that I am on the side of the masters and that now, so is she--that's what the initiation experience is for.

It's not as if I wasn't worried. It's one thing to go through the Ordeal yourself and afterwards to know that it doesn't hurt, it isn't scary (except for that first startling moment under the black-out bag, in the seconds before you hear their reassurances). It's not actually all that much different than a long trip on a Greyhound bus, except there's no view and the toilet doesn't stink. But it's quite another thing to watch your wife leave your dorm-room to go to a meeting and to know she thinks she's coming back in an hour--and she's wrong. And you don't say anything. To spend those three days, however you spend them and whatever you're doing, periodically casting your attention to your wife, knowing that at that very moment she is in the dark, sworn not to speak, and she doesn't know where she is or when she's getting out. To spend all the hours of that final day constantly looking at your watch thinking ok, now they're going to get her. Now she's seeing daylight again for the first time in the wing of the stage in the Chapel. Now the sun has set and she's still in the wing with all the other new initiates, in the dark again, waiting for the ceremony to start.

It's warm down in the basement, where the Ordeal rooms are, but it's cold in the wing of the Chapel.

Then I was back in the audience, sitting in a cold, metal folding chair in a dim room that smelled of wool and honey, and the little bell was ringing, ding! ding! ding! as the masters processed in carrying their as yet unlit candles. I was sitting with Ebony and Eddie and Aidan (it was his seventh birthday), as I often have before, but for only the second time in my experience of Brigid in that hall, Kayla wasn't sitting with me. She was waiting in the wing with June to graduate.

Was the Ordeal a surprise for Kayla? She certainly knew the rooms were down there, because that's where she went to be out of the way when she thought she was dying but was actually giving birth to Aidan when she was twelve. Did she know what those rooms were used for? She learned a lot of the school's secrets, just being a kid on campus, and of course secrecy is mostly maintained using the principles of stage magic--and when you're not part of the target audience, frequently the illusion does not work. I never once saw anyone being escorted to their Ordeal the whole time I was a novice, but this year, not being the target of the illusion anymore, I saw three of them without even trying to look. So, I imagine Kayla had seen some of them, too, over the years, and probably asked questions about them. Direct questions always receive honest (though sometimes legalistically narrow) answers around here. So maybe she knew.

On the other hand, would she really have asked all the right questions? Might the masters have evaded her, at least partly, in case she grew up to want to join the school? I don't know.

In any case, watching that twenty-year-old woman walk across the stage, a young but not prodigious college graduate, and thinking about where she was and why eight years earlier, was quite something. Almost as big a deal to me as watching June walk across the stage and knowing that the period of our being on different sides of a divide, of it being part of my job to keep secrets from her and hold distance from her, was over. We're both initiates, now, both entitled to wear the brown uniform, and I knew that starting that night, and from here on in, we'd share the same room.

The thing about uniforms--of course, novices wear white uniforms with black cloaks, candidates and allies without the Green Ring wear brown except for white belts, and people with the Ring wear all brown. So the symbolism of dress is important, here. When you graduate, one of the masters takes off your cloak and underneath is the outfit you choose to symbolize your life after the school. At least one person almost every year is naked and everybody laughs, and otherwise you get everything from suits to graduation gowns to jeans. When it was my turn I wore cargo pants, a turtleneck, and a flannel, which was my guess as to what I might be wearing in grad school (a good guess, as it happened). June hadn't told me her plans. She ended up wearing the same brown uniform she'll be entitled to wear every other day she spends on campus, unless and until she gets her ring.

"Because I don't think I'm leaving," she explained, later.

Afterwards, we watched Andy and Veronica receive their rings--I found Andy's graduation very moving, too, considering where he started and how far he has come--and then the masters processed away again, to do whatever it is they do on Brigid Night.

But I hadn't gotten a good look when the newly arrived candidates stood to introduce themselves at the beginning of the ceremony. I was sitting fr back and couldn't see or hear them well, I could only gather that there were two of them, a man and a woman. Afterwards, I sought them out to see who it was and found that the returnees are Raven G. and Steve.

Steve Bees is back.

Mastery Year 1: Part 6: Post 4: Leaves and Leaving

I went for a walk with Kayla the other day. I hadn’t spent much time with her in a while, and we hadn’t really talked about her studies, her career through the school, in years. 

“You’re graduating this year,” I said, after a bit.

“Yes.”

“Is it weird? I mean, you’ve been here forever.”

“Not forever,” she corrected me. “Just my whole life. And yes, it’s weird.”

