Hugging the Whole Experience

This morning–chilly and an hour earlier than usual thanks to Daylight Savings–Seth and I made our way to the front of the school to help with the 5k run (and walk) a number of students had organized to benefit the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, a charity long supported by Laurel students.  As we congregated by the flagpole, along came several basketball players and several girls who had been in our production of Into the Woods. 

I smiled, so proud of them for showing up for their friends. That is so Laurel, so typical. Kids show up to support one another.

 It has been a weekend of triumph and disappointment; the show opened on Thursday and was spectacular–this from a drama teacher who always, always watches plays with a critical eye. During “No One is Alone,” a song sung late in Act II by the Baket to Jack and by Cinderella to Little Red, I may have wept a little in my seat, second row center. Truthfully, I may have fallen apart completely, tears running down my face, my hankie nowhere to be found.  Seth held my hand; he knew I was crying not only because the song was beautiful but also because the knowledge that my days at Laurel are ending swept over me in the darkened theatre. So much of my life has been spent in theatres with kids making plays–NMH, ETC, Chapin, and Laurel. I pulled it together by the curtain call, clapping hard and standing up to cheer on the performers.  

Walking home across the parking lot, as we passed the buses, Seth pointed to the sky. 

There were the planets, glowing beneath the moon.

“Will  I ever make plays again with kids?” I asked him.
The fact is right now I am working with the fourth graders on a play about Suffragettes and with a group of Middle Schoolers on a script I wrote more than 25 years ago at ETC called The Epic of the Magic Cloth, and though I have just started these two projects, the refrain, “this is the last, this is the last” beats in my brain. 

“You will,” he reassured me. “You will find kids. You will always find kids and make plays.”

On Friday,  I wrote to the middle and upper school students, urging them to see the production. I wanted everyone to know what an exceptional production it was.

Then, yesterday, our basketball team competed in the Final Four playoffs for our division. The opposing team brought their whole town to cheer on the Red Ladies.  We had a robust fan section, too, but we couldn’t compete with the loud high school boys heckling our spectacular girls. The girls played hard. They were formidable, showing nerves of steel at the foul tline.  Though we started strong, even keeping a slender lead, the fourth quarter didn’t go our way. We lost. Like that, the season was over. The bright meteor this team had blazed, extinguished. When I went to talk to them in the locker room, I was determined not to cry. I wanted so much for them to win, to go to State Finals on Friday. I had even  planned to dismiss Grades 6-12 at Noon or even cancel school, so more of us could go to Dayton to support them. But it didn’t go our way.

In the locker room, they were sitting, some in the locker cubbies, some clutching bags of ice, all of them woebegone.

“Hold your heads high, Gators. I’m so proud of you. You played hard until the very end. I could not love you more.”

Most of them were crying; they had played their hearts out, left nothing on the court.

“I’m a drama teacher,” I told them. “Have all your feelings; you have a right to feel how you feel, but know how loved you are; so many came out to support you. Seth and I love you.” I hugged Liv, smiled at all of them, worried that Tristan was sitting in the corner, wished I scoop them all up, hugged Bella, and left. I made it to the car before I cried.  “It’s the last game we’ll ever watch,” I bleated to my husband, his hair dyed green to support his beloved Gators.

“We’ll come back next year and watch them win States,” he comforted. “But you won’t be the head.”

No.  I won’t be the head.

A former student, Georgia, texted me. Georgia, one of the many exquisite actors it was my privilege to direct at Chapin and at ETC–Viola in Twelfth Night; Therese in Revolution. She does other creative things now, but when I close my eyes, I see her onstage in the Black Box signing in Johnny Belinda, or in the Assembly Room at 100 East End, a fiery instigator, leading a group of fish wives and peasants in a march on Versailles.

“Are you coming to our reunion?” she writes. “It’s our 25th.”

I shake my head, How could that be? 

“No,” I answer. “I’m retiring in June–too much going on.”

The little dots pulse on my phone screen,  “What’s the next chapter?” she taps, 

The million dollar question. What is the next chapter?  My life has been governed by a school calendar for as far back as I remember. I went right from college to boarding school to Chapin to Laurel, with ETC summers devoted to making plays for much of that time.  

What’s the next chapter? I tell people I am taking a gap year. Maybe that’s true. I don’t have another answer. I don’t have a crystal ball. I am a little afraid of not knowing, really, what’s next.

It was my friend, Paul Kassel, who taught with us at ETC, who taught me that In theatre, in life, you have to hug the whole experience.  Ups and downs; wins and losses.  I keep thinking of his sage adage.

I have had a great run at Laurel. Twenty-one  years.  Atticus was born on the twelfth day of my headship and will turn 21 a few weeks after we leave Cleveland.  I’m excited about having more time to write, to be with Seth, to be in Eagles Mere and NYC, and I wish I knew what the future will feel like. I  know—tempting though it may be—that I cannot skate over the hard parts of leaving. I am sad to leave a community I care for deeply, kids I love–and their families, colleagues who buoy me, the stained glass and leaded windows at Lyman Circle; the goldenrod and purple asters and the yurts at Butler; the traditions and idiosyncrasies specific to LS4G, beautiful Lyman house with the hobbit door where we have raised our family…I will miss all of it.

I notice the tiny shoots of the daffodils just peeking up through the snow tas Seth and I stand with Dave, our Athletic Director, pointing the way for the runners. We clap for each runner and for all the walkers, the sound more muted than yesterday’s huge fan base because we are wearing gloves and there are only three of us. It may be risky to poke up through the snow when we could still get a freeze, but the hyacinths and daffodils are doing it. The stems of our rocket rose bushes are flushed pale green. Time passes. They can’t fight time any more than I can.

Endings are hard. The days will lengthen and  pass, and soon, we will pack up the moving van and drive into our next chapter. For the next few weeks; I’ll keep teaching on Wednesdays and directing my two small productions; I’ll administer chocolate to Upper Schoolers; hug Seniors after their Senior Speeches; make plans for next year that I will not be here to see. Time will speed up, and Commencement will be here before I am ready to say goodbye. I know the school will thrive. And I know, too, that on the other side of this chapter that I know so well will be a new adventure. I am trying not to fear it. I wear a little bracelet made of colorful beads–it’s an intention bracelet to remind you of an intention you have set.  My word is  SURRENDER. Don’t fight time, I remind myself. 

I think of the lessons of the weekend that the girls have taught me through the play, through the playoff game, through this morning’s 5K.  Cheer on the people you love–actors, athletes, friends, colleagues. 

Remember:

“Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood. Others may deceive you…But no one is alone.” 

Cheer like a maniac–who cares if you make a spectacle of yourself?  Breathe, Say “I love you” and “ I’m proud of you” and “Thank you for showing up” as often as possible. Notice the signs of spring because the natural world knows how to do it—all of it—right.. Love the girls. End with your head high. Have all your feelings. Let your husband comfort you.  Stay present. Enjoy the sunshine. Even in endings, look for joy. Hug the whole experience.

A Day in the Life of a Headmistress

Long ago, before Laurel School meant anything other to me than a school cited by Carol Gilligan’s where she had conducted research in the late 1980’s, I went to see my mentor, Millie Berendsen, the long-serving Head of The Chapin School, who had hired me at 23. I told her  that I felt ready for a new challenge. I had served for a decade as a college advisor and even longer as an English and drama teacher at Chapin. Without even blinking, she nodded and said, “Yes, now, it’s time for you to be a head of school.”

I scoffed. “Millie,” I protested, “I have little children, I’m not even a division director! What do I know about running a school, ” Holding up her hand, she interrupted.

“Ann, if you wait for the fates to align, you’ll never do anything with your life. I knew you would be a head before you were twenty-five.  And do you want to know why?”

Stunned, I nodded.

“Because you are curious about every aspect of school life–you are as interested in the way we organize spaces for learning as you are in writing plays. Don’t you realize this is why I never let you stop teaching English? You will need your academic credibility. Didn’t you wonder why I insisted you teach in all three divisions? I wanted you to learn as much as you could about how a school runs. And, then there’s the summer program you and Seth direct; there, you have done so many of the things you will need to do as a Head.”

I nodded, again, mute. Millie 

“And there’s another thing–”

I wondered what that could be, why this woman I admired so deeply thought I could be a school leader.

“You’ve got stamina–like a mule.”  

I burst out laughing. Here, I had been hoping she would tell me I was brilliant or smart or great with people, but, instead, she compared me to a mule.

I am still  curious about every aspect of school life, and in more than twenty years, I have not been bored–not for a single day. Headship has held my interest, held my heart and I do, typically, have a great deal of stamina. Some friends occasionally refer to me as an Energizer Bunny because I keep going–at least until 10 p.m.. At my best, I can work hard for long periods of time–I attribute that skill to a life in the theatre; everyone works hard when a cast and crew  are preparing to open a show–tech weeks demand concentration and perseverance.  And, opening a show is a lot like running a school–a new season every year; many in the cast return in their roles,  but there are always new players, too, and new designs to implement and money to raise and  stories to tell. 

One of the best things about being a headmistress is that every day is different–some are chocker-block full of meetings and obligations; other days offer the chance to walk the school and pop into classes. And there are those glorious moments  when a meeting is unexpectedly canceled and I can talk with adults and children spontaneously.. To lead a school committed to our mission and values and to witness children learning under the direction of our superb faculty are the greatest privileges of headship. 

Right out of college, at 21, I  taught at Northfield Mount Hermon, a large coed New England boarding school, whose founder, D.L. Moody, based his school’s philosophy on the mantra, “Head, heart, hand.” I have always loved the wholeness of that approach.

“Surely you don’t still use the term “headmistress,” Ann?”  a colleague asked recently, lifting her eyebrows.

“Oh, I do go by headmistress,” I answered.  “I prefer it. I’ve reclaimed it.” 

While Head of School is the more conventional contemporary title for those who lead independent schools–the modern connotations of the term mistress understandably unsavory–I grew up on a steady diet of school stories with headmistresses at the helm: in Little Men, Jo March opens her own school; in The Chalet School series, Madge, orphaned, founds her own school in the Swiss Alps some decades after Jennie Prentiss founded Laurel. I adored the headmistress of my own girls’ school, which I attended for thirteen years, So, some years back, I reclaimed the more archaic title. Headmistress names me as a the lead  teacher–the person charged with guiding the educational direction of the school. And, for me, the term allows me to include my full self in my identity–l my mind, my spirit, my love of teaching, and my heart.

From the moment  I was invited to lead Laurel School, teaching  was non-negotiable  The head of my own girls’ school was a teaching head, as were all the heads I’ve worked for, so it never occurred to me that I would not teach. Most years, I’ve  taught ninth grade English or drama or both; more recently, after I earned my MFA in Creative Nonfiction during Covid, I’ve taught a pass/fail class in creative writing for all ninth graders. Teaching reminds me of the fundamental purpose of our school: to inspire our girls. 

Teaching even a single section reminds me that no matter how often I have taught Antigone, I need to prepare meaningful lessons, design assessments, grade papers, write comments and conduct conferences. Teaching keeps me  humble and reminds me why I lead. My teaching schedule tethers me to the academic calendar that students and faculty live by. It is through teaching that I come to know the students who populate my stories.Teaching also helps me to  stay attuned to the needs of our faculty. Since the pandemic, we are all aware of the ways in which the educational landscape has shifted–children need more now than they once did. Our focus on social and emotional wellbeing as a springboard for academic achievement has never been more urgent. Teaching immerses me in the day-to-day life of our school and lends a credibility to my work with prospective parents, alums and donors. The word educate derives from the Latin “ to lead out,’ and I have always imagined teachers as a joyful group of Pied Pipers, leading children in a joyful dance as they construct knowledge and make sense of the world. I am glad to have retained my identity as a teacher for more than 40 years.

Those of you on social media may know that I have kept an informal and irregular record of my various headmistressing endeavors on Facebook. Often, I post a recap of the day or the week.  Looking back over those entries, I smile, so filled with gratitude about our students’ triumphs, our faculty’s incomparable talents and care, our traditions and rituals that connect one generation to another–Senior Speeches, Song Contest, Laurel rings. I have led Laurel for longer than any of our students have been alive. I have had the privilege of watching legions of students grow to adulthood.

Yet, I still remember my incredulity when Millie suggestd, blithely, that I become a Head of School. I vividly recall those first bewildering weeks of moving into Lyman House, getting uniforms for Miranda and Cordelia, cramming the ninth grade summer reading books, tucking baby Atticus into a bassinet in my office, learning everything about our school–from where the light switches are in every room to the norms and sacred traditions. How lucky we all were to be welcomed so warmly by Laurel.  Seth and I have raised our family here, have learned what it is to love a community deeply, and to embark on our next adventure while the school is thriving and ready to welcome a new leader.  We have felt so fortunate, so grateful, that Laurel has been such an important chapter in our lives.   

My mentor was right; she knew long before I did how much I would love being a headmistess..

Our Town, Memory and An Everything

One morning,I slept later than usual, then stood at the stove, stirring oatmeal with a red spatula in my right hand and holding a new book of poetry in my left. I had read about Joe Elliot’s new poetry collection, An Everything, in the class notes of my college alumnae magazine and immediately ordered the book and wrote to Joe. Like me, he is an English teacher. He lives in Brooklyn, and I hope, in my next chapter, that we might up for coffee and swap stories about the last four decades.

In my mind’s eye, Joe is wearing a flannel shirt and overalls. He’s playing George Gibbs in the production of Our Town that I directed my Senior year. We are doing a final run-through in the squash court of Davenport College, built in the sub-basement. It was a little black box theatre, and it was freezing in the winter of 1982. Joe’s scenes with Emily, whose real name is also Emily, are the ones I see whenever I return to Thorton Wilder’s play–a text I know almost by heart, having taught it often and directed it twice over the past 40+ years. 

Seth, my husband now of almost 40 years, had helped his roommate, Russell, transform the squash court into a theatre some years before. The four walls were painted black, and they had suspended a pipe grid from the ceiling. It, however, lacked heat, and we rehearsed in January and February.  When Editor Webb returned from giving a speech at Hamilton College, he told the milkman that it was so cold that  students’ ears were freezing off, and we all laughed in grim recognition. We hopped around between scenes, wore extra layers, huddled near an ancient space heater my mother lent us, watched our breath form tiny clouds. I wonder now why I didn’t rehearse somewhere else–surely, there were warmer venues, but the squash court was where we worked to bring the play to life.

It was Our Town at the boys’ school that saved me the autumn after my older brother died. Though I was the lowly Woman in the Balcony, inquiring of Editor Webb if there was much drinking in Grover’s Corners, the production offered me a community, a sense of belonging. Through theatre, I discovered purpose. I’d always loved acting and being in plays, but in Mr. Worth’s Our Town, it was as if Thorton Wilder, himself, was speaking to me. Sitting quietly in my chair in the cemetery, I listened over and over to Emily wondering why people couldn’t appreciate life “every, every minute.”  As the Stage Manager, Tommy Woodward, explained what grief meant in Act III, I wondered if, someday, my own sorrow would quiet down.

In high school, I did play after play, almost always playing character roles–only now, do I approach the age of the elderly parts I seemed destined for. Though I longed to play an ingenue, I reveled in the idea of being someone else–anyone else. In particular, I longed to be someone who had not just lost her brother, a someone who wasn’t always the “good girl” I felt I had to be in my family, in school, off stage. In college, working with a children’s theatre for two summers, I discovered that I was a director and a teacher, not really an actress after all. I fell in love with the process of shaping a production, encouraging actors to take risks, to really talk and listen on stage, to bring a play to life. 

Junior year, I directed Ah, Wilderness! in the Davenport College common room, using the same techniques I had honed in children’s theatre, ones I would use in every production I directed. First, we built the ensemble, came to know one another, played. Only then would the script follow. The formula worked, though some actors initially rolled their eyes at the start of the process–eventually, I helped the actors in our plays learn to trust each other–on stage and off. 

The summer following Ah, Wilderness!, Michael, who had played the father, died in a car accident–a memory that brought my brother’s death rushing back. To process my double grief, I decided to direct Our Town. 

Artie, who had also been in Ah, Wilderness!, said he would read only for the Stage Manager, and I was irritated until I heard him bring Grover’s Corners to life. He was exceptional. Emily and 

Joe and Artie were all seniors like me–I think Betsy–Mrs. Gibbs–and Nick–Editor Webb–and my friend, Ed, were seniors, too. Somehow, the production felt all the more tender because we would leave the lovely Yale campus in a few months and head into the unknown. Grovers’ Corners felt a little bit like a very chilly Eden. That production gave me Deborah, now one of my closest friends. Bob, whom I had known in another lifetime from back home on the Main Line, played Doc Gibbs. Tom, a boy on whom I had a crush, played Sam Craig. The play took shape.

Emily and George were magic. As we watched their two characters fall in love, we held our breath–they were innocent and earnest, every line landing exactly as it ought to land. Those iconic scenes–doing homework on ladders or drinking strawberry phosphates at Mr. Morgan’s  soda fountain–are hard to do without tilting into cliché, but they never did–each line was a discovery, each moment of connection filled with wonder. It was as if the two of them had taken up residence in a private snow globe, existing out of time, a tiny world the two of them made that we glimpsed. Directing them meant getting out of their way, allowing them to breathe life into Wilder’s Emily and George, as surely as if they had been born to the roles, to the act of falling in love. 

We were very excited when Miss Isabel Wilder, Thornton’s sister, agreed to attend the production, and we were deflated when she pronounced my choice of having the ensemble carry dead Emily in on their shoulders in Act III ghoulish…I did feel vindicated when this year’s production on Broadway made the same choice. We recovered from Miss Wilder’s disdain, went on with our lives, graduated from college. The soap bubble memory of the play’s triumph floated into memory–iridescent, lovely, and the years spun by. Artie and I remain dear friends, and Emily and Deborah and I went to Europe the summer Our Town, sealing our friendship. Others from the cast cross my inbox from time to time. Everyone knows I love the play. When Tom Lake was published, lots of pals from college asked if I had read it. Did I love it? I did. This fall, Seth and I went to see the Broadway production–it was fine, but beyond the swath of lanterns that stretched like the constellations into the audience, which I loved, I was underwhelmed.  Our own production, decades ago, was imbued with so much love that it’s the one that has my heart.

I had lost track of Joe until I read about his new volume of poetry and stood, devouring his poems, marveling at past and present, making oatmeal as Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs might have at their coal stoves. Joe’s poems are worlds made of words–city life, middle-aged life, accidents, cruise ships. They drew me in. I read and read, trying to reconcile the brilliance of this poet past 60 with that boy in a cold squash court, tossing an imaginary baseball and bumping into an invisible Miss Corcoran, stuttering his love for Emily, weeping at her grave. He is a man who makes worlds with words–isn’t that what plays and poems do?  And, teachers, we use words to make worlds, too. We grow older. We carry all our selves with us.  

Somewhere in My Memory...Gingerbread Feelings, Winter Concerts and School

The lights dim. A group of singers file onto the risers, ready. With her back to us, the music teacher begins to conduct, elbows high. The girls follow her direction, intent. Notes float through the gymnasium, transformed this evening by the addition of a stage lined with white poinsettias.

It is the evening of Laurel’s Winter Concert, an ancient tradition in our school. I stand in the back of the gym, leaning against the bleachers that retract into the wall for events like this. I gaze at our students in their formal uniform–white oxford shirts, hunter green skirts, and new this year with my blessing, a navy blazer with the school seal on the left pocket for the Juniors and Seniors. The girls’ hair gleams in the theatrical lighting. Later in the evening, I will slip into their circle make when they surround the audience to sing Somewhere in My Memory. I’ll clasp hands with Kellan and Ellie, looking atround these girls I love so deeply, smiling across at Reese, teasing another that she doesn’t know the song’s lyrics. But in this moment, at the beginning, I am thinking about all the winter concerts I have known.

Almost every historically girls’ school has some version of a winter concert.  As a schoolgirl, at Agnes Irwin, I stood in a royal blue choir robe, waiting for the first chords of Adestes Fideles.  Music isn’t quite the same as theatre, but it was still a performance, and, in the moments before our cue, I felt the same flicker of nerves and anticipation, my hands clutching an electric candle. In the New York City girls’ school where I taught for 20 years, there was also lovely concert right before the winter vacation, too. As Head of the Drama Department,my job was to remind the singers to smile, to articulate their final consonants, and to stage manage the event. Girls processed through the audience, holding candles, singing songs that reflected the themes of the season.

Winter Concerts remind me of the power of community, the value of coming together to share songs and pieces some have worked all semester to learn. They are celebrations, culminations, a tradition that links girls’ schools, that connects graduates across the generations and reminds us that we are connected across time, across distance, throughout our lives.

Each year, in my Welcome, I remind the audience not to clap until Silent Night is really over. 

“If you don’t know,” I explain, “stay quiet.”

At the end of my twenty-first Winter Concert at Laurel, the choir will hold electric candles as they sing Silent Night and make their way from the gym up the stairs to the balcony–two flights–allowing their sweet voices to fade away in the utter dark. If all goes well, no one will clap prematurely, and the lights will stay off until the lyrics grow too faint to hear.

We are at the edge of vacation. People are fried–kids, teachers, parents. In my experience that the closer we get to a break, the more unhinged people become–in part because we are all supposed to be wrapped in some sort of Hallmark haze of joy, which can feel elusive. Why is it just cold and wet when we yearn for snow and cocoa? The rhythm of our days changes as we approach the break. Older students stress about exams. Parties–endless parties–punctuate the last week, with  too much sugar for everybody.  Final projects are due. Secret Snowflakes require late night runs to Target.  Anticipation makes the little ones cranky–they know a change in routine is looming. Teachers–including me–fret that we didn’t get as much done as we’d hoped during first semester. Parents manage holiday preparations–perhaps organizing travel or buying or wrapping gifts or participating in over-the-top Elf on the Shelf antics or imploring other parents in their class to donate to the holiday fund for the teachers. Some in our community manage loss and sorrow, always worse, counterpointed against a cultural expectation to feel merry and bright. In fact, most in our whole school community could use a nap and a host of useful elves of our own to correct papers, soothe nerves, make dinner, and do all the things we don;’t have time to do.

And yet. The end of the term does finally arrive. On the day before  break, we convene for our Snowflake Assembly. We gather in the gym–all 600 children and the faculty and staff–22-month olds perched in the too big folding white chairs that we will use at Winter Concert and at tomorrow’s Song Contest–an alumnae tradition. The toddlers wriggle in festive holiday sweaters, clutching their jingle bells for their big moment–shaking the bells as the 6th grade plays Jingle Bells, The older girls give us a preview of Winter Concert–a few songs and instrumental pieces. Our fourth graders play their ukuleles and sing.  I read a story–as I always do. There’s a slow-motion snowball fight performed by the Upper School acting class and the choir–this year, the faculty make a surprise appearance, and the crowd goes wild as Senora–our longest-serving and miuch-loved Spanish teacher–prevails, still standing at the end of intense combat.

The pièce de resistance is the Snowflake Ballet. After I introduce them as the finale, the Second graders rise, and, at the direction of two classmates, smooth their filmy silvery skirts, straighten their  white “snowflake” collars, take a deep breath, and float to the stage. Each small group has choreographed their own dance to the music of Debussy. They are well-prepared by their teacher, the remarkable Ida Porris, whose high standards and unwavering belief in her students’ abilities mean that even the most truculent child is temporarily transformed into a ballerina–graceful, poised, elegant. I squint at the back of each child’ head, having used a million bobby pins, tiny amounts of hair gel and just a little spray to cajole slippery 7-year-old hair into buns with hairnets–it’s a ritual. I am crazed about having every performer’s hair out of her face. I was tickled to be invited, one last time, to run a hair station at 7:30 a.m..  The girls sparkle–literally, because they have glitter on their arms and necks. At the end, as they form a circle, blowers roar into life, and flakes fall from high above the stage. The toddlers in the front row are transfixed.   

We end the Flake (as I call it) with Let There be Peace on Earth. And that’s when I have to use my hankie surreptitiously to wipe my eyes.   It is a truth universally acknowledged in my family that I–as well as most of my relatives–cry easily–and it’s worse at moments like these when my heart overflows with love for these children, for this school.

Worried that Winter Concert will finish me off and I might end up a puddle on the floor, I take precautions and script my remarks–unheard of–to forestall my weepiness. I tell the audience about my very first Winter Concert–it was in a church in 2004. A blizzard raged, and towards the end, the police arrived, demanding that I stop the concert. A parent had parked in the drive-thru window of the pharmacy next door. The police insisted that had to move his car. 

“Can we wait till the end of the concert?” I  asked.

“No ma’am,” the stern officer frowned, snow on his navy shoulders. “It has to be now.”

I do not like to interrupt performances for any reason. I looked at the church, full of our students and families. In passing, I wondered why we were in a church at all–wasn’t that hard for our Jewish or Muslim students? Or for others for a host of reasons? Squaring my shoulders and drawing myself up to my full 5’2”, I marched myself down the aisle and tapped the revered choir director on his shoulder, explaining the situation as clearly and calmly as I could. The guilty parent fled. 

Last night’s audience laughs at this tale. I thank them for coming, remind them to silence their cell phones, and make my way back to Seth, my husband, who is waiting by the light board, having warned audience members (as he has done for many years) to be careful crossing over the plastic “speed bump” that covered the lighting cables.

Seth, my personal illuminator, has placed a record number of inflatables in the front yard this year for the Laurel children. I think there are 40.  It’s the last time, so why not go for broke? More is more. When the inflatables–Olaf, a huge swan, a fire engine, a menorah, a Kwanzaa kinara, a minion, Mickey Mouse–lean or collapse, it looks like Christmas has thrown up on our lawn. This is Seth’s labor of love.  He has been repairing and patching and replacing motors and driving stakes into the ground for the last two weeks. His hands ache and his knees aren’t doing so well either, but the yard glows, and the little ones love Mr. Orbach’s blow ups. He puts his arm around me, and the concert begins. 

Another Silent Night memory floats up as I listen to The Skater’s Waltz. Perhaps it was my second year as Headmistress. I had moved the concert back to school, the church simply a bridge too far for me as a fierce advocate for belonging. A group of Upper School girls appeared at my door.

“May we talk to you, Ms.Klotz?” they asked politely. I was still so new; I wasn’t yet Ms. K or even AVK, which they all call me now–allegedly behind my back, except they know I know.

They perched on the couch.

“We really love Silent Night,” one began. I am sad that I cannot remember who the girls were–the moment is so clear, but the faces are gone.

“And I’m Jewish,” another added,

“Me, too,” chimed in the third.

“And we know it’s a Christian song and everything, but we all really love it, and it’s a tradition at Laurel–”

“So will you please not change it?” they chorused.

It’s a tradition at Laurel and we love it. Traditions matter. Newcomers don’t always understand why–it took me a long time to understand Song Contest–another Laurel tradition–but I knew enough to know that Silent Night mattered. I was moved that students who were not Christian valued the song and its place in our Winter Concert. I was proud of them for being brave enough to approach a headmistress they did not yet know well, brave enough to share what mattered to them.

“Do you think you are speaking for the majority of the Upper School?” I asked.

“We know we are,” they nodded.

“Well, then, Silent Night stays,” I said.

Last night’s concert was exceptional. It’s true that Let There Be Peace on Earth got me again, and I sobbed a bit, but at the very end, as the choir processed up the stairs, the gym fully dark, I wrapped myself in decades of memories–Agnes Irwin, Chapin, Laurel.  I thought about the privilege of spending my life in girls’ schools, with remarkable students. I allowed myself to note the contrasts of this season–what’s hard and what’s magical. I imprinted the memory of this particular gorgeous evening on my heart, to cherish next December when I, for the first time in more than 40 years, will not have a school concert to attend as vacation begins.

I am glad I listened to those wise girls in my office many years ago. I love Silent Night too.

Glimpses into Headship: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

In the days leading up to a break, I am fond of noting that “the wheels come off the bus.” We are all ready for a break, crave a respite, and sometimes, the last few days preceding a vacation lead the whole school to feel a little frantic.

I speak with a colleague several states away, who asks, “Is it always hard? Leading schools? It doesn’t seem to get any easier.”  We are talking on the phone; she is a few years into her first headship.

I pause.

“Yes,” I think, “it’s always hard,” but that seems a little bleak to say to someone who is looking for hope.

I remind her that school leadership is hard because there is always stuff to manage: unhappy children or dissatisfied parents or disappointment around college admissions or mental health crises or a faculty that is being asked to do too much or, or, or–and, often, it’s all of the above at the same time. And, and, and. The list of hard moments, tricky situations, challenges grows daily, and the world is hard, too. In the past five years alone–and she has not yet been a head for five years–things have gotten a great deal harder. We have learned more about the climate crisis; deep political polarization has fractured our nation; we have had a racial reckoning; we have lived through a global pandemic; we’ve faced backlash for initiatives that center all children in our schools. While we know more about the ways in which kids learn, we also know more about the ways in which they suffer. Phones are a constant–for kids and for adults. Anxiety seeps into school life. Parents need more from us; our faculty need help–they are not all trained as counselors, but kids trust them and confide in them. Differentiation within a single classroom takes time and training. Every school leader I speak with wishes for more staff trained to work with kids who are struggling in all kinds of ways. I talk a great deal about integrity and honor and principles, but my students do not always see those values reflected on the world stage. Many of the girls in my school wonder about their worth and value in our nation. The world is a lot, and schools are tiny microcosms of the world.

While I try to remember that every generation has had its challenges–we used to hide under our desks as if that would protect us from a nuclear bomb, and our bank had a bomb shelter in the basement–the ones we have  navigated recently in schools are real for each of us living them and leading through them.  

And, I say to my friend, trying to avoid any kind of pat reassurances that smack of toxic positivity, “We do have choices about how to lead.” Early in my headship, I used to worry I was somehow attracting crises in my school. Was there something about my temperament that invited calamity?  My style in those early years was “Wait for the other shoe to drop.” I was constantly on edge, hyper-vigilant, prepared to fly into action, to fix whatever was awry. We’d get through one complicated situation, and I was certain another would follow. I was not wrong, but it took me some time to realize that my worry would not change what might happen, and my agitation about what might come was good neither for my school nor for me.

But I come by worry naturally.  In first grade, I was cast as Chicken Little in the class play, scurrying onto the stage in a yellow leotard, replete with tailfeathers, to proclaim, “The sky is falling; the sky is falling.” This starring role foreshadowed that later “waiting for the shoe to drop” mindset. Charged with keeping the school safe, I imagined I was Cassandra on the ramparts of Troy, foretelling doom. I was ready to stand between my school and disaster, to imagine, wrongly, that I could both invite or forestall disaster and that it was my job to fix every mess.  Paradoxically, I was simultaneously without all power and all-powerful

Fortunately, a wise therapist friend, gently chided me one day when I was spinning. 

“Whoa,Calamity Jane,” she smiled. “You must think you have a whole lot of power to make so much bad stuff happen. Or to fix it all when stuff goes wrong. You know you don’t really have that much power, don’t you?”

Busted. I stopped my rant, grinned back at her.  “Ego?” I asked.

“Big time,” she answered, “Are you a witch or a headmistress? Aren’t you doing the best you can?”