“I’d be scared, if I were you,” I said. She laughed.

“Is that your big-brotherly advice? To be scared?”

“No, it’s just what I would do. I’m not saying it’s a good idea.”

“I’m not scared. Maybe I should be? I’m going to miss all of you, though.”

She has this deal, to make sure she goes out and experiences the “real world,” where she’ll be barred from campus for a year, not even allowed to call. If she wants to come back for her ring, she’ll have to be Absent, or at least living and working elsewhere, for ten years, not the normal three.

“We can visit you, though,” I pointed out.

“Only one at a time,” she reminded me. “And honestly, you won’t. Not very often. You’ll get all wrapped up in your lives here, and you’ll forget to visit.” I started to protest, but she overrode me. “No, it’s ok, I think that’s part of the point. If they thought you’d all come by my apartment every other minute, they’d probably put tighter restrictions on me.”

“They’re tough.”

“They are.”

“What about Aidan?” He's an exception to the one-at-a-time rule, I knew that.

“He has to come visit me. Every day and twice on Sundays. I told Mom I’ll reveal the location of her secret chocolate stash if she doesn’t take him.”

“Ooo! So, what’s your plan? When you leave?”

“Did I tell you I joined Joe’s company?” Impressive news, though apparently a non-sequitur. Joe, my former boss on the janitor’s team, you may remember, has a dance company off-campus. Hardly any students ever dance with him, though, because he does not teach beginners. You have to audition. She had passed.

“That’s great! So?”

“Well, he does pay his dancers. Not much, but with that on my resume, and the dance classes I’ve been teaching at the summer camp, I should be able to get a job as a dance instructor, somewhere.”

“Kayla, I’ve never asked you—what do you study here?”  Her first few years, of course, she was just taking the occasional course and mostly being a kid. She only really got serious about earning her degree while I was away in by own Absence.

“When I was little,” she said, “and I’d ask my Mom how she knew something, she’d always say ‘it’s something I learned in Mom School.’ Well, I guess I’ve been going to Mom School.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I mean, I met my healing requirement by learning how to take care of a small child, everything from baby CPR to how to splint a fracture, to reading all this child-development stuff. Magic is stage magic so I can entertain my kid and make things he shouldn’t have in the first place disappear. My spiritual studies revolve around what it means to be a mother and how to integrate my experience of…having Aidan, you know? My Craft is cooking, but I’m going to try to argue it’s building a human being… Mom School.”

“But your Mom is mostly raising Aidan.” As soon as I said it, I knew I should not have, but she appeared not to take offense.

“Let’s just say that if Aidan comes into fatherhood early, I’ll know how to help him.”

While we’d been talking, we’d come down among the sugar maples on the side of the road. Most of the leaves are still up, and some of them are even still green, but a lot have fallen already. I’d been using my foot to idly push leaves into a small pile, as if I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. Now, I knelt to tie my shoe.

“I know one thing you’re not prepared for though,” I said, while still kneeling.

“What?”

“A Sneak Leaf Attack!” I shouted, and tossed the pile at her. We were both wet and tired and covered with bits of vegetation when we made it back for Friday Dorm Dinner.

Mastery Year 1: Part 1: Post 2: Getting Started

Of course, my first morning back I woke early--we all did, in order to make noise and turn on lights and generally make sure the yearlings didn't sleep in and miss meditation. I used to just stay up and go for a walk, and I'd planned to do that again, but I couldn't get out of bed, not even to  go hassle yearlings. But I couldn't get out of bed. My room was cold, it was very dark out, and honestly, I hadn't slept well, so I was exhausted. I don't like sleeping without June anymore, and of course she was in her own dorm.

I think I fell asleep again before the yearlings had even left. When I woke again, the dorm was much warmer--close to 70 degrees, thanks to the wood stove--and my room was full of light. The indirect sunshine of morning leaked in through the my tapestry curtain and made the Green Man design glow and that old, familiar scent--wool and incense--greeted me. The dorm was completely silent and, for a moment, I was completely happy.

And then I realized that the reason the dorm was empty was that everyone else had left. I scrabbled for my watch and found that it was 7:45--fifteen minutes until breakfast!

I yelped, jumped out of bed, threw on my uniform over the long underwear I'd slept in, and ran out my room and all the way to the Dining Hall. I made it in time to find my seat before the moment of silence that begins the meal.