“I am,” I gulped, embarrassed by the tears that sprang to the back of my eyes.

“Ease up, girlfriend,” she continued.  “Stuff happens. Sometimes, it’s really hard, but set yourself free of the idea that you can control any of it. You’re just not that important.”

We are just not that important, Trust a friend to both cut you down to size and give you permission to be human.I let my shoulders drop away from my ears. My worry about my own inadequacy was an odd form of ego.

A burden lifted. We can plan, implement systems, hire great people, do our best. But we are not all-powerful. Believing in our schools helps me manage–I love the school I lead and the people with whom I work. I believe in our mission and values. And, when I’m overtired, it’s easy to revert back to that grooved track that characterized the beginning of headship. Awake in the middle of the night, I fret, believing that I have caused the demographic dip in Northeastern Ohio, that I’m the reason a parent is unhappy about our approach to homework, or a neighbor is frustrated at the way our students park, that I am supposed to solve all of it. But when the sky lightens, these days I am more apt to remember that I am not the Great and Powerful Oz–he was a sham anyway. Dorothy ultimately learned that  courage, love, smarts and trust were what would help her–what helps all of us–to weather the inevitable storms.

I explained to my colleague on the phone that one benefit of my long tenure in my school is that I’m aware of my own tendency to catastrophize when tired. I am also more aware of the rhythms of the school year, the vicissitudes. Everyone gets cranky in the days leading up to vacation; the long, dark winter months are trying; being seen and affirmed by leaders is one way to improve morale for faculty and staff. Celebrating little triumphs can’t fix big, hard things, but looking for what’s good can help–there’s a balance between constant gloom and doom and toxic positivity. People are allowed to complain and it’s not my job to smooth away all the discontent–some of it is justified. Spending time with students reminds me why I chose to lead schools in the first place. And I have to be deliberate about not sinking down into my “lowest common denominator” self when it’s easier to whine than consider solutions. Cookies or chips can’t solve everything, but can improve a late afternoon meeting. These days, I try not to “borrow trouble,” as my mother would say, but to breathe through the tough stuff, secure in the knowledge that my team and I will manage–together. I am not Superwoman or Elphaba or Athena or a victim or a tumble-weed. I’m Ann–human, pretty good at solving problems, administering chocolate, and trusting that we will move through tricky situations and get to the other side. I am also better when I sleep and write and do chair yoga, but that doesn’t always happen, and I have to resist beating up on myself when one of my self-care rituals doesn’t happen the way I’d hoped. These days, I am better at interrupting the earlier musings of the tired, working mom-head of school, who worried that everything, absolutely everything, was both her responsibility and her fault. I’m better at remembering that I’m not that powerful.

My friend and I talk a little more. I listen, offer some encouragement but honor her feelings–her work is hard, her school is tough, her board is a challenge.

“Be gentle with yourself,” I counsel. “You are doing the best you can.” 

“Yes,” she answers. “I am.”

“And you don’t have to stay,” I remind her. “Maybe there’s another chapter, another adventure?”

“Maybe,” she says, unconvinced. I tread softly here, wanting to validate her struggles and to suggest that she has agency, that there are possibilities. When we know we have choices, sometimes we feel less stuck. 

We hang up.

A few days later, I am up in the middle of the night, worried about the weather and whether or not I will have to call a snow day. I think about my friend, about the fine line between taking responsibility and being humble. I decide to wear my red shoes to school. They make me feel brave. We are all Dorothy, aren’t we, finding our way, learning as we go?  Maybe I’ll send a tiny pair to my friend, too, to remind her that she has everything she needs within. We all do.

Living the Mission & Values: Ring Ceremony, 2024

Ceremonies and traditions link one generation to another in our schools, reminding students that they are part of something larger than themselves. At Laurel, each November, the Junior Class receives their school ring, a Laurel branch engraved into a flat surface.  They ask a member of the faculty to speak, and this year, they asked me.  Here are my remarks, excerpted—they were too long and the whole Upper School was so patient. What a privilege to address them. 

What a privilege to be invited to speak with you this morning–in a year of lasts for me, this is a first.  Thank you.

Because I will not be with you next year, I want to use my time consider how the mission and the values of our school link to the Laurel ring, to the history of our school and to women’s history in this country. And I hope to inspire each of you to think about how you choose to live while you are members of the Laurel community and long after you leave these dear walls.  

Though  I am not an alum, I proudly wear a Laurel ring. In the winter of 2012, a Laurel Junior, Jessica, died in a sledding accident, and her class and I walked through many sad months together, grieving. The whole school grieved.  I think that’s when the candy in my office became a real thing–it gave those Juniors who became Seniors a reason to stop by, to sit and talk and cry and be with me and with each other. We made a garden across from the quiet study room and dedicated it to Jess in the fall of what would have been her Senior year. The days slipped by, and soon it was Last Chapel, the day before Jess’ classmates’ Commencement. At the very end, when I was about to ask everyone to stand to sing the alma mater, the Senior class President said, “Ms. Klotz, give me the microphone.”

I said, “Emily, we’ve given all the awards–”

She reached for the mic, and, on behalf of her class, presented me with this ring that I wear every day.  Your class, whom I love so deeply, reminds me of that class.

Jessica’s legacy has been carried forward by her classmates. They remember her mane of bright blonde hair, her quick laugh, her talent as a gymnast, her love of the outdoors. They try not to take their lives for granted because they remember a classmate whose life was far too short. They are turning thirty this year, and Jess is frozen at 17. I remember turning her ring on this day thirteen  years ago. We do not forget those we love.  

When I leave Laurel, with this ring on my left pinky, I will carry all my Laurel classes and all of you with me into my next chapter.  

We don’t know what we will remember when we have left these dear walls--but this ring is a talisman, a symbol of the time we have spent here and a call to action for how we choose to live.  Someday, you may run into someone in a restaurant or in another country, and you might look down and see this ring on her finger–a connection across generations. On this day, you look both backwards and forwards.  

I have told you Jess’ story because my own Laurel ring is a symbol of how love endures; it reminds me to be the best headmistress I can be, to hold myself accountable, to lead with our mission and values in mind. 

128 years ago–1896–Jennie Prentiss, at 26 years old, founded our school in her living room, inspired by the audacious belief that girls deserved an education equal to that available to boys. In 1896, few women had the right to vote in this country, though women had been working for suffrage even before the Seneca Falls convention in 1848. Abolition and suffrage were both movements that sought to give legal rights to Black people and to citizens.  The 19th amendment would finally pass in 1920, 24 years after our school was founded. The right to vote for people of color was not guaranteed–nationwide–until the voting rights act of 1964. In 1964, I was three years old. Why tell you that? Because the freedoms we take for granted have not been in existence for very long–freedoms are not guaranteed. 

To be sure, at the beginning, Laurel enrolled only affluent, white, Protestant girls–now I am proud that we have broadened our definition of who belongs at Laurel–we have made a Laurel education accessible to many students whose families could not afford it. Even the cost of the ring you receive today is now built into our fees now because the ring  is an important symbol of belonging here, and I wanted everyone to be able to have one.

Laurel is not paradise. Your workload is heavy; our expectations are high. Some days, it rains, or the candy jar is empty. I stand on the other side of 13 years in my own all-girls school–I was a lifer–and I have spent 41 years teaching and leading in historically all-girls schools–I say historically because we now have a better understanding of gender than we once did.  I urge you to  appreciate the privilege of being in a school that takes you seriously, that cares more about what you think than what you look like, that respects and celebrates your intersectional  identities, that encourages you to use your voice, that is designed for you to dare to fail gloriously–which you know is one of my mantras.  Not every space you occupy will. Sexism is alive and well in America.

Back to History–in particular, women’s history.  

A few weeks ago, Seth and I went to see Suffs, a musical on Broadway about the suffrage movement. For women to get get  the vote took generations, and along the way, there were big divisions and disagreements. It’s not for nothing that the word rage is part of suffrage. Women were mad at men for their refusal to include women as full citizens; they were mad at each other because of competing priorities and strategies.  There were egos involved and a woman riding on a white horse down Pennsylvania avenue, and people excluded and delays and hunger strikes. There were cliques and fights and moments of triumph and despair. It was a long struggle.  But the women kept marching, literally and metaphorically. They did not give up. When you are discouraged or feel hopeless, I want you to remember the story of suffrage.  I want you to keep marching–metaphorically–through your lives fighting for what you believe in.

Today, white women earn 84 cents for every dollar earned by a man–for Black and Brown women, it’s less than that. When I graduated from high school, women earned 58 cents on every dollar a man earned–so, in 45 years, we have gained 26 cents.  

The equal rights amendment has ever passed in America.  

Has there been progress? Certainly. Many more women now hold political office, work as CEOs, doctors, lawyers, athletes. Women have achieved great heights.  We should celebrate that progress and know that it is not complete–the success of women, people of color and LGBTQ+ people is never assured.

Has enough progress been made? I don’t think so. As a feminist–one who advocates for women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes, I reject patriarchy–a structure in which men hold authority simply because they are men–and I am dismayed by and baffled by the way misogyny persists–misogyny means hatred of women–and it’s not only men who practice misogyny–plenty of women are threatened by other women, too. 

Patriarchy and misogyny persist because many fear what would happen if power shifted, if the status quo were to be upended, But what if we chose circles rather than pyramids to represent success? 

I want patriarchy and misogyny to make you mad, to inspire you to create structures and systems  that are just and equitable. Progress is slow–change requires effort, persistence, resolve, resilience and hope. 

Sometimes, we look around, and realize we’ve moved backwards and then have to gather ourselves to fight the same fight over again. That feels unfair. But the mission and the values of our school call us  to carry as we climb, to strive towards ideals,  to be sure that the quietest voices are encouraged to speak, to listen deeply and to get on with the hard work of bettering the complicated world.

My charge to you is to live the mission and the values. That’s a tall order. When you slip your ring on your finger and invite the people you love to turn it, you are making a pledge–not to the school, but to yourself–to fulfill your promise and to better your world, to commit to build a just and inclusive world–because the world needs you–all of you. Urgently.

Now, my hopes for you–Class of 2026–and, for all of you:

Remember that few people are all bad or all good–most are a combination.

When you get tired, ask a friend to tap in, give you a chance to breathe and rest and get back in the game.  

Keep your sense of humor and your humility, even as you do great things.  

Do not be afraid of your own vulnerability; do not be afraid to ask for help.

When you speak, do so with confidence and conviction, and be sure to share the air-time; 

Remember that collaboration takes more work than doing flying solo, but the results of true collaboration are often stronger.

Don’t take relationships for granted, and remember, too, the people here who will support you and help you for the rest of your lives because we share this school. 

I trust you will lead the school brilliantly next year and welcome Ms. Breen, so that she, too, can come to love all of you as I have. She will need you to teach her about things like Laurel bananas and the Flower Ceremony, and Green & White day and the Snowflake Assembly.  

Try not to wish away your time in pursuit of the golden carousel ring we call college.

Take  time to really look at one another, to appreciate the small moments, to see each other.

Look around at your class.  You are Laurel.  Slow down. Breathe.  Once it ends, we cannot get this moment back.

When you wear your ring, remember that a ring is a circle of love, unbroken. Laurel School wraps you in a circle of love; I do, too. Though I will be far away in Pennsylvania or New York City, remember that the same sky stretches above us, the same stars.

Reflections on Headship: Bring on the Muffins!

In Manhattan last weekend, my husband and I went to see Our Town on Broadway, a play I have loved since I was fourteen when, though I yearned to be Emily, I played The Woman in the Balcony in a production at the boy’s school. Since then, I’ve directed the play twice and taught it many times. I know the script almost by heart.  In Act III, when Emily chooses to return to Grover’s Corners for her 12th birthday, she finds the act of revisiting her life excruciating. She asks the Stage Manager: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?” and he answers,  “No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.”  

What prevents us from attending, from noticing our lives as we live them? Everything. As the head of an exceptional independent school, I consider my own life and the lives of my colleagues. A million excuses float up as to why I do not stop to notice, to reflect on life as I am living it. We heads of school are busy, over-scheduled, over-obligated humans. We manage our families and ourselves–as well as the lives that make up a complex organization–children, parents, faculty, staff, alums, neighbors, trustees. We juggle meetings and travel and long to-do lists and hard conversations; we think strategically and plan agendas and consider our market position and our value proposition and schedule our own children’s orthodontia appointments. We care for elderly parents or face empty nesting or organize who will pick up which child from soccer or play practice. We support those in our community who suffer. We referee complicatied dynamics, figure out who will do the laundry, feed the pets, go to the grocery store, encourage teachers, observe classes, go to games and plays and concerts, make dinner. We affirm the kindergarten child who has learned to read and reassure a worried middle school parent that it’s okay if her daughter is not yet in algebra or does not have a best friend. We celebrate Seniors for their many accomplishments and demystify comma rules for ninth grade English students. We pay bills and send birthday cards; we write countless thank you notes to generous donors. We smooth ruffled feathers, welcome children cheerfully each morning, apologize–often–for things we may not have done. We read mountains of email and try to determine which messages are essential. We worry about particular children or colleagues who are overwhelmed. We wonder if we have another week before we need to bring the geranium inside and how many pairs of shoes we might really need to cram into our suitcases for our next trip.  Our minds overflow.  Staying present is a challenge.

As I watched Our Town–a tricky production in my opinion, but that is another conversation–I found myself resolving to pay closer attention in this, my final year of leading Laurel. a school I love with all my heart. I do not want to hurtle through my days. I vow to allow myself to note and reflect–-even when that’s hard.  There is both joy and sorrow in transition, of course, loss and gain. I already feel anticipatory grief at not having the voices of children as the backdrop of my daily life.  It’s a funny seesaw–I look forward to the unknown and look back over all we have achieved as a school. Standing as I am on the threshold between now and my own next chapter and my school’s next chapter, I think about opportunities and challenges. What can we celebrate?  Though I am full of pride at our accomplishments, I also consider the “might have beens”–all I thought we would have tackled by now that must wait for my successor. 

On the heels of last weekend’s  NYC whirlwind–our younger daughter’s wedding, two shows, and the Alvin Ailey exhibit–I sat, for the last time, in a lovely meeting room of the University Club at Index, a benchmarking group to which Laurel belongs. Morning light streamed through leaded stained glass windows. Each autumn, school leaders and CFOs gather to discuss data. At the best of times, numbers and percentages and trend lines and correlations require my disciplined focus. Data, a Laurel colleague explained to me long ago, is the evidence anecdotes and stories require, but data often makes me feel a little bit “less than,” as if I am back in 7th grade puzzling over algebra, wanting unknown variables to be expressed in real words, not in x and y. Numbers have never called to me the way stories do. 

Lisa, the extraordinary executive director of Index, offered clear explanations that, when I am managed to avoid going down the rabbit hole of fretting about where we stack up as a school, I could follow.  I silently cheered myself on when I answered a question correctly in my head.  But I was not so brave about volunteering my answers aloud.

One session about head evaluation was led by my friend Alona, and towards the end,  we spoke about how often heads—friends—have lost their jobs of late and how important it is for boards to support heads. In response to something I said, my friend, Crissy, who leads a Quaker School in Brooklyn, said, “I always think of Ann as bold.”  

Am I bold?  I want the  girls at Laurel to be bold–I read them a story at our opening assembly about a bold little girl. Bold is better than bossy.  I like the idea of being perceived as bold, but I wonder if—twenty years ago when I began-–I was bolder.  When we start a headship, we are full of promise and hope; we’ve been chosen; we are the one!  It is a lovely time—a long runway of anticipation, a much-heralded arrival, and the fun of meeting the community, forming a team, rolling up our sleeves to get to work. Is boldness easier before we fully understand the complexities, the nuances of compromise.? I know I can be bold on behalf of those in the school I serve, but have I lost some of my verve in two decades–and is that entirely a bad thing?  Have I retained my integrity over twenty years? Absolutely. Do I understand  now that not every idea I offer is a good one. Yes. Am I less spontaneous than I once was?  Perhaps.