I was sitting with a group of yearlings, nobody I knew. I didn't know any of the senior students, either. As I ate, I looked around. I saw a few brown uniforms, a few familiar faces, but I couldn't get a real sense of who was really on campus with me. No one I knew came to seek me out, everyone seemed busy talking to somebody else. I wasn't eating with June--we've agreed to mostly avoid each other, at least for the first few weeks, so she can really find her own way here. We'll have breakfast a couple of times a week, have sleep-overs....I agree with the plan, and I helped plan it, but I felt lonely and disoriented.

After the meal, I went out for the walk I'd intended to take before it. I wandered around in the snow, noting shrubs that had grown, trees that had lost limbs...campus looked about the same as I'd left it. I thought at least the trees know me. I started to feel a little better. It was strange to think, as I walked around, that at that very moment, the masters were busy fare-welling the graduating students and none of the white-uniformed novices knew. They were all in a series of orientation meetings and meet-and-greets for the new yearlings, completely unaware that their attention was being misdirected so as to render an event invisible--but I, not being part of the intended audience for this particular trick, could see perfectly well that something was going on--there were extra vehicles parked around Chapel Hall, and a thin, white smoke issued from the chimneys there.

At last I grew cold, so I went inside and showered. By then, it was almost noon, so I wandered over to the Dining Hall for lunch. I found Greg there, loading up his plate. He greeted me casually, as though we'd seed each other last just days ago, and agreed to eat with me. We sat together at a table in the back corner of the room and talked while a sea of yearlings surged in as a group and ignored us.

"I noticed some people are missing," I told him. "Joe, Security Joe, Chuck, and Malachi?"
"Yes, I believe they've all left while you were away," he confirmed. "You don't get to return to the world exactly as you left it."
"I didn't expect it to, it's just...are they all ok?"

He looked at me as though he were preparing some clever and Zennish reply, but evidently he couldn't think of anything.

"They are all ok, so far as I know," he said simply. "Security Joe has retired. He is still living with his husband on campus--they were at breakfast this morning. The others truly have left, gone to take up more conventional employment."

"Wow, hadn't Malachi been here twenty years?"
"Nearly," he told me. "He had just turned 51. Middle age has a way of forcing you to think about what you're going to do with the rest of your life. Malachi decided he didn't want to spend it here."
"Wow," I said, again. It's not like I was close to any of these people, but it felt disorienting to think of someone who had been here for twenty years just up and leaving while I was gone. "At least some things haven't changed," I said. "You're still here."

"Actually, I'm not." And Greg took a sip of coffee and smiled. He seemed pleased to finally be able to say something odd.
"What?"
"I've retired from teaching. I still lead Zazen and I am still the school's spirit master, but this year I will teach workshops and talks, not full classes."
"You're retired?"
"I am turning 80 in a few days, Daniel. I think I've earned it."
"Happy birthday."
"Thank you."
"Anything else I need to know about?"
"They'll be a meeting for mastery candidates next week, just as soon as we've gotten the new yearlings settled in."
"No, I mean...has anybody died?" I meant the question kind of facetiously, an exaggerated, playful way of defining the kind of changes I was concerned about. But Greg's face fell and I immediately regretted my joking.
"My cat," he said. "Greg's Cat has died. He was hit by a car a few months ago."
"I'm sorry," I told him, and meant it.
"Thank you. I have trained all my life to accept the fact of impermanence, but acceptance does not mean painlessness. I am not sure, honestly, that it should."

Over the past few days, I've caught up with my fellow candidates--Ollie, Rick, Ebony, and Eddie are all here with me, just returned, as I have. Which is pretty incredible. Most of my favorite people, and I have them back again. There are five others in the group--I think the only one I've really talked about much before is Andy. He got back last year and expects to receive his ring a year from now.

There is one other student here I know, and I shouldn't have been surprised to see her, but I was. Kayla, I mean. She looks like a grown-up now--no taller, but a little broader, more filled out, with stronger, more defined features. She's 20, and part of this coming year's graduating group. I doubt any of the yearlings will realize she's anything other than an ordinary college student, unless she tells them.

The meeting for candidates is tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. We've all been wandering around with no clear idea of what to do. And I was wandering and wondering, rather than asking, because I understand that the masters are busy answering the questions of yearlings who, after all, have many more questions than we do.

But, yesterday at lunch, Charlie found me. I simply turned around, and there he was, making his traditional cheese sandwich. I could not tell whether he had sought me out or just happened to be there, but he spoke without hesitation, as though he had planned what do say.

"Have you forgiven me?" he asked.

His voice was rough and guarded and I could not tell whether he was serious or not. I assumed he meant forgiven him for helping to "kidnap" me for the graduation ordeal three years ago, but of course that was his job--the job I'd asked him to do. Or maybe he meant forgiven him for not saying a proper goodbye to me before I left. Which, yes, hurt my feelings a bit, but whatever. We never were chatty, and he has a lot of students. Or maybe he just meant for the entire experience of my novitiate, which he made as difficult--and as rewarding--as he could. But whether he honestly thought he needed my forgiveness or was just joking to break the ice, I could not tell. Before I could formulate a response, he spoke.

"Are you ready to do it again?"

Year 4: Part 7: Post 4: Problems

And, election-related interruptions over for the time being, our story continues….-D.

Last night, Steve Bees’ girlfiriend, Sarah, stayed over. She’ll stay over again tonight—she’s here to get more of a feel for the place, I suppose, plus, of course, they don’t get to spend a lot of time together. This morning she joined us for breakfast in the Great Hall, where we had oatmeal, fresh corn muffins, butter, cheese, and several different kinds of jam. There is no fresh milk and, today, no eggs. There are no large tables in the Great Hall, and only the one in the Bird Room, so we made a picnic of it around a small table by the door to the library and we ate looking out the window. There was snow last night, the first of the year, and it left a light dusting, white on the sere, winter pastures, that melted as we ate.

When I say “we,” I mean Steve and Sarah, Kayla and Nora--that is, the Nora who started when I did, not the yearling--Eddie, and me. There were a lot of other people eating breakfast in the Great Hall that morning, of course, but we couldn’t all eat together because what I said about the tables.

“So, what do you think?” asked Eddie of Sarah.

“I’ll take it!” she replied, referring to campus, to our community.

“Well, leave some for us!” Eddie said, laughing.

“Don’t worry, we’ll share,” said Sarah, looking at Steve as though she meant to divide the entire school equally between the two of them. She would not stop flirting with him for more than a few minutes at a time. He gazed back at her with a mix of awkwardness and pride. I think her presence made him feel vulnerable among us in a way he normally doesn’t.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said, smiling.

“You’re lucky,” interjected Kayla. “I’ve seen people whose partners didn’t like this place and that didn’t really work. Not long-term, I mean.”

“Kayla!” said Nora, as though Kayla had said something embarrassingly direct, the way children sometimes do. Nora has been going through a phase of treating Kayla like a kid sister lately.

“What?” protested the kid sister, “It’s not like we don’t all know they’re an item!”

“This corn bread is really good,” said Sarah, changing the subject. “If I were you, Steve, I wouldn’t ever leave this place. I wouldn’t graduate, the food’s too good.”

“Maybe I won’t,” he said, still smiling.

“No,” she said, her mouth still full of corn bread, “because I am not you, I’m me, and I will kick your ass if you don’t become the awesome lawyer we both know you were meant to be.”

“You see what I have to deal with?” exclaimed Steve, in mock exasperation.

“Nice problem to have,” I told him.

“I want that problem,” said Eddie.

“So, go out and get yourself a girlfriend,” said Sarah. “You’re a handsome guy.”

“He knows that already,” I said, in a stage whisper.

“Which girl, though?” said Eddie. “They’re all so wonderful, I want all of them. That is my problem, and that’s why I don’t have your problem.”

“That, too, is a nice problem to have,” I said.

“I know, it’s glorious,” sighed Eddie, licking fruit preserve off his fingers and looking over his plate for the next thing to eat. Rumor has it he has slept with at least a quarter of the female population of the school. None of them are complaining, it’s just that none of them want to share him with quite so many others long-term.

“You’re really going to do the lawyer thing?” I asked, of Steve.

“Sure. I actually got in.” He meant into one of the law schools he’d applied to.

“Really? Congratulations! I didn’t know that. I didn’t think anyone was taking applications for next fall, yet, though.”

“They’re not. This one starts in the spring. What are you doing?”

“I don’t know yet,” I told him. “I’m getting a masters’ degree in conservation biology and see where things go from there.”

“Is that a deer?” Sarah asked, looking out the window. We all looked, watching as the deer—there were actually three of them—walked up onto the Flat Field and then behind the yew hedge, headed for the Apple Orchard.

“The two smaller ones are her fawns from this past year,” I commented. “I see her a lot. She likes it here on the main part of campus, maybe because there’s no hunting.”

“It’s going to be so weird next year when you’re not here,” said Kayla, to me.

“Imagine how weird it will be for us?” I countered.