Lucky heads of school join organizations in which other heads offer wisdom and humor and counsel; head colleagues buoy each other when things are hard in our schools, in our lives.  And that’s the crux of it.  For most heads, our schools and our lives are inextricably braided.  When we are with “our peeps,” we can be our authentic selves.  With one another,  we drop our guards, share the complications of our schools and our lives. Heads get it in a way no one else does. Heads understand the ways in which our family lives inform our school lives, and vice versa..

Crissy facilitated the final discussion I attended–a meet up just for heads. I didn’t know all the people around the table well–there were a lot of men, which made me realize most of the spaces I inhabit are largely female. She began by asking us to join her in a moment of silence—she leads a Quaker school, after all. It was lovely to be together in contemplative quiet, an invitation to be fully present.  After that moment,  we went around the table to introduce ourselves and to offer something about our selves. Our selves, not our work. Even as we volunteered glimpses of our personal lives, school spilled into what we shared. Lots of people talked about their love of the outdoors as a way to recharge. We learned about hut-to-hut hiking, and a head who places stickers wherever he hikes to celebrate the life of a student who died hiking. Another head made a ritual of collecting sea glass. We heard about, the endless juggle between our families’ needs and our school's’ needs, and the constant “push-me, pull-you” of when to prioritize school and when to put family first. We listened to folks sharing struggles about fundraising for big campaigns, the wear and tear of travel. One head had missed his son’s first travel soccer goal; another was headed to see his son in Our Town. Another head explained that she channels her anger into baking. “Bring on the muffins,” she declared recently, grappling with a few tricky situations at school. A supervisor told her long ago, “Now I get it; when you’re baking, I should be worried about you.” At least this strategy has a delicious impact on others! We all  laughed in recognition; hers is a positive approach to channeling the helplessness we can feel in the daily mess of school–issues that cannot be easily resolved. I shared my daily watercolor practice–a ritual that has helped to ground me in this final year. As I listened, I noted how often work and family criss-crossed and how present we were with one another, riveted by each person’s willingness to share and be vulnerable.  We felt a shared sense of calm and gratitude for the space Crissy had created for us.

Later, waiting for my plane at O’Hare, I thought about camaraderie and trust and vulnerability and about Emily’s revelation that we do not take the time to notice the little moments of our lives. I treasure the friendships I have formed with other heads, the notes of good cheer I’ve received this fall, the exquisite bouquet sent to me by a  group of women heads whose friendship I cherish. In this long goodbye–and it feels like a long, long goodbye–I remember Emily’s plea to her mother:   

“Let’s look at one another…It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life, and we never noticed…”

In these next months, I’m determined to pay attention–to breathe in the present and not to skate over it. I am not a saint or a poet, but I am a headmistress and a writer and a mom and a wife and a friend.  I’m carrying a miniature version of Emily Webb in my heart, reminding myself that letting everything go by unremarked to save myself the pain of what I might miss is folly. The mess of it all. To love the everyday, to hug the whole experience, to notice life as I am living it is the intention I’m setting for myself.

Meeting Do’s and Don’t and the Endless Feedback Loop!

Designing great meetings may feel a lot like what it feels like to me to wrangle our three rescue dogs and two recalcitrant cats. They don’t love being herded and often prefer to make their own choices, even if I think I know better.

Most school communities have meetings, and many members of those communities intensely dislike meetings—with good reason. Some meetings are deadly and those leading them have not thought carefully enough about structure, form or content. In twenty years, I have not yet found a way to avoid all meetings nor have I found a foolproof way to ensure that everyone leaves a meeting sighing with satisfaction. Secretly, I feel some dismay about how much people dislike meetings; I actually like being in a room with smart colleagues talking about topics that matter at school.  However, I also have the highest status person in the room. So, I try to make meetings as meaningful as possible. Meetings are not generally for sharing information—think about why you are gathering. What is the purpose?  

 If you have not yet read Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering, get it immediately and read it. She has such thoughtful and practical ideas to share about how we bring people together. 

 Here are a few principles I try to remember:

 Have a clear purpose.

• Publish an agenda.

• Start and end on time.

• Choose a space that works for the content. Do you want people to be able to move around? Do you need to use a screen? How’s the sound in the room? What about the temperature? You want people to be comfortable.

• Offer snacks and beverages whenever you can—especially for after school gatherngs.

• Has your school created meeting norms? If not, consider doing so. Then, stick to them.

• All-school meetings require a different approach, of course, than one-on-one meetings, but some of the same principles apply.

• Communicate your own meeting norms with those you manage.

• Will your calendar be available for people to self-schedule?

• Who will set the meeting frequency and/or agenda?

• Will you publish the agenda in advance?

• Who will take meeting minutes? How will you share those?

• Don’t expect people to know how you will manage; assume as little as possible.

• Do you like to have a sense of the topic in advance when someone asks to see you?  Or, are you okay with drop-ins?   Tell people what you need.

• If someone else is managing your calendar, do you need breaks between meetings or are you happy having back-to-back meetings? Do you like walking meetings? Be aware of power dynamics—there’s a difference between calling someone to your office or going to someone else’s office.

• There are lots of meetings; plan each one as if it were the first class of the year.

• You may deviate from the plan, but the act of planning, itself, will make you more intentional.

• I start most meetings with some sort of check in—there are millions on the internet. And the same head who reminded me not to scrunch my forehead also reminded me that it can be good to tell a little story on yourself. You want to be a brave, bold leader, who is also human, retains her sense of humor and can share laugh at herself from time to time.

Goal Setting and Feedback

• Follow up all feedback conversations in writing–email or the school system. Model this so those you manage know documentation is an expectation.  Document, document, document.

• As a head, it makes me cross when a department chair or division director comes to the end of their patience with someone who is not thriving. “What do we have in writing?” I ask.  We open the person’s portfolio. There are three glowing reviews and nothing at all that suggests a need for improvement.  Terminating an employee is much easier when you have a paper trail.  How does your new school handle tough conversations?  Do you use email to document those conversations? Do you have a performance improvement plan process?  Ask these questions before you need the answers.

• Set goals with those you manage together.

• Check in on progress regularly—don’t go 6 months and hope all is well. Hope is not a strategy.

• Offer frequent feedback (perhaps monthly or every 6 weeks) that is clear and kind.

• Involve your HR director at the Front End of any complicated employee situation.

• Be careful what you promise. If you tell someone, “It’s no problem if you are out for 3 weeks,” it might actually be a big problem and not in alignment with your new community’s norm.
  
  

• Think about who else needs to know about or will be affected by a decision you make, a situation that’s unfolding?  At Laurel, we use wooden cubes—every member of the leadership team writes the various constituencies that may be affected on a face of the cube—it’s a good visual reminder—but only if people remember to use it!  I keep mine on my desk. Don’t forget that schools are interconnected; what happens in one division will surely be discussed by faculty and by parents—in another.
  
  

• Always remember the power differential; when people report to you, they may feel reticent about giving you feedback, so find ways to solicit feedback from those you manage. Try these prompts: “What would you like me to keep doing? Stop doing?” or, if you are brand new, adapt that to say, “What would it be most helpful for me to do or not do?” or “What can I do to help you be effective?”

Finally (for this week):  The work is seductive. There is always more to do, items to check off the to-do list. The work will be there.  Pace yourself and model that you understand there is more to life than work. After the blurred boundaries of the pandemic years, we have worked hard at Laurel to restore and respect boundaries. We’ve made a commitment to avoid email after 6 p.m. or on weekends unless there’s blood—in which case, text.

Use schedule send; when you send an email, people may feel obliged to respond.

As the Desiderata reminds us, “Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.”  Sleep. Eat. Drink a lot of water. And look for moments when you are full of joy. Living lives of purpose is a marvelous privilege. Enjoy this new beginning.

Navigating Cultural Norms and Snakepits!

It’s a well-known adage that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The tricky thing about culture is that the nuances of any school culture can be hard for a newcomer to discern.  People know when you betray your newness with a misstep, but you may not know precisely how you went awry.

What to do? First, pay attention. Remember that the guest sees more in a day than the host sees in a month. Being new is a gift; don’t squander it.

When you are new to a culture, or even new to a role in a familiar culture, imagine yourself as a tourist in a new city. Take some time to get the lay of the land. I love the change of scenery that new cities or landscapes offer:  different architecture, unfamiliar plants or trees, unusual light. I love to sit and people watch, jotting down my impressions. So, too, you might take time to note your own first impressions. I’m a big believer in writing notes; we move so fast in schools and we think we will remember all we experience, but we can’t possibly recall everything.)

Try not to judge your first impressions; be aware; take in information with your five senses and with your intuition—what I often call your “Scooby sense.” (Sadly, I reveal that I was a Scooby Doo fan in my youth; I was a child of the late 60s and early 70s after all—who doesn’t love a good mystery and a van?).  Let those impressions percolate—eventually, you will get a sense of whether or not your instincts about people’s motives or behavior were correct; you don’t need to know everything at the beginning.

The best book I know about culture is Dan Coyle’s The Culture Code. I’ve underlined so much of it that I need a new copy.  (As a side note, he is the father of three magnificent daughters who are Laurel School graduates, and he is a formidable, funny, fabulous speaker and human). Culture matters and changing it for the better, in my opinion, takes sustained work by many people over time. Some things seem to be “in the water” in a school—some dynamics may have roots that go back several generations. Don’t act too fast; don’t wait too long—if that feels paradoxical, yes.  It will take some time for you to determine your priorities; if you are leading a team, you will want the people who work with you to buy into the vision you have and there is value in co-creating your strategy and timeline for change with that team.

Reading Dan’s book reminded me of another mantra I learned from consultant, Debbie Freed, based in California. “What you permit, you promote.”

This phrase echoes in my brain when I find myself in one of those perennial conversations that occur in schools. A group of well-meaning, smart people go round and round on a topic for the umpteenth time without moving forward. Perhaps it’s a staff member who isn’t performing well; perhaps it’s a toxic parent. The fact is that ruminating doesn’t always move us forward. If bad behavior has been allowed to persist, you may find yourself needing to be the one to make a change. People may be anxious for you to do so and as soon as you do, people may be angry that you made the very change they asked you to make. Such is leadership.  Be mindful, in a new role, of the unresolved issues people may hope you have come to fix. You might be a fixer, but be cautious; don’t simply leap to action before you ask a lot of questions and have a sense of all the issues at play.

Asking questions is a great way to come to know culture. Our schools are full of lingo and acronyms, traditions and rituals. Sometimes—particularly if you are the new Head—people assume you know everything. Don’t pretend you do. Ask lots of questions.  Here are a few other tips about navigating a new culture:

• Be mindful of all you don’t know. Try not to assume.

• Know that the sentence, “At my last school…” gets old fast.

·      Be careful about designing/suggesting solutions based on what worked in your old school. It’s hard to lay the cultural norms of one school on top of another without adaptation or revision.

• What might someone not know that is a cultural norm at your new school? Here are some examples from Laurel, the school I lead:  

• On Fridays, adults wear our school colors: green and white.

• We dress up for parent events.

• Typically, we are a last name culture in front of children.

• Respond to a parent or colleague email within 24 hours—even if you need to say you need more time.

• Do not put tricky things in email—pick up the phone.

• We try to avoid email after 6 pm and over weekends

• Do not text with students–if you must, texting a group is better than texting individuals.

• Do follow Laurel social media accounts and “like” and share if so inclined

Side bar: As much as possible, remember that your personal and public lives are merged on social media; high school girls know more about social media than any adult—they will find that unfortunate post or dating profile you made years ago.  Google yourself. Go deep.

·      Relationships change when your role changes. You may feel colleagues treat you differently if they assume you have more power; you may feel awkward or formal. There’s no quick remedy here. You have a job to do; you will do it in the best way you know how, but it may be true that people don’t want to hang out with you in the same way.

·      Much has been written about the loneliness of headship; that’s amplified if you move to a new part of the country; my husband and I had both been schoolteachers, and our colleagues made up the majority of our friend group. When we moved to Cleveland for my Headship, that changed—understandably. I was now the boss. I felt like the same Ann I had always been, but how people perceived me differently because of my role. I was the boss. Remember everything you learned about psychology in college. Read up on projection and transference. Heads often stand in for other authority figures. Who you actually are may have nothing whatever to do with how people perceive you—that’s on them, not you, but it can be bewildering.

·      People may show you one side of themselves and another to colleagues, who are not their supervisors.  Once I commented that a particular colleague was always so quick to respond to my emails. “To your emails,” a division director muttered.  Oops. I’m not sure I had fully realized, until that moment, that people behave differently with the head.

Eschew Clique-y-ness

As a young teacher, I was always aware of who my Division Director or Department Chair sat with at lunch or sat next to at meetings. I watched them, curious about who they chose to be with. I wanted to be in their “inner circles.” Once, I looked up during a meeting to find a young colleague looking at me. I felt a frisson of recognition—I used to scrutinize the head’s expression after a ludicrous or provocative comment. Now, she was examining my face for clues to my reaction.

We are human. Some people are more fun or easier to be with than others, but be aware of who you spend time with–when possible, reach beyond your circle—as a leader, you do not want to be “cliquey.”  Be mindful of who has your ear. Are you listening a great deal to one or two people? Why? As a newcomer, you have to get information from folks, but those who are eager to curry favor may not end up being your most trusted sources. 

Mix it up. Sit at lunch with different colleagues. Speaking of which, it’s tempting to take a plate to your office, but eat with colleagues when you can or with students (if they’ll have you).

Remember gossip.  You may suddenly be more interesting to people than you were before. If you are too exclusive with one or two colleagues, people make up rumors…sad, but true. And people may gossip about you anyway—you may have the uncomfortable feeling that a conversation stops when you enter a room.  It might.  People may speculate about your marriage or your children—there is nothing you can do about this. Walk on by as much as possible.

Next week:  everything you need to know about meetings!

For New School Leaders with Love

Long ago, before I became the head of a school in another part of the country where I knew no one, another head invited me for tea in her lovely office.

“What do you really want to know that you haven’t asked anyone yet?” Dorothy began.

“What do I do the very first day?” I knew how to be a teacher, a department chair, a member of the Ad Team, but I could not quite fathom how I might start as the headmistress of a brand-new school.

“Ahh,” she smiled. “You go to your office, and something will happen. The phone will ring or someone will ask to see you, and then, you will have started!”  She smiled, full of reassurance, and twenty years later, a few weeks ago, I reminded her of that conversation.

“Was I right?” she grinned.

“One hundred percent!”

Now, rounding out my time as the leader of Laurel School, that school I have loved for twenty years, I am thinking about how to equip new leaders for their roles, many of which begin on July 1, when the students and faculty may not be in the building. It can be an odd and lonely time to start a new adventure.

“What will it be like?” you may wonder. 

Last spring, when I was avoiding my long to-do list last spring, I emailed a number of colleague heads to ask what they wish new leaders knew as they started.  Some of the advice has to do with moving to a brand new school; other bits will be relevant even if you are switching roles in your current school.

Over the next few weeks, I will distill the good ideas they offered and include some of my own thoughts, too.