“Actually, I don’t think it will be weird at all,” said Steve.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Kayla’s used to you being here, so campus will seem weird without you, but we’re not used to seeing Kayla at grad school. We’re not used to grad school at all, so however it ends up being, that’s how it will be. It won’t seem weird at all.”

“That’s true,” I said, but I wasn’t really sure.

“Think about this,” he said, “when you first left home for college, who was that weirder for, you or your parents?”

“I don’t know. My parents, I guess. It didn’t seem weird to me at all. I never thought about that before.”

“I bet your parents did, though.”

“Steve, you continually open my eyes,” I told him, and meant it.

“And you mine,” he said, and clearly meant it.

“What are you all doing for Thanksgiving?” asked Nora. I already knew she was going home to celebrate with her mother, still an awkward thing for both of them.

“Going to my parents,” I said, shrugging a little. I always go home for Thanksgiving.

“I have a sister,” said Eddie. “She’s not a shit, like my parents are, so I’ll have dinner with her.”

Sarah’s eyebrows went up at that, but Eddie didn’t elaborate. The rest of us already knew why Eddie called his parents shits, and that they had called him worse, but we didn’t explain, either.

“Well, I’m going home, too,” said Sarah. “I’d rather stay here with this one, but I have obligations this year.” And she didn’t elaborate.

“I’m going with Charlie to his sister’s place,” said Steve, and I looked at him in surprise.

“How’d you get that invite?” I asked.

Steve shrugged.

“Last year I gave Charlie a ride there and back—Maria lives pretty close to Sarah—and this year when he asked if we could do that again, I told him Sarah would be out of town this year, he invited me to celebrate with him. Sarah—I mean, the farm manager, Sarah—and her family are going, too.”

“He’s never given me an invitation like that,” I said, and I’m afraid I sounded more jealous than I wanted to.

“Maybe you didn’t need it,” Steve told me. “And that is a nice problem to have.”

Year 4: Part 7: Post 2: The Party

I remember attending the end-of-year party as a yearling, and then years went by when I didn't. Of course I didn't, the party is only for yearlings, graduating students, and faculty. The remarkable thing is for two years running, I was barely aware the party even happened. One year I heard noises from downstairs when I was doing my homework in my room and guessed that the party was in progress. I have no idea how it was planned and set up without my noticing. The next year I didn't notice it at all, although there were several events in the Great Hall that I didn't attend and I assume one of them was it.

How can things be kept secret in a community of less than two hundred people, all of whom live and entertain in the same building? Especially as no one ever said it was secret the year I attended? It's one of the magics of this place that I still have not plumbed.

This year, as October and the school year drew to a close, I again did not notice the party, either. No preparation, no invitation, nothing. Was there going to be no party? I was disappointed.

But then, yesterday, I went upstairs to go to dinner in my dorm and I met Eddie coming down.

"Are you coming?" he asked.
"Where?"
"To the party," he said.

It took me a  few seconds to figure out what he meant. Then I turned around and hurried down the stairs after him. And, sure enough, though the Great Hall had been empty when I'd passed through it less than a minute earlier, some twenty people had arrived, with more coming in. They were clearly setting up for a party.

"How do you know about these things when I don't?" I asked Eddie.
"Well, now you do know," he said.
"Yeah, but..."
"I have a talent for making things happen," he said. "And let's leave it at that." He was involved in making the Beltane play happen, after all. I shrugged and followed him into the party. We helped set up trays of food and drink and pushed the couches closer together to leave more room for dancing.

There were finally maybe forty or fifty people in attendance, not quite all the yearlings or graduates, but most of us, and all of the masters except Joe (the head of the Janitors) and Karen. There was less music this time, but more musicians--less a band than a series of people playing a couple of songs when the mood struck them. There was more food and perhaps less alcohol. There was a Mexican-style Day of the Dead altar opposite the rather withered and aged Thankyou Doll from Mabon still sitting in state above the fireplace.

But otherwise the party seemed much the same.

Even Kayla and Aidan were there, just like they were four years ago. Kayla has been part of the yearling group this year, since she'll be graduating with some of them. But four years ago, she was a twelve-year-old. She was a kid. And Aidan was a baby. Now, Aidan is a small child. He's three and a half, which is a much more mature age than I used to think it was. And Kayla is...not a woman, but a teenager. It makes a big difference.

So, we mingled and danced and chatted and ate. Yearlings came up to me and my fellow graduating students and asked us questions, just like I asked questions four years ago.

And as the party drew to a close, just like last year, a few people stayed longer than everybody else and sat together on the couches around the wood stove--lit for the first time that night. I joined the group, at least in part, because I wanted to see what these people would say. Some of them I actually hadn't ever really talked to before.

Kit and Charlie both stayed, though I caught them looking at each other with wary suspicion. Allen stayed, as did Malachi. I haven't talked much about Malachi, but he works in the office, alongside Sharon. He's the comptroller and quartermaster--the quartermaster on a ship is in charge of supplies, and that's what Malachi does. He orders pencils and notebooks and cleaning supplies and everything else and keeps it all within budget. I hardly know him.

Steve Bees and Eddie both stayed, as did Jutta and Raven G. and Joanna. Nora the yearling stayed, as did Kari and Chrystal, also both yearlings. We sat around, mostly drinking cocoa or cider, though a few people had brandy.

Joanna sat on my lap in one of the big, comfy, winged chairs. Other people noticed.

"So, uh, are you two an item now?" asked Raven. She did not sound so much disapproving as confused. It's true that Joanna and I don't make an obvious match. We don't really fit together, the way some couples do.

"Not exactly," I said, because we aren't exactly a couple.
"We're just sleeping together," Joanna asserted, "we're not actually dating." The others nodded, accepting the explanation, and I turned red. It's not exactly that I mind the others knowing what we're doing and why, but it's not something that I really want to talk about casually, either. Joanna and I haven't discussed how to talk about our relationship with others yet, and obviously we should have.

"It's weird being here as a graduating student," I said, to change the subject. "Last time I attended this party, I was a yearling."
"Imagine how it is for me," said Jutta. "I'm here twice."
Four years ago Arthur, who was, like Jutta, a one-hit wonder, said almost exactly the same thing.
"Do you wish you had more time here?" asked Allen, and they talked about time and coming and going and belonging for a while. The masters must have nearly the same conversations every year. All of us, all us students, think of ourselves as so unusual, so unique, and yet we're so predictable.

I watched the conversation play out, noticing body language and vocal tone, how the talk flowed from one person to the next, and I noticed something odd. Nora was sitting, not on a couch, though there was room, but literally at Charlie's feet. They did not speak to each other nor look at each other, nor had I been aware of any particular connection between them before. He isn't one of her masters. She mostly works with Joy. And yet her sitting with him could not be a coincidence. The way she had folded her legs under herself, the way she held her arms, echoed his posture. He laid his hand on her shoulder at one point, just for a few minutes. He doesn't normally touch anyone. I've never seen him give anyone a hug.

I felt a spike of weird jealousy and also something like guilt. Usually it's me, consciously or unconsciously mimicking him, and here I was with a girl on my lap. Woman, excuse me. I had thought his reassurance to me on Samhain that it's ok for me not to be celibate as he is, had been silly, an example of him expecting me to have a problem that of course I wouldn't have. But at that moment I needed the reassurance. I felt like I was letting him down, choosing something superficial and hormone-addled over the deeper truths, the truer dedication he had taught me.

"How come you're all here?" asked Steve, addressing the masters in the room. "It's after Samhain. I thought you all had to turn into pumpkins, or something?"
"We don't have to do anything," asserted Charlie.
"How do you know we're not all pumpkins together?" asked Allen.
"I think they came out of pumpkinitude for the night because this party was a lot easier to schedule after most of the other students have gone away," said Eddie, and Charlie pointed at him and said "ding!ding!ding!ding!"

"Wait, what?" said Kari.
"Haven't you noticed?" said Chrystal. "Most of the students who aren't yearlings or graduators have moved out. And more are going."
"Hey, that's true," said Kari, and I envied her her discovery of this place, her place at the beginning of the process.
"I wish I could head out," said Steve, "I just have a few things I've got to finish up here first. No offense, it's not like I want to get away from any of you people...It's just that I...."
"You have a girlfriend," said Joanna, in her teasing way.
"Yes, I have a girlfriend," he asserted with proud dignity.

He's actually had this girlfriend for a while now. She knows about us and some of us have met her on her short visits to campus. He often spends weekends away, and talks to her from campus on a cell phone, something very few of us actually do. It feels like cell phones ought to be against the rules or something, but they're not.

"Why don't you bring her up for a few days?" suggested Raven. "Let her get to know the school a little better."
"I wanted to," said Steve, "but we couldn't get it arranged before the school year ended. I guess I've lost my chance, now."
"Why?" asked Charlie. "Bring her over now anyway. After all, we haven't all turned into pumpkins.

Year 4: Part 3: Post 3: Island

We're off to the Island again.