First, the real currency in school is not enrollment or money or, even, time. It’s relationship. As you begin, so will you go.  In your excitement to get to work, do not skate over the essential work of building relationships. When I moved from NYC to lead Laurel School in Shaker Heights, OH, I realized that I had gone from being a “known quantity” in my former school to being without the web of relationships that had sustained me for two decades—relationships with colleagues and kids and parents and other administrators and trustees and pals across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Of course, relationships formed over time wither only if left unattended; I feel fortunate that many of those relationships grew stronger and nurtured me when I felt tentative and alone. But the fact was that when I came to Laurel, I was younger—as the Head of School—than many on my leadership team. They had worked together for years, and I was very much the new kid.  It felt odd to be “in charge” when the school was brand new, when I was brand new. I acted a confidence I did not always feel, learning as I went, grateful that my team was, bu and large, willing to be led by me.

Real relationships deepen over time, but even in your first weeks, you can take care to cultivate the relationships that will be at the center of your work.

The Human Touch

• Make an effort to learn names fast—your colleagues, certainly, but also the folks in the kitchen and on the maintenance staff, the crossing guard.  Your use of names signals you are paying attention and that you care.

• Greet people by name in the halls.

• Never be afraid to say, “I’m sorry—I’ve forgotten your name.” My mother was brilliant at this—and no one begrudged her—they wanted to help.

• If you love Russian novels, you will relish the complexity of relationships in a school—who is connected to whom? Which donors have long ties to your school? Which teachers are much-loved? Is there anybody who isn’t?

• While schools can be slow to reveal their secrets, listen to what is said and what is not said. You will quickly figure out the “sacred cows,” those traditions or customs that are inviolate—don’t be afraid to ask directly. Similarly, you may stumble across the proverbial “snakes in the Garden of Eden,” those tricky bits that may not have been evident during the search process. Everything is information.

• Respect the dignity and worth of all people you manage.

• People need to feel you value them–while it’s true we are all dispensable, no one wants to feel dispensable.  Take an interest in those around you—their families, their pets, their interests.

• Find ways to let your people know they and what they do for the school matter.  A handwritten thank you, the occasional $5 Starbucks card, a small bouquet.

• A great mantra to live by: make the implicit explicit. Lingo doesn’t always translate from one school to the next. Be sure you learn your new school’s vocabulary and terminology. And know that you will slip up and call your new school or a new colleague by the name of your old school or the name of a former colleague. Fix it and move on.

• Be mindful of casual or off-the-cuff interactions with colleagues that could be misconstrued as favoritism or being harsh.

• When my new headship was only a few weeks away, the head I then worked for tapped her index finger gently on my forehead.  “Adjust your face,” she said. “If you emerge from your office scowling, the first person you pass in the corridor may think you are angry with her.” It was great advice; the weather in the head’s office can be stormy. Always take a deep breath and compose your features before you step into the hall.

• Model self-care—do not come to school when you are sick. If you do, you communicate that that is your expectation of those you manage.

• Apologize when you get something wrong.

• Sometimes, we forget to say, “I’m sorry” because it’s an admission of wrongdoing, but you can always be sorry, you can always show empathy.

• Show your vulnerability–it helps build trust–you are human, too, not an automaton, but do not ask employees to be your caretaker.

• Take the work seriously, but never take yourself too seriously.

• Trust your instincts. And remember how little you like being led by people who are arrogant, even if they are smart.

• Be careful about “I” and “me” in your language. “We” is almost always a better choice. It’s never “your” school. We serve our schools, but they belong to the trustees, not to the school leaders.  Go back and re-read the beginning of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The guy has quite an ego on him—he cares about Thebes, but he is convinced HE is the answer. Never believe your own PR, bad or good. Humility matters.

• Remember, not everyone will like every decision you make; chances are, plenty of people will not like any single decision. Figure out the people whose opinions matter most. Listen to them; consider test driving an idea on them, “What do you think about the idea of doing…”  People like to be asked what they think.

• On the other hand, people want leaders who are willing to make decisions. Gather input and then do something. It might be the wrong thing. If so, you will know and do a different thing, but limbo is fatiguing. If you are where the buck stops—as the Head or the Director of a Division or a Department, your job is to make the tough call—with grace and confidence—and the good sense to recognize if you are wrong.

 First Conversations

In your first conversations with people, listen more than you speak. When I became a head, a pal told me to keep track of the first people who asked to see me; they always have an agenda. That pal was right.  Commit to little as you start; you are listening to learn, not to weigh in on topics that may have complicated histories.

Here are a few other responses that have helped me.

• Reflect back what you hear. Try: “This is what I’m hearing; does that sound right?”

• When people are wrought up, ask, “What else?” or “Tell me more.” This buys you time to figure out what you want to say.

• Sometimes, I’ve said,  “Do you need to vent or do you want to solve the problem?

• Ask “What do you love about our school?” or “What keeps you here?”

• When a parent begins the conversation by saying, “This is not about playing time,” it is. Ditto to, “We don’t put any pressure on our child.” It’s likely that they do.  Work to cultivate an interested face that doesn’t betray all you might be thinking.

• If you are youthful and are challenged by a parent or colleague, remember this phrase, “In our experience…” When you invoke this phrase, you bring the school’s whole history to bear on the situation…and it’s a subtle way to put people back in their boxes.

• Remember professional boundaries–in terms of touch, personal space, etc.

• When a faculty or staff person talks to you about another manager or employee, set a boundary–ask, “Have you talked with your own supervisor about this?” Or “I don’t feel comfortable having this conversation about a colleague with you; perhaps this would be a better conversation to have with a member of our HR team.”

• When identifying problems, also work to identify possible solutions–encourage those you supervise to do the same.

• Always give more credit than you take–it’s more important for the whole enterprise to flourish than for you to have the best idea.

• Let go of the past; allow your colleagues to evolve. You want people to give you the benefit of the doubt—model doing the same. Form your own opinion of those with whom you work—there is no room for grudges at school.

• Don’t be above the work your employees do.  Everyone has their jobs, but good will goes a long way when an employee knows you are willing to jump in. None of us is too fancy to move tables.

• Consider going to someone else’s office for a meeting rather than always asking people come to you. Or, better yet, think about having a “walking” meeting—it’s good to move!

• Keep your sense of humor close at hand.

That’s a lot to take in. I’m hoping much of what I write is already filed in your head under “the common sense God gave a chicken.” But sometimes reminders of what we know help us—particularly when the stakes feel high and you don’t yet even know where the lightswitches are in your new school.

Perhaps you take a look at this long list from time to time. Nod your head at those points you know you do routinely. Think a little bit about those that feel less intuitive. Be gentle with yourself. I am a better, calmer headmistress now than I was in 2004. I’m also grayer and my children are grown, but I wouldn’t have traded many minutes of the last two decades.

When I became a head, Millie Berendsen, the headmistress I had worked for as a young woman in NYC and the person who encouraged me to consider headship, gave me a card titled Consider—it was a list of great advice in her inimitable calligraphy. She gave such a card to the many of us who became heads after we had worked for her. I keep her notecard pinned to the bulletin board behind my desk as a reminder that none of us lead without help.  Your mentors and friends want you to succeed. Never forget to reach out when you need a reality check or reassurance. A wonderful thing about schools is that we are never wholly alone; there are thought partners everywhere!

Stay tuned next week for some thoughts on Navigating Cultural Norms, Meeting Do’s and Don’t and Snakepits!

Every Exit is an Entrance Somewhere Else

Last winter, after sharing the news of my impending retirement as Head of Laurel in June, 2025, I felt heavy-hearted. Who will I be when I am not the Head of this school I love? I thought about Tom and Huck spying on their own funeral though I knew that was silly. I was still very much alive, but in the weeks following my announcement, I was a little glum.

In February, I attended a conference with other heads of independent schools. These are my people—my peers, the colleagues and friends who understand the complexity of leading a school because they, understand what it is to manage enrollment and fundraising, to celebrate a child’s triumph, to oversee construction projects and emergency plans, and to surf the vicissitudes of every school year. While each schools is distinct, the pace, the rhythm from one school year to the next, is familiar.

The speaker invited us to  play a game called Mad Tea, a type of speed-dating game . Questions flashed on the big screen at the front of the room. Each player found a partner and had a few minutes to answer the question, speaking without interruption until it was the partner’s turn. Then, we both moved to find a new partner. I spied Felicia and made my way around a few tables towards her. She was mid-way through Year 2–-the beginning of her first headship, while I was in the midst of Year 20 and will leave next year,  at the end of Year 21–-my majority, a friend teased. Felicia is tall and lovely, her dark hair rippling, her eyes dancing. She is a new friend.

The prompt invited us to recall a time in childhood when we felt free, felt our most authentic selves—though, I thought to myself, children who are being their most authentic selves don’t necessarily label that behavior as such. Felicia told me about being a little girl in the back yard in Baltimore, how she played alone, how she still, sometimes, slips off her shoes and walks barefoot in the grass—no siblings, alone. She recalled being on a swing—going high, high, and loving the sensation of the world whooshing by. We laughed. When it was my turn, I told her about carefully unlatching the screen of my sister’s bedroom window in our summer house–-the left window–-and lifting the screen from its frame to lean it up against the wall. Then, I’d clamber out onto the roof and sit on the green asphalt shingles. I leaned against the white clapboard, my journal in my lap, writing and listening, an unseen observer ,who watched the water moving across the lake in front of me and recorded snippets of conversation floating up from the porch. Harriet the Spy on a roof. To write what I heard or saw or felt was my way of making sense of the world when I was a not quite a teenager. The daring, secret parrt made the whole endeavor more fun. I wonder, still, if my mother knew of my exploits. I climbed out onto that roof well into my twenties.

The exercise ended, and Felicia and I smiled at each other and found our way back to our chairs. Our exchange cheered me. Perhaps it was Felicia’s gaze—direct, compassionate, vibrant, affirming—that reminded me that I am still here–alive, joyous, purposeful–and there are unknown chapters to discover, which may be thrilling. I want to model for the girls in my school that women’s lives are made of many chapters, that we get to compose our lives, leave before people hope we will go in order to explore new possibilities. Leaving will be hard. I already know I will be full of feelings, but in the months since the conference, I’ve recalled Felicia’s kind attention, her calm and loving presence, and I feel reassured, buoyed. Friends do that for one another.

And, in the quiet that follows the end of a busy school year–my penultimate year at Laurel–I recall lines I spoke on stage at seventeen. 

“Every exit is an entrance somewhere else,” the Player says in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guidlenstern Are Dead. I wore a floppy hat that I doffed, its purple plume sweeping the floor as I left the stage.

A year from now, I will exit a role I know well. My next entrance? I don’t know. Since my exchange with Felicia, I’ve been savoring the possibilities. My friend, Paul, says actors have to “live in the land of I don’t know.”   So, I’m cultivating a spirit of not knowing  I’m imagining time to wonder and read and garden and nap and travel and think. In a sense, I’m plotting a metaphorical return to the roof. I don’t intend to crawl out the window next fall, but I hope to reacquaint myself with the habits of that young woman who took time to listen and watch undetected, to record and imagine from her daring vantage point. In that place, she felt full of possibility—bold and free.. 

What We Do as the Eclipse Approaches

Written for the participants of The Heads Network Leadership Seminar, Asheville School. April. 2024.

The eclipse approaches.

It will happen tomorrow.

The children—and the science teachers—are excited.

At an assembly on Thursday, Izzy whispers

“How does the barber cut the moon’s hair? She asks.

I shrug.

‘E clips it!”

In the chapel, I giggle, glad to be the person she has shared this joke with.

Then, I pack a bag and head to the last leadership seminar I will emcee.

How many weekends have there been?

I’ve lost count.

On the plane, I remember coming to this very workshop.

The luminaries of girls’ schools our faculty--

Divorced, widowed, childless.

Each a force.

Intimidating.

“Not for me,” I thought, “though fascinating.”

We were at Miss Porter’s that weekend,

Another boarding school full of flowering trees.

Spring reminds me that nature is stronger than all of us;

She will not be held back.

Which brings me back to the eclipse and how little I know.

It will happen, no matter how little I know.

We schoolteachers sometimes imagine lots of things are within our control

That aren’t.

We arrive, establish ourselves in this lovely room.

High ceilings, beveled windows, dark wood tables.

Begin the work of the weekend.

On our way to Asheville, we tell each other after supper, we were busy.

 One by one, we introduce ourselves.

I planned Head of School day, one of the first participants says,

(though, please note, she is not

Yet

A Head of School)

“It’s a surprise celebration

Because of the eclipse.”

Once in a lifetime.

Monday’s eclipse is happening.

Some of us are right in the path.

On our way to Asheville, we walked and kissed and petted and fed a lot of dogs.

Is it okay for a dog to look at the sun, a tenth grader asked Thursday.

A Science teacher—competent, matter-of-fact—answered briskly, “Yes, it’s fine,” but I am still wondering why it’s fine.

I am thinking a lot about vision. What it means to see.  Eclipses and other things.

Our older daughter got a scary diagnosis—spots on her retina—perhaps genetic.

She phones me, weeping, as we arrive on this bucolic campus—

pink cherry trees in bloom,

Almost shouting, “Look at me, look at me!”

Glorious crimson Japanese Maples,

Their leaves unfurling like stars beyond the big window in our room.

“You will be okay,” I reassure her. “You’ll get through. We all love you.”

What is essential, St. Exupery reminds us, is best seen with the heart.

Still, she is frightened, and I shudder at the idea of her not being able to see.

Ever.

Or my not being able to see.

Love will see us through, I think. I hope. I hold onto love.

We—my family, these women—are rich in love, in fortitude.

We do get through, wearing our resilience like shields.

Of course we manage,

serve as assistant heads,

do more,

get paid less,

worry and fret about next steps,

new beginnings,

moments that do not go as planned.

Because we are planners.

Listen. 

Before I left…we tell one another:

I taught my husband how to crank our 9-year old’s expander.

I took my mom to a doctor’s appointment.

I organized the Middle School clothing swap across two campuses, so everyone could play.

I worked through what to do when a student threw a pen at me.

I taught chemical geometry—they hated it.

I announced we were the vocabulary bowl state champs, and I didn’t even know we’d been competing.

Took kids bird banding

Scolded a child because she was late, and then I found out she’d gotten pulled over.

Personally, I was slow to focus on the eclipse—it seemed so far away up in the sky.

but I know our school is ready—

We’ve purchased solar glasses for the kids,

Organized programs,

Invited NASA to explain

Why this is such a big darn deal.

My favorite explanation on Instagram was of a meme with Oreos,

showing the moon moving over the sun.

I read it’s going to look like dusk everywhere around the horizon and that doesn’t happen very often.

But we are here, thinking about headship, not eclipses, aren’t we?

In our lives, we toggle busily between school and home—

another domain where we are often in command—

Hiding candy, eating Toast bites,

kissing the twins,

asking the spouse did you pay attention to the text chain?

She needs her white soccer jersey, not the maroon one.

We are ourselves orbs of light, criss-crossing the sky, daily,

What makes the sun bright, I wonder?

How does it manage to rise every day, no matter what, and get on with the business of illumination? 

No vacations or personal days. No pd to help it glow brighter.

No evaluations or feedback forms.

Even when we cannot see her, she is there.

The moon, too, I guess.

Except on Monday, when they will do a light and dark duet,

Choreographed without rehearsal—can you imagine? My nightmare.

No one asked the sun and the moon if they’re excited.

They will simply perform, crossing, one over other, as predicted.

Like all of us?

Each day—unremarkable, just doing what has to be done in our schools and families.

The sun doesn’t get to say, “I don’t think so—this is all too much for me.”

The moon doesn’t get to say, “Umm—I don’t feel up to it—could you get a sub for me?”

They will do what they do—maybe the tides have had some influence?

Can you tell I don’t know enough about space and planets?

I know a lot about women in schools, though.

How we, too, are sources of light, and love and warmth and competence.

And wonder.

How we put up and shut up and move up and often do not take up

Enough space.

How we, sometimes, very often, much of the time, put others first,

And say:

“It’s not the right time “or

“Do I want all that responsibility?”

or “I could never leave Ohio,”

or “My parents need me”

or “My kids have three more years in my school.”

We are full of reasons why we resist the unknown.

On the eve of this once-in-a-lifetime eclipse,

I am wishing for a catapult that would scatter all of us into the sky—

a bundle of stars—

already arrived at our next chapter without worry or dread or waiting or negotiation about salaries.

Against the navy night,

we would

Sparkle and twinkle and glimmer and shine,

keeping the moon and sun company,

cheering them on.

Points of light

spread in a vast dark sky, but connected—a web of stars.

When I watch the eclipse tomorrow,

From a field on campus,

With houseguests I forgot that I will need to feed,

I will think about the women gathered here in Asheville,

Mulling over new beginnings and possibilities.

I will think of us eating supper on the stage of the theatre—

I love that we ate dinner there--

Bathed in light.

So many lovely things said,

me without words for once,

but full of gratitude.

We say in drama that we must hug the whole experience--

Laughter and tears, dark and light.

And maybe that’s why a once in a lifetime eclipse

Is a worthy metaphor

as we contemplate next steps.

Totality by Laurel teacher Dale Versteegen

Easter Musings

I wake up coughing and sputtering. After six weeks of travel—weekends in San Diego and Ashville, NC, followed by four non-stop days in NYC with 15 Laurel students, and then four more days—at a slightly less frantic pace—in London with my sister, I succumb to a cold that Seth has most generously shared, and spend yesterday—and, today, too, I suspect—lying low.

It’s Easter, but here in Shaker Heights, with my Jewish husband and without young children excited about bunnies and egg hunts and baskets, I wonder what the day means to me and feel a little blue. 

Death and resurrection. At 63, I am more conscious of aging than I’ve ever been, more aware of how often I feel pulled by recollection, by memory.  I remember Easter luncheon at our grandparents. A huge baked ham and an egg cracking contest and an egg hunt in own pachysandra. I think about making baskets for Miranda and Cordelia and Atticus—a long time ago now. Seth used to tease me and say that the baskets were just another version of Christmas stockings, and he was right. But Easter lunch, like Thanksgiving and Passover and Christmas, was another opportunity to use the “good” china, to be together, to make  memories. Sitting with my laptop, I hear my mother’s voice in my head, singing all the Easter hymns. “Jesus Christ has risen today, Ahhhhh-lay—luu—ya.”

We go to London on a whim; during my last bout with Covid in early January, I wondered how to celebrate my sister’s birthday—a significant birthday—and, feverish, before I could second guess myself, I decide we will return to London—more than fifty years after our first trip there as a family. Lee’s daughters collude with me to be sure her calendar is free, and Miranda makes a surprise video to land in Lee’s email box on the morning of her birthday since I am in California that day. I hope she will be excited—and she is. Seth is our gracious chauffeur, drove us from Eagles Mere to JFK—the worst airport I could have chosen, he explains—Newark would have been a lot easier, but it is too late by then to change the tickets.

I booked us into the same hotel where our family stayed in 1972, the Duke’s Hotel, now rebranded as DUKE’S London, famous for its martinis! It is a lovely, elegant hotel, where the staff greets us by name each morning.  Long ago, Daddy didn’t want to pay for the roll out cot, so Rod slept in the bathtub and fell asleep on his Yorkshire pudding at Simpson’s on the Strand. Lee and I slept in twin beds shoved right next to each other! We strolled around London together, sliding between past and present the way sisters do.  Rain showers come and go; my sister reminding me that we are not wicked enough to melt. We found the Tube charming, much less dingy than the subways in NYC. Descending on the steep escalators, Lee recalled our brother’s antics—he loved to quote the ads in the frames along the wall as we sank further underground. I grasp at memories. We remember different bits in elegy. At the Burlington Arcade, we stopped with our mother long ago, and she bought two enamel rings—emerald green and royal blue—that she wore and wore. What happened to them? My sister doesn’t know and neither do I. For fun, Lee tried on an enormous dinner ring—a huge diamond edged in emeralds. It is a steal at 74,000 pounds. We thanked the saleswoman and left the shop, giggling on the street. It entertained us to make believe, even at 70 and 63.

Our trip is like one huge version of the high tea we enjoyed at Fortnum and Mason’s—a tribute to our dad, who was the original Anglophile. The days are delectable, out of the ordinary, a confection. At the musical SIX, we recalled Daddy’s love of British history. I wonder if Henry VIII might have been Dad’s role model. They both loved the ladies. Having the six wives reclaim their story pleased me. I stole glimpses at my sister from time to time; she seemed to like the show, too, and I realized how much I wanted her to feel celebrated and cherished on this trip. After our mother died, my sister called me every day for months; she knew my grief was too large for me to manage by myself. She is a caretaker—of me, of her own children, of the little village of Eagles Mere, where she lives.

We roamed and laughed and drank prosecco and enjoyed John Singer Sargent’s gorgeous portraits at the Tate. My visit to the Biltmore was still fresh in my mind as was my time with our students at the Morgan Library. Thoughts of the Gilded Age swirled: an era of extraordinary wealth, wretched excess, and the desire to show off one’s family—to stake a claim, to assure one would be remembered. I think of white men acquiring possessions, hoping for posterity, My head is tangled up with musings. As we moved through the exhibit listening dutifully to the audio guide, I noticed  how Sergant’s subjects were positioned, his choices of fabric and draping, the stories each painting told. Several of the sitters’ dresses and accessories are displayed near the portraits—Ellen Terry’s costume for Lady M, for example, is made of a crocheted fabric with beetle wings knit into it. Astonishing. The rich and famous seem to have been better about keeping their fancy clothes wrapped up in tissue and preserved for more than a century than I am. Or, perhaps, their help was better at preservation.

I, too, will soon have my portrait painted. Sargent is, sadly, unavailable. But the mother of a alum who was a student during my tenure will paint me.  I wonder about my image hanging in the school I love long after I am gone. Some years ago, I moved the portraits of the heads at Laurel around a few years ago; I thought Mrs. Lyman and Miss Lake might enjoy a different view. I wonder where the painting of me will hang. Legacy. Do we ever understand what it is we leave behind? Did Sargent’s subjects wonder how strangers in galleries would perceive them, what viewers would presume or wonder about the lives they lived from those careful compositions? Did Sargent shave off pounds or soften edges? Could those illustrious beings from long ago imagine that we would walk through the Tate and wonder about their lives and loves and sorrows? Can I imagine little girls looking up at my image and wondering about me? or the students from the NYC trip coming back to school for a reunion and pausing in front of my portrait to tell stories about our metropolitan adventures? The possibility pleases me.

Easter means death and rebirth, hugging the whole experience.  On this foggy Easter morning, I note that spring in Shaker Heights is not as advanced as it was in London. But the green is greener than it was when I left two weeks ago. The daffodils are chatting, bending their heads towards on another in our garden. The hyacinths aren’t yet in bloom, but their buds are swelling.  I am drinking my coffee from a new lavender mug my sister bought for me when we went for high tea. My sister and I. Two out of the five of us left.  Two out of five.  Death, rebirth. We chat on the phone this morning. I miss having her with me. But it’s not all melancholy.  Loss is balanced by addition. Family rituals shift and change.  We make our own families, and our children make their own families, too. The generations contract, expand, move forward. There is hope and comfort in the idea that the future spools out. Those who leave us stay with us through shared reminiscences. I tell stories about my brother to my own children; we claim and reclaim the past and add new stories to the family canon.

Nothing stays the same. Vacations end. Colds improve. The seasons pass.  We stand in the present and look back and wonder what lies ahead. Perhaps there will come a time that little children in my life once again require Easter baskets. I’ll be ready. 

Vacation Is a Tease

I don’t really like this whole empty nest concept. I prefer the house full to overflowing, no matter how many glasses I gather up each morning, no matter how many shoes I stumble over on my way in the back door. I like the sound of all our children in the house, gathered in the living room, which might as well be a seasonal room, since we use it mostly around the holidays—tree in one corner, card table ready for backgammon, gas fire lit.  I like knowing when I wake in the early morning that the kids are all still sleeping, breathing, in their beds.

But vacation ends. The girls and Cole and Sara go back to NYC. Atticus goes, too, for a bit, and Seth and I look at each other, glum. We settle into our chairs in the family room, sighing at the decorations that need to be taken down and put away, the inflatables on the lawn that are now deflated, covered in snow.

Atticus returns to have his wisdom teeth taken out, and on that very day, I sneeze a million times, rolling gauze and trying not to sneeze directly on him.

“Mom,” one of the girls says on Facetime, “Do a Covid test, so you don’t make him nervous.”

“I do not have Covid,” I retort. “I’m fine.”

“For Atticus, Mom,” the daughter insists—both of them? We frequently indulge in group Facetimes.

“Okay, okay.” I dig the Covid test out from the cat food shelf, find the directions, swab my nostrils—a ritual that feels like some sort of an ancient rite. I tuck the swab into the hole and fold the cover down and set a clock, certain that I am fine, and, the pink line is incontrovertible ten minutes later.

I gather my belongings, find a mask, take myself up to Cordelia’s lovely bed and settle down. I can hear Seth and Atticus on the other side of the door.

I am worried about my son, but Seth turns out to be an excellent nurse, feeding me pretty much what he offers Atticus: a milkshake, mashed potatoes, rice pudding. When I cannot stop shivering, he, masked, covers me in quilts, proffers the thermometer.  After the fever breaks, my confinement feels a bit like being in a cocoon.  I huddle into the covers, knowing that I will share big news when I emerge.  I nibble Wheat Thins, take Tylenol, sip Ginger ale mixed with Grape Juice, a childhood remedy. Eventually, I feel strong enough to take a bath.  Atticus sends me Instagram cat videos. I sleep, watch The Buccaneers, watch Astrid, tell Seth he may NOT finish Friday Night Lights without me. I creep downstairs to collect some water colors and play with paint on a tray on my lap in bed, feeling like a little girl.  It is not all bad.  But mostly, I am sad to miss my time with our son. Having him home again feels normal, the way it’s supposed to be.

Finally, he is able to eat again and I am fully recovered. The three of us go to see Boys in the Boat—no popcorn for Atticus and no straw. Afterwards, in the car, heading for ice cream at Mitchesll’s we compare the book and the movie; one of Atticus’ best friends rows crew, and my dad rowed at Penn.  This is how it’s supposed to be—the three of us. No, this is how it used to be for a long time. Even as I revel in the evening, I know it’s temporary; time is running out.

When I share my big news—I am retiring from my school in 18 months--Atticus and Seth stand in the back of the Chapel. Their presence buoys me.

“You’ll cry when you tell the girls,” Atticus warns after I rehearsed last weekend.

“Yes,” I agreed. “I probably will, but I’m glad you’ll be there with me.” My headship is as old as he is. He was an infant in my arms at my first faculty meeting.

After I tell our Upper School students, Seth and Atticus announce we are going out for dinner.

“To celebrate,” they say. I am touched, learning only later that it had been Erin’s idea—Erin is my amazing assistant; she knows this week has been a lot. At dinner, my phone blows up with texts from colleagues—will we cancel school because of the cold? More texts roll in. I need to make a decision.

“Boy, Mom, you are fun to spend time with,” my son smiles.

“Be nice,” Seth chides. “She has to do this—it’s her job.”

I call a cold day and two days later a snow day in anticipation of the storm that has been forecast.  Seth and Atticus brave the blizzard to shop for gear Seth needs for his upcoming trip to Antarctica. I love that Atticus is both the fashion and the gear consultant.  I work all day on Zoom, but it is fun to be at home, as if I am inside a snow globe. Seth models the gear; they have done a good job.

“Kids still text me,” Atticus says about the snow day call. “They think I have the inside track, like I still go to school here.” He grins.  When he was in high school, kids from lots of schools would ask him if I planned to cancel school. His influence was considered vast.

On his last night at home, we finished Friday Night Lights—despite himself, he got drawn in.  This last episode was all about endings. I remind myself that endings are a part of life. Shows end. Vacations end. Chapters end.  But I am still a little teary—though I blame it on the show, my son isn’t fooled.  We can’t always spend the time we want to spend with one another the way we want to spend it—wisdom teeth, Covid, school, distractions…and now we are out of time. We’ve packed his suitcase and his duffle, put his liquids into Ziplock bags. Reluctant to end the evening, we hung out, Atticus and I together on the couch, Seth in his chair. Finally, we headed upstairs.

And this morning, he hugged each dog, patted each cat, murmured his goodbyes to these creatures who will not understand where he has gone.

“Hurry,” I fussed, “I don’t want you to miss your plane.”

I squeezed him fiercely, managed not to cry. “It’s only college,” I said firmly to myself. “He’s happy there.”

I know all that. And yet.

The molecules shift and change. He’s gone for now. Each time he leaves means moving closer to the time when he no longer slots back into the way it used to be.

I am proud of him, a little embarrassed by how much I miss him.  And very, very lucky to have children that we love so much.

Banishing the Chocolate Turkeys

Half asleep, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, I recall I forgot to procure the foil-wrapped chocolate turkeys that always adorned my grandparents’ table at Thanksgiving.  A formal affair, replete with linen tablecloths and napkins and discreet servants summoned by the bell underneath my grandmother’s foot on the carpet, the turkeys were the only bit of levity, arranged in procession from one end of the table to the other, pretty much eye level with little me, finally promoted from the children’s table. Was there still time?

For years, my mother presented our daughters with shiny turkeys, suspiciously the same one year to the next. Had she bought them in bulk and stored them in her present cabinet? And when we began to celebrate Thanksgiving at our own tables, I felt the chocolate turkeys were as essential as sweet potatoes topped with toasted marshmallows.  I’d scour the shelves at Michaels or the grocery stores, snatching up the remaining foil lumps—we had to have chocolate turkeys; they were a talisman, essential to the celebration.

My husband, a vegetarian, dislikes Thanksgiving. He sees the whole run up to the meal as a waste of time, the sides the only part of the meal worth consuming. Churlish, he would prefer Chinese Food, which we do offer him on Christmas, but, so far, we have mostly held out on Thanksgiving. The sulker can’t always win. In fact, he’s a great sous chef when he chooses to be, and no one in our family is better at washing dishes or managing the puzzle of storing leftovers when there is too little room in the fridge(s).  Our two daughters and our son-in-love (my second daughter’s affianced) manage the menu these days. I am allowed to shop and do menial taks, but the calculus of when to put the turkey in—this year, we are downsizing at Cole’s suggestion, and only preparing two turkey breasts—is up to them. I confess I’ll miss the dark meat. I noticed those yams aren’t on his menu, either, but some traditions must endure…

I love setting our table with heavy water goblets and a lace cloth spread over the green damask cloth I prefer. I enjoy laying out the good china, adding additional forks and spoons to the standard table setting. I did order fancy napkins that will, after the holiday, take their place under the sideboard with all the other fancy napkins we did not use up on other holidays. Perhaps, one day I’ll lay out only mismatched napkins—mistmatched teacups are considered chic these days—I read that somewhere. I like scouring the backyard for some sort of natural centerpiece. When the children were little, we painted their hands and pressed them onto sheets of card stocks, decorating their little handprints with feathers and glitter. We’d hang their creations on the dining room windows—I suspect those turkeys are somewhere in the attic in a dusty box. 