Every year, the yearlings go to an island, whose identity I do not reveal, for a week and a half of workshops. The idea is for the yearlings to bond as a group (now that they've had a few months to absorb the school culture) and for the masters to have a retreat and semi-vacation of their own, when they aren't leading workshops. For the past two years, I've gone along as well in order to help Charlie with his workshop. Here I am again.

There's always the logistical difficulty that because both the yearlings and the faculty are on retreat, I can't camp with either group. Thew first year I camped with Charlie, just the two of us, so he could train me. Last year I stayed with Allen's family, who were up for a vacation at the same time. Allen split his time between the masters' campsites and his family. I felt welcomed by Lo and their kids, but very much the outsider. I assumed that this year I'd have to do something else.

A few weeks back, I said as much to Allen.

"Why wouldn't you stay with us again?" he asked. This being Allen, the question was real, not rhetorical.

"Because I'm a student," I told him. "You can't just have students crashing in the middle of your family vacation all the time, that wouldn't work."

"Well, no, it wouldn't," he acknowledged, "but occasionally stopping by is ok, and the more you stop by, the more you cease to be just a student and the more you become family."

I stared at him, speechless. Allen and I aren't especially close, though we are solidly friends. I had not expected him to categorize me as a quasi-family member. He chuckled and bumped me on the arm with a fist, in a friendly way.

"You'll have to talk to Lo, obviously, but David's asked about you coming with us already."

And so here I am.

This year I've made an effort to get to know the yearlings a bit more, so I have some friends in the group, but there are some extra familiar faces on the Island, too. Evie and Jutta (pronounced like "you-tuh," with the accent on the first syllable) are both one-hit-wonders, so even though they're yearling they're also part of the graduating class and they've been attending group meetings with me every month. And Kayla and Nora are here.

As you might remember, neither of them went to the Island with us when we were yearlings together--Nora's mother wouldn't let her go and Kayla was still nursing Aidan. Both of them are on an extended track, spending more than the normal four years here, so the idea always was that they'd go to the Island with the group that would actually include their graduating group.

And that's what Nora is doing. This is her fourth year out of six, so almost half the current group of yearlings will graduate with her. Plus, she's 19, now, so she's about the same age as a lot of them.

Kayla is 15 and still has four more years, meaning her graduating group hasn't arrived yet. She could have waited until next year or the year after to go to the Island, when she'd be closer to normal college age. But she and the masters (including her mother) decided that it's better to go this year, when she has Nora--and me--with her. So here she is.

There were some logistical issues, as always. Between the 33 yearlings, the five masters (Greg stays home), and Nora and Kayla, we had to bring three school vans not just two. That meant it made sense for Lo and the kids to join the third school van rather than take their own vehicle, but that in turn meant their family couldn't stay after and have their vacation, as they usually do. What we ended up doing was putting all the students in two vans, with a faculty driver in each, and the three other masters, plus Lo and the kids and me and most of the tents and food and so on, in the third van, which went up a few days early. So Charlie and I pre-hiked all the trails we'd use for the workshop to check for any changes or issues and the Chapmans (Allen and his family) had some private time. I don't know what Karen, the third master in our van, did. I think she went rock-climbing.

Then the students came up, the workshops went well, and Charlie vanished to explore the Island on his own, as he usually does. Before he went, he gave me an assignment.

"I want you to find your favorite spot on the Island," he said.

Year 4: Part 2: Post 7: Seasons of Change

Every year I talk about how spring seems to always be just now arriving, from the first blooming of trees in March to the full greening of campus late in April or early May. I keep thinking "ok, now it's spring." And then the next week something else sprouts or blooms and I think it again.

I've noticed the same thing with how Aidan is growing. It seems like for years now he's been just starting to talk.

He said his first words when he was just over a year old, though I didn't actually hear him talk until months later. Then, when he was around two, he started using a lot more words, a lot more complex sentences, so it seemed like he had really started to talk. I think I posted about it. Now, he's just past three, and he's really talking, using more or less complete grammar and mostly correct pronunciation (except he still says "gweens" and "aminals" and such things).

Not that he talks often. He's kind of a quiet boy.

I don't babysit him much, but I understand that watching him is getting both easier and harder. Easier because he can follow rules and instructions and some sense of judgment, so you can tell him "stay where I can see you" and he will. Harder because he's also able to make innocent  mistakes or to disobey, so when he gets in trouble he can get in trouble seriously. And one minute he seems to know everything and be able to do everything, so you let him do things, and then the next minute he's obviously a toddler again.