Seth, my husband, will use his penknife to get the candles to fit inside the candelabras which, if polished, would not look out of place at Downton Abbey and definitely are too large for our table for seven. Still, they were my mother’s and I love them.  The pies are coming from New York City, and I will miss the fun of clearing the counters to roll out crusts, but I know what is brought will be delicious. Our son will fly home Tuesday night; he won’t mind, I hope, that I’ve taken over part of his room for my watercolor studio—a folding table in front of his window, strewn with paints and brushes and half-done projects. Our oldest daughter is staying in NYC with her wife; it’s too long a haul for too short a stay; I will miss them being with us, but they’ll be here for Christmas, which is not so far off now.  Maybe Seth will mend a couple of the dining room chairs we’ve broken over the twenty years we’ve lived here—they are waiting for him in his woodshop at the school I lead across the parking lot; one is conveniently placed in the dining room, its back laid carefully across its seat, a gentle reminder to him of my hopes. If not, some of us will sit on folding chairs.

This morning, I took a first pass at cleaning out the fridge, dumping half a dried-out lemon and some Crème Fraiche well past its prime. I know our predilection for keeping items past their expiration dates exasperates our children, just as my own mother’s habit made me shake my head. We are, many of us, tough on our parents. Sometimes, I think our children believe we are one step from the home, though I think my husband—grouchy though he sometimes appears over the holidays—have a few more good years in us. He is happiest on the lawn, setting up inflatables that delight the little girls in my school.  Watching Michigan beat Ohio State also pleases him, so I offer a quiet hope for a Wolverine victory.

Families grow and shrink. Holidays mark time. 

“Don’t you want to have Thanksgiving in Eagles Mere?” I asked our son earlier this fall.

“Absolutely not. I want to come home.”

Home. We have celebrated holidays in lots of different homes: in the house where I grew up, with Seth’s family in Arizona and New Mexico, at several houses in Eagles Mere, in overheated apartments in Manhattan, at Lyman House, here in Ohio.  These days, home, in my mind, is less about the kitchen or the table and more about gathering, about gazing around the table at our family—thinking about the ones we miss and appreciating the ones that are with us. And I love the preparations, love the feeling of waking up on Thursday morning knowing that we are all focused on a shared endeavor.

When I wake up enough this morning to scooch up onto my pillows and slide my laptop from my bureau onto my knees, I google chocolate turkeys. There they are, the foil feathers apparently unchanged since 1963. I wonder if they make dark chocolate ones now? Would those taste better? They make them, but they look just like their milk chocolate pals. The party favors of my childhood were not particularly tasty; after you unwrapped the foil and bit off the legs, the hollowness you discovered within was disappointing, the chocolate grainy. So, I restrain myself. I do not purchase any turkeys. For me, they are nostalgia, memory, my grandparents, my mother, but unnecessary. Traditions evolve. The idea of the turkeys felt momentarily urgent, but no one actually eats them—not with pie and Susan Stamburgh’s cranberry sauce and a spicy mac n’ cheese our son-in-love prepares. I consign the little foil guys to memory, print my shopping list, head to the market.

Going on a Bear Hunt

Dear Beloved Head of School Friend,

 I see you, so accomplished, so accustomed to swiftly solving problems in your school, feeling you are going through something and frustrated that you are not your typical optimistic, ebullient self.

 So many women like us climbed a linear ladder to attain our roles: teacher, dean, department chair, division director, head of school—each path distinct, few breaks. We were on the move, ascending. Along the way, perhaps we dreamed of running a school. Perhaps someone else put the idea in our heads. We met consultants, entered searches, interviewed, and, if we were lucky and in the right place at the right moment with the right search committee, we were chosen.

 We believed we were in control all along. After all, we are endlessly competent, we women heads. We have reservoirs of talent and patience and humor. We know how women leaders are perceived, so we are mindful of not coming on too strong, of listening deeply, of building consensus. We take time to build coalitions in our schools. We are interested in everyone—parents, teachers, staff, children, alums, neighbors. We smile and soothe and fix, seamstresses of a sort, stretching fabric to cover a tear, mending a seam, making beautiful patterns. Or maybe we are more like feudal lords, meting out justice, smoothing ruffled feathers, refereeing disputes over turf and power—or circus ringmasters, taming lions and getting horses to march in formation or conductors of grand orchestras who know just how to keep the piccolo from being drowned out by the tympani. We know these things and do these things as they apply in schools--always with a smile. 

 And, one day, we discover, we have “made it.” We lead schools we love. We serve boards. We stand before children, modeling what leadership looks like. We resolve conflicts, think about what’s best for the institutions, consider budgets and deferred maintenance and the regulations governing athletics, and whether or not APs are good for anyone. We seek to understand the needs of our post-pandemic faculty and staff. We wonder about the changing needs of the workforce, the tuition models of our school, demographics, what to say when the world combusts or another school shooting occurs.  Some of us do more with less. At work, we stay calm—temper is a luxury forbidden an independent school leader.  Our email boxes overflow, cascading with messages and questions and meeting invitations. We go to lots of meetings. Our time is not our own, and the days we plan are rarely the days that happen. There’s always something unexpected; sometimes, the surprises please us—the 3-year-olds parading through our offices, a Senior confiding joyous college news—often, there are tougher interruptions: a colleague fighting ill health, someone behaving badly. Our days are long—some days, we get to school at 7, welcoming children at car circle and go home after 7.

We come home to dogs or children or spouses who love us or don’t, to friends and families. We manage the complexities of all those relationships, too, remembering birthdays and who is gluten-free, and which relatives need attention and who needs tough love. We water the plants and order holiday gifts. We cook and prep for classes or meetings. We read more email; perhaps we take care of ourselves—a massage, a walk, a session with a coach or therapist—but often, self-care is pushed aside because we are taking care of others.

 You confide that  you’re not sure why you feel the way you do right now—a little off, less positive than is typical for you.  I ask if you can be curious, if you can sit with not knowing why you feel as you do? I suggest there is knowing and there is feeling, and you smile. As heads, we like knowing. Knowing is certain, sorted, tidy. Feelings, on the other hand, can be messy, complicated, hard.

 You share you have a parent who is dying. And you do not know when that will happen.  What you don’t say is that you also don’t know how you will feel when that parent leaves you. We are grown women, but it is hard to be without a mother or a father, no matter how old we are. And if we did a study of all the women heads we know, I suspect a lot of us are the care takers in our families. When we keep moving, keep all the plates spinning in the air above us, we can keep feelings at bay—those familiar feelings of wondering if we are enough?  As the leader of a girls’ school, this is the one feeling I’d like to shield my students from.

 When, as a much younger woman, I first read about Imposter Syndrome, I felt a frisson on recognition. No matter how accomplished I am, I wonder if someone yet will come along and unmask me, crying, “Fraud.” I am a woman of a certain age; this reckoning is not likely to occur. And yet, that fear is a version of the self I was in 7th grade when I stood in the dark gym at the boys’ school and hoped someone would pick me. And no one did.

 So, here is what I offer you. Be how you are, even though it’s uncomfortable. If you can, ease up. Wonder about how you feel without criticizing or judging it. Live in what my friend, Paul, calls “the land of I don’t know.”  Do you remember the children’s book, Going on a Bear Hunt?  “You can’t go under it, you can’t go over it; you just have to go through it.”

 There is something on the other side of how you feel. Remember that some fields have to lie fallow before new crops can surge forth. So, it may be for us. We, too, have seasons. And while you are waiting for what comes next—something that may be wholly unexpected--practice tenderness with yourself, practice grace and gratitude—a tiny bullet journal works for me. I write three things most night that I am glad for in my life. Reach out to the people who fill you up, who love you not because you are a head of school but despite the fact you are one.  And set yourself free from urgency, from controlling what might come. Sometimes, we are so accustomed to putting out fires, we think a pause is cheating, but it’s not.

 Know you are enough—just as you tell the girls at school that they are.  You are, too, my beautiful scarf-loving friend.  You are absolutely enough. 

A New Chapter: Volleyball Without My Boy

I am in the gym, waiting for the Varsity Volleyball game to begin. It’s late September. The two teams are warming up, our gym alive with energy and expectation. One player bounces the ball  against the wall, warming up her fingers for setting. Others pass and serve and run. It’s well-organized chaos. They know what to do. I sit in the stands, chatting with parents. I am known as a headmistress-fan and I’ve logged many hours in this gym. The excruciating temperatures the kids endured before we added air conditioning last summer are now a faint memory. The new space gleams.  Though I know he isn’t here, I scan the players, looking for my son.

My son was born on the twelfth day of my headship; when he was an infant, he napped in a bassinette my office. He went to our Early Childhood, but when it was time Kindergarten, he had to leave us since Laurel, the school I lead, is an all girls’ school. Still, in a sense, Atticus grew up in the Laurel. As a little boy, he’d get off the bus from his school, check in with me if I happened to be free. My assistant, Erin, would give him a snack, and then, most days, he’d wander over to the gym to watch the Upper School girls play volleyball and basketball. He’d hang his legs through the bars of the railing and watch. Eventually, Erica, who coached volleyball, and Tim, who coached basketball, invited him down. By ten, he was on the court, fully a head shorter than most of the girls, learning the basics of both sports. Those coaches offered him a community, and the girls welcomed him, part-mascot, part-little brother. He belonged. As the college process unfolded last fall, he and I bantered that he should write his college essay about growing up in a girls’ school. 

At games, when he was little, Atticus would run in front of the fans, toting a huge stuffed gator on his back. He loved going to games and practices, keeping the stats, being part of it all. Volleyball won out over basketball as the sport he would play.  As he grew, his skills increased. Last year, as his father recovered from back surgery, I went with Atticus for a weekend tournament in Columbus. I watched him serve and set and bump and kill. On the court, he was not as tall as many players, but he was a skilled communicator. He knew the game; he was encouraging of his teammates, confident, respected.  Now, he’s off at college, playing club volleyball with the boys and managing the girls’ team.  I remembered his first club practice when he was about twelve.  The team, mostly Catholic, prayed.

“I didn’t know what to do, Mom,” Atticus said.

“So what did you do?” I asked my Jewish-Protestant son, who has spent little time in either a temple or a church.

“I just bowed my head like the other guys and looked at the floor.”

Smart boy.  Last night, watching our Laurel team line up for the National Anthem, I missed being able to spot him on the bench, conferring quietly with the coaches.  By the time he left for college, he was an honorary member of the coaching staff, trusted to run drills and work with players.  His love of the Laurel teams who welcomed him meant I grew to love these sports, too. It’s easy for me to stop in the gym on the way home—I have to pass it to leave the building. Habits form. 

in the stands, I’m a regular, raising my voice to cheer on the girls I love. “Go, Gators!” I yell.  I want them to hear me.

Without Atticus to spy on, I consider this team.  Vanessa, our libero, was a shy ninth grader in my English class, but now jumps straight up when she serves and is fearless as she lunges low to bump. Ninth grade Jordyn, at Laurel since she was a baby, has a serve that skims the net, effortless and lethal; Reese, new to the school this year, plays as if she is a lot taller than she is; Kayla, my advisee and outside hitter; Ana and Linden, who have both height and power; McKeely, the setter, who is everywhere at once, encouraging, supporting, the heart center of the team. Liv, Jordyn L., Sophie, Azariah. I love them all plus the JV squad and the legions of players—both basketball and volleyball—who have inhabited our gym over the past twenty years—G and Claire and the Thierry twins and Shea and Margaret and Natalie—if only briefly. In the gym—unlike the sports played on fields, I can see the players’ faces--their grins and grimaces. The immediacy appeals to me. When we miss a point, I deflate; when we ace a serve or put a shot away, so that the other team has no shot of returning it, I delight—the same is true for basketball when we miss a basket or score—such waves of feeling sweep through me. I know the other team wants to win, but I want our girls to win more!

I love our girls, love the way they “woof” in triumph after points scored, love the way the JV girls encourage them from the sidelines, “It’s okay, V!  Good try,” the 9th graders yell when Vanessa misses a shot and lands on the floor. I love the team culture. We have sisters playing this year—Cia and Ana—their older sister, Delia—already graduated—they are a volleyball dynasty! 

After Varsity handily dispatched their opponent in the first set, I mad my way across the parking lot, opened our back gate, and got on with making dinner.

Pictures of Atticus adorn our fridge—the day he got his license sophomore year, a picture of him at Miranda’s wedding, his final hug with Cordelia as we left him at Bowdoin. When I got back from Maine, I discovered he had left bright pink post-it notes all over the house for me: “I miss your food.” “Call me—I’m still up.” “Don’t put chili powder in the coffee.” (In my defense, I only did that once, but it has mythic status in the family).  The notes made me weep and laugh. I’m proud of him for all he has accomplished, proud of him for his independence, and grateful to him for his love and care. I’m surprised he didn’t leave a post-it for me on the bleachers in the Laurel gym saying, “Go, Gators!”  In a letter he wrote to me, he reminded me to remember how much I love the Laurel girls when I missed him.  Obedient, I am loving them.

 He is playing volleyball on a new team now, finding his way in a new gym in another state. I’m at home, missing him, but feeling lucky that he grew up with me at the school I lead and amazed that I am now—thanks to him--a sports fan.

Goat's Adventures Abroad

This piece originally appeared in the lovely but now shuttered publication, Mothers Always Write, in 2014. Dropping Atticus at college earlier this week—at Bowdoin, where this story is set—brought it to mind. When I returned home from drop-off, I discovered Goat on my bed, left for me by my son.

It was nighttime by the time we arrived in Brunswick, and I wasn’t feeling well.  Achy, dizzy, not myself.  By sheer force of will, I had managed the flight from Paris to Newark, Newark to Portland, the drive from Portland to Brunswick, where we would see our daughter, Cordelia, as Antigone in Anouilh’s Antigone the next night.  We ate dinner with her director, a lovely man, whose affection for our daughter and respect for our ten-year old son, Atticus, impressed me.  Atticus liked him, too, though jet lag got him, and he fell asleep on an ottoman.  Finally, back in the Inn, my husband, son and I tumbled into bed. In the night I woke with an “Uh oh feeling.”

Where is Goat?

Goat, whose formal name is Elijah Vanilla Crème Goat, traveled to London and Paris with us over Spring Break, seeing the sights and offering a friendly ear to a boy who was not so sure about unfamiliar places.  I remembered stuffing him into Atticus’ backpack when we left London, but suddenly, I have no memory of packing him  early this morning, when, groggy, we left our miniature hotel room in Paris.  I clambered out of bed and use my Itty Bitty Book light to locate the backpack, which I unzip quietly.  I felt around.  No white fur.  No Goat.  As I feared.  Goat had stayed in Paris.

I felt like crying.  “Bad mother,” I punished myself, despite the fact that my son was ten and perfectly capable of looking after his things.  Except that we left Paris at 4 a.m.  None of us was firing on all pistons. 

What to do? What to do? I knew Atticus will be crushed.  He was too old to accept a new Goat, a trick I tried once when he was three and his beloved Tubby had been mislaid.  When the original, a pale green hippo with pink paws, was discovered, we had Tubby One and Tubby Two. 

Goat is the last.  Atticus and I have talked about this—he has always loved stuffed animals—animals ring his bed—penguins, dogs, rabbits.  He sleeps with Goat and a small bear called Capitan—one of the characters from Commedia del’Arte. His sisters—ever so much older—have matching bears with Commedia names, too—Smeraldina and Columbine---the hazards of a theatre family—even our animals get names from Shakespeare or mythology. Goat, named entirely by Atticus was the last new acquisition to my son’s menagerie. 

“Enough,” I said, irritated, last fall.  “There are too many stuffed animals in this room, on this bed. No more animals.”