All this, too, is a process that has been unfolding since he learned how to crawl.

Kayla hardly ever babysits him these days. She's busy being a student and being a teenager, and since he's been weaned completely for about a year now, there are whole days that go by when she hardly sees him. That's ok--the idea was always for Sadie to raise him.

During the day, Sadie is usually in the kitchens or off-campus at this restaurant she's started. He can't really go with her, so he gets passed around the various masters. Sometimes he'll even turn up in class and sit quietly in the back, coloring.

Actually, this past week we were talking about the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., in class--the anniversary of his death was April 4th--and Aidan jumped into the conversation.

"He didn't get killed because he was black," the child asserted. "He got killed because he was nice to all the people and mean people are scared of nice people so the mean people killed him."

Greg looked a bit startled, but recovered himself.

"Interesting point, Aidan," he said, speaking as he might to any other student. "Do you care to elaborate?"

Aidan put down his crayons and spoke up.

"A lot of people think Martin Lufer King was killed because he was black and because he was nice to black people on buses and stuff. But he was nice to white people and pink people and green people and purple people, too. Like, if they didn't have any money he would help them get money and if people were mean to them and told them to take out the garbage all the time he would say 'no, you have to be nice!' And that is why mean people killed him. Because sometimes mean people just want to be mean, so if you tell them not to be mean they kill you or put you in jail. So that's why it's important to be brave and nice, not just nice all by itself."

And he picked up his crayon again and went back to coloring.

"You are right, for the most part," said Greg. "Where did you learn all that?"

"I don't know. It might have been Steve Bees or somebody like that."

Steve is in American History of Dissent, of course, and he shrugged helplessly and looked completely dumbfounded. Aidan seemed completely unaware he'd said anything extraordinary. His drawing just looked like multicolored scribbles, no hint of a recognizable image at all.

The boy is starting to talk, but the thing is he hears everything and remembers most of it.

Year 4: Interlude 1

Hi, all, It's Daniel-of-2016 here.

Happy St. Patrick's Day (I'm writing this Thursday night), although as far as I know, none of my heritage is Irish. My last name sounds German, but I really don't know much about where my family is from. Perhaps I'll ask my parents, see if they know. Anyway, June's family isn't Irish, either, but we're celebrating anyway. Largely, I think, because June and I are bored and needed an excuse to do something different.

Not that “bored” means “having nothing to do,” you understand. We have a three year old. But we got bored with our typical version of busy and decided to do something else.

What we did was to invite over a pile of people and serve pizza (it was Pi Day earlier this week, after all) and green cupcakes and watch The Secret of Roan Innish.

The guest list—you’ve heard of most of them, Allen, Lo, Alexis, Kayla and Aidan—but Steve Bees wasn’t married thirteen years ago, so I haven’t told you about his wife and their two kids. I don’t know Sarah very well (this is not the same Sarah as the farm manager from school, obviously), since she’s seldom healthy enough to socialize much, but our families have spent a lot of time together because their younger son, Charlie (yes, named after my teacher) is just a year older than Carly and they play together. Their older son, Sean, is almost eight and is sort of an unofficial kid brother to Aidan, who was a Sprout with Alexis.

Anyway, we actually got take-out pizza, which I hardly ever do, but we made the cupcakes from scratch. Not that Carly actually cares what the cupcakes are as long as there is icing on top. She actually iced all of them for us, after we showed her how, while telling us this long, involved story about how she had supposedly had cupcakes in all different colors, “pink and gween and lellow and puple,” when she had a St. Patrick’s Day party when she was our age. She says that a lot, “when I was your age,” and I have friends who are convinced it’s evidence she has past life memories, but actually that’s what she does with phrases she hears but doesn’t understand. For a whole week she found a way to introduce almost every statement with the word “technically.” We’ve been following the primary coverage, so she’s started talking about “superdelegates.” She has no idea what any of these things mean.

I'm thinking of bumping back up to two posts per week, though I don't know if I'll have time. After all,I’ve started to teach workshops and things for the group of new students we have, plus a group of us are trying to get this interconnected group of businesses off the ground, and none of this is paid yet so I have to keep doing everything else I was doing for money before. Plus, as I said, I have a three year old. So, we’ll see.

I like to add some extra information about the narrative during these interludes, but nothing jumps out at me right now. Maybe it’s because I’m tired. My attention has been pre-empted by My Little Pony cartoons, “gween” icing, and the prospect of little naked seal babies beaching their cradles upon formerly abandoned islands.