My exasperation, I know, is tied up in Atticus’ pleasure in remaining a little boy—by his own admission, he worries about getting older, is reluctant to grow up, to take on school work, to show how competent he is.  And a piece of me empathizes with his fear.  It’s nice to be cared for, to have few obligations, to have a Mom and Dad who swoop in to fix things.  I explain that his reading by himself doesn’t mean I won’t read to him, that his managing his homework independently doesn’t mean we’ll throw him to the wolves—the year has been a struggle.  He sees his sisters working hard in college; me, working hard as the Head of the School on whose property we live but which he, being a boy, had to leave before Kindergarten.   He sees his Dad working hard as a math teacher at my school. He feels exiled.  He hates that he is so much younger than his sisters, hates having to do much that does not involve the Disney Channel.  Too much of his life is spent in front of a screen, escaping and untended by older parents, who are too busy coping to remember to entertain him or to hold him accountable. I know some of Atticus’ resistance is because he feels less than…he doesn’t believe he is capable, and though I can say it all day long, he needs to feel inside himself that he can manage, be successful.  Effort and persistence, key aspects of growth mindset, have not yet taken root, so I fuss at him, a nagging mom, who loves him so much, but wants him to step up.  His father, calmer, worries privately, to me or to his sisters, noting on the soccer field that Atticus gets tired and stands, hoping the ball will come his way.  We want to allow him to be who he is.  We want him to be more.  It’s a wicked cycle. 

Last fall, we went shopping for a baby gift, and Atticus spied Goat in a lovely boutique.

“Look, Mom.  He’s so great.  He looks distinguished. Look at his beard.”

“No,” I said firmly.  “We agreed.  No more animals.” 

Sadly, Atticus muttered, “I don’t have any goats,” but reluctantly returned Goat to the shelf.

But secretly, in a mixed messages mothering move, I snuck back and purchased Goat, hiding him from Atticus. I tucked him into the top of my boy’s stocking, so he was joyfully discovered on Christmas morning.  We named him that night as Atticus solemnly contemplated the animal he knew would be the last stuffed companion to come into the house. 

“He looks like the little blue cups of half and half I drink at First Watch, Vanilla Crème.”

“Okay, anything else?  Want to call him Vanilla Crème Brulee?” I ask. Names matter. And I love Crème Brulee.

“Nope.  Elijah.  Elijah Vanilla Crème.”

“With Goat as his last name?” 

“Yes, but I might call him Goat for short.”

“Sounds sensible.” 

Often, after I read to him at night, Atticus, my philosopher, offers me his musings. This night, he says:

“Sometimes Christmas is hard, Mom.  I look forward to it for so long, but then the girls don’t even want to do anything.”

“Well, we went to the Annie movie.”

“Yea, I guess it was okay.”

“I agree.  It was medium.”

“But you gave me Goat, Mom.  That was pretty great.” 

“I’m glad.  It's fun to have surprises sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says, drowsy.

Theirs was not a long relationship, but one that mattered.

At 2 a.m. from my bed in chilly Brunswick, I did not have the heart to wake my husband, who was finally in deep slumber.  Fretting, I email Lili, a former student, who lives in Paris.  We had been with her the night before.  She lives in the Marais across from the Pompidou, and Atticus, suspicious of Paris because it felt darker and drearier than London—possibly because it rained most of the time we were there—loved her.  He even ate the savory crepes her fiancé prepared—it had been a magical final evening.

“Don't laugh.  Could you call the Odeon St. Germain and see if they found Goat, Atticus’ lovey?  I think he slipped down between the beds.  He’s white, so I think I just missed him.”

In moments, she wrote back.  “They have him!”

I thanked her extravagantly. 

Relieved, I give into illness and jet lag and went back to sleep.  In the morning, Atticus poked me gently, at the side of my bed, eyes brimming.

“Mom, I can’t find Goat.”

“Honey, he decided to take an extra day in Paris.  He wanted to visit the Pompidou.  Lili is sending him home tomorrow.”

“He stayed in Paris?”  Atticus is incredulous, disbelieving.

“Yep.  He liked the crepes.”

“You’re teasing. Did we forget him?”

“What’s going on?” my husband asked groggily.

“We lost Goat,” Atticus quavered.

“We didn’t lose him,” I explained to Seth. “We know where he is. Lili has him and she is sending him tomorrow.” 

Seth asks, “You talked to Lili?  It’s 7:00 a.m.?”

“I know.  Email.”  Seth rolled over.  Atticus, soothed, went back to his I-pad.

Crisis averted.  Atticus was okay.  I was ill but much better than I had been at 2:00 in the morning. I was grateful that Lili saved the day. My mother- guilt was assuaged. 

Later, Lili sent a photo of Goat to reassure Atticus.  She wrote “Totally my pleasure to be walking around Paris with an adorable stuffed goat. The French word for a child's sacred stuffed animal is "doudou" and they take these things very seriously - the hotel staff was sincerely concerned / protective / relieved.”  Lucky Atticus, to have misplaced a lovey in a land that values a child’s relationship with a stuffed toy.

We saw Antigone.  Cordelia was exceptional—fiery, vulnerable, authentic. Five minutes in, Atticus’s head drooped onto my shoulder.  He snored softly.  I tried to rouse him, but he was too tired.  We are a pair—one over-tired boy, one sick mother. Only my husband, Seth, seemed in tact, alert, unscathed by jet lag.  His experience working abroad served him well; he travels light and adapts fast. 

The next morning, Cordelia bustled into our room at the inn, administering Source Water, chosen for electrolytes, scolding me about dehydration, patiently watching her brother’s magic tricks from the kit he acquired at Hamley’s in London, the highlight of his trip.  A few days later, we left for Cleveland.  Lili assured us that Goat is en route, and about a week later, he arrived.  Atticus worried that he may have been harmed, squashed as he was into the padded envelope, but a quick shake and he was uncrumpled. 

That night, once again, Atticus clutched Goat next to him in bed. 

“I liked London, Mom.  I didn’t like Paris.  I like home best.”

His eyelids fluttered, lashes resting finally.  I look at his silky dark hair, the round curve of his cheek.  He needs to leave his little boy self at his own pace, not at mine. Goat may need to keep him company on the way. He is my own Peter Pan, my own Dorothy, refusing to grow up at any one’s time table, but his own, realizing, after his travels, that there no place like home.

Still, sitting by the bed, I think that he is also Jackie Paper to my Puff. “Painted wings and giant strings make way for other toys.  Little boys grow up in a blink, when we are not watching. Seth and I, after the daily care of children for so decades, will wonder at the house’s quiet, at our lack of tasks to accomplish.  I breathe in his lingering little-boy-ness, the need he has for his mother.

Watching him sleep, finally, I know the day will come when he no longer will cuddle goat.  Even now, he is changing, struggling.  And I, like Atticus, am struggling, too, with the knowledge that there will a come a time—in fact, there must come a time—when I can’t fix whatever is awry; even now, I feel a little guilty.  I’m a school-teacher who reminds parents often that we hobble our children when we try to assuage every bump.  But tonight, I forgive myself, knowing that soon he will not need or want me to unravel all the snags.  

It is easy to get Goat back; other losses along the way are harder to bear.  We manage.  We move forward.

Sweet dreams, Atticus.  Sweet dreams, Goat.  Welcome home.

A Headmistress Reflects on Barbie World

When our first daughter was born, I vowed there would be no Barbies in our home. Growing up for thirteen years in a girls’ school and choosing a concentration in Women’s Studies within my English Major in college; I viewed Barbie as a synonym for all that was awry in sexist American culture. She was objectified for an unattainable physique. Acquiring all the accessories that were marketed with her seemed materialistic. And, perhaps, worst of all, she seemed vapid. I wanted better for my daughter.    

As a little girl, I inherited my older sister’s Barbies and enjoyed pulling their heads off to switch which head went on which body. I do not remember why this was entertaining since all the bodies were the same. Skipper interested me more than Barbie because she was like me, a little sister. I ignored Ken. My brother had drawn on him in indelible marker.   Dressing the dolls felt frustrating; their limbs didn’t bend and it seemed undignified to turn the dolls upside down to shimmy their narrow pants up their legs. Also, we never seemed to have panties to go under those very tight pants.  By the time another friend of my sister’s passed down her Barbie dreamhouse, I was too old to play much with dolls. Though I loved make-believe, I couldn’t quite imagine what Barbie might yearn to do.   In those days–the late 60’s, Barbie hadn’t yet become a career woman. She seemed, frankly, boring.  

Like so many of the grand schemes young parents imagine, mine fell to dust. At her second birthday, Miranda, our oldest, was given a Barbie by a nursery school classmate, whose mother, I recall, upon reflection, looked a lot like Barbie. Our feisty, independent toddler loved the bright pink packaging and Barbie’s fancy blonde curls. Should I have grabbed the doll from her reach? My husband and I exchanged a glance. Tears on a birthday because of this mother’s social conscience did not feel right. I don’t think I ever purchased a Barbie for our daughters, but I did let them play with my vintage Barbies, discovered in a plastic bag in a closet in my mother’s house.  They much preferred American Girl dolls, who came with books and even more expensive accessories.  

As the hype surrounding the film increased, I was not excited about seeing the Barbie movie.  But a colleague head said, “Ann, you’re the head of a girls’ school. You have to see it.” When reviews of the Barbie movie began to show up on my social media feed earlier this summer, I mostly ignored them. But then I read an interesting editorial that suggested this movie was more than maribou feathers and glitter.  Greta Gerwig, critics suggested, had upended our Barbie stereotype. Susan Faludi, whom I admire greatly, liked the film. Another head friend wrote her back-to-school letter about the movie. I had to go.

Dressed in the requisite pink, my son, Atticus, 19, and I went to the Barbie Movie. I was curious, skeptical at the beginning, totally hooked as Barbie encountered surly Sasha and her mom, the complicated and wonderful,Gloria, who was, in fact, glorious. Atticus reported to his older sisters that I cried the whole time, which is not accurate, but I did cry. So much of what Gloria said as she deprogrammed Barbies hypnotized by Ken’s adoption of a patriarchy in Barbieland resonated. Gloria’s monolgue mirrored conversations I have had for decades with girls and women as a teacher, mother and friend. It is complicated to be female. There are paradoxes that feel impossible to navigate, contradictions, judgements, societal norms, pressure. I felt as if I knew the words Ferrera would speak before she uttered them.  

I have spent most of my life as a teacher in girls’ schools, encouraging girls and young women to use their voices. I’ve reminded legions of girls that they have a right to be at every table and reminded them, too, that they have access to an exceptional eduction.  “Of those to whom much is given, much is expected,” my mother used to say.  Sometimes I say, “Carry as you climb; women need to lift up other women, not tear them down.”  Sometimes, the girls in my classes roll their eyes as I talk about the fact that we are not yet on a level playing field in terms of men and women being paid equally for having the same qualifications and doing the same work. Then, they return from college and say, “Ms. Klotz, you were right–people ARE sexist.” There is no joy in being right..

For many of the girls in the school I lead, the Barbie movie may seem like an innocuous parody of times long past—for me and for women my age and older, not so much. But part of why the movie may feel more entertaining than revolutionary is because of the work we do at Laurel every day.  Our students come of age in a school that encourages them to be their authentic selves, that encourages them to dream, dare, do, to explore possibilities, to reject anyone who tries to diminish them or judge them…what would have happened to Barbie if she had been a Laurel girl?

Driving home from the movie, my son and I discussed Ken’s story, too. Patriarchy is no good for anyone; Ken was about as undifferentiated a character as any character could be; his plaintive declaration, “I am Ken,” moved me, but not as much as the real woman’s speech about womanhood. Gloria says:

“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.

You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin…You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people… 

But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged…You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line…”

I need to see the movie again. Soon. Maybe tonight.  It is a fable for our time, a call to action, a subversive and not so subtle but marvelous take on what it is to be female (and male) in our nation. Yes. I love when a billion dollar movie has a social conscience with Greta Gerwig as the director; I love the sheer number of people who are seeing this film. 

In a Facebook post I wrote the day after seeing the movie, I closed by wondering if this movie, this colossal hit, could change us, and a former student wrote to me, “Ms. Klotz, maybe it already has.”  I smiled. Maybe it has.

Nesting--Originally Published in Mothers Always Write, 2017

Nesting

If I were born a boy, my father always told me, they would have called me Robin.

When I was little, my mother would say, “Take your hairbrush out to the garden and clean it there.  The birds can use your hair to line their nests.”  Enchanted, I’d flit down the back steps to the boxwood bushes and tulips. Running the comb through the dreaded brush to loosen the strands, I’d chat with a robin, who tilted her head with interest: “Here you go, birdie.  Take my hair for your nest.  It’s very soft.”  For a minute, I was the bird lady in Mary Poppins, not feeding the birds, but offering them something of use for their shelter.

Nest building is the job of the mother bird, of course.  No one teaches mama birds the way I learned to pass the potholder loops over, under, over, my fingers clumsily learning rudimentary weaving.  Female robins are deft, intuitive, tucking strands, adapting materials, with beaks far more clever than my chubby fingers.  They make homes for their babies out of grass and thread and bits.

Our daughter, Cordelia, stands on the back porch of our summerhouse.  She is in conversation with the birds.

“Do you hear, Mom?  That’s the chickadee answering me.” Cordelia has taken an American Songbird music class in college. Her melodious calls are hard for me to distinguish from those of real birds.  She sings: the birds answer.  It is a chorus, a symphony of bird song in our backyard.  She grins.  My mom would have loved this duet.  I am awed—it is as if, like Cinderella, she can call the birds to her to do to her bidding. Our children have so many selves, so many bits that inspire us, even as they reveal that they are separate from us.

 “And there’s a dove.  You love doves,” she grins. 

I do love mourning doves like my mother before me.  Their throbbing coo brings my mom back to me—doves, who reuse robins’ nests to lay their own eggs, sort of like a rental property, so practical.  It was my own practical mother who taught me how to identify songbirds, first by helping me collect feathers one summer and looking up in her bird book the bird to whom each feather belonged:  Baltimore Oriole, Scarlet Tanager, Junco, Woodpecker. Then, together we made a scrapbook, pasting bird silhouettes onto construction paper and piercing the top corner with a shiny brad.   Towards the end of her life, I sat with Mom, her chair tilted to see out the sliding glass doors to watch her feeder, gleeful with the arrival of goldfinches, furious when aggressive jays dive-bombed the sparrows or chickadees.

“Get away from there,” she’d holler, rapping her cane against the glass.  Her bird book still rests on the shelf above where her chair used to be.  Though she has flown away, each summer, we fill the feeder off her porch.  I mix hummingbird nectar, suspending crimson feeders across the front of the house to entice the tiny, jeweled creatures to sip and hover, honoring my bird-loving mom.  Where do they go, I wonder, when they finish drinking?  I have never seen a hummingbird nest in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I have read that those nests are infinitesimal, exquisitely constructed. Perhaps I do not know where to look.

One bright September afternoon, I see the Kindergarten having recess in the courtyard and join them.

“Look at our fairy garden, Ms. Klotz,” Ariya trills. “It’s magic.  A new chair and a gazebo and statue!!!  They came last night—magic!”

 “Magic, indeed,” I confirm, hoping I had remembered to take the price tags off the bottoms of the tiny items.

“And over here, Ms. Klotz, look over here,” Caroline peeps, tugging my hand, urging me toward a pile of grass and leaves on a flagstone.

“We made a soft landing—see?” She points above us, and I see a nest snuggled in a crabapple tree.  The nest is empty, but Caroline is prepared:

“In case a baby drops out.  It would have this soft place to fall.”

A soft place to fall.  No matter that it is September, and the little birds are long flown away—we all need a soft place to fall.

“That is splendid, girls,” I murmur, “just splendid.  Those baby birds are lucky to have such clever, thoughtful engineers. “ 

“Their mommies would be happy, Ms. Klotz,” chirps Caroline, “that they have a soft  landing place.

“Yes, I think their mommies would be very glad.”

“And then the mommy bird would fly back down and pick up her baby and tuck her back into the nest,” clucks Grace with confidence, her golden hair downy in the light.

I nod and we move onto hopscotch.  Just for a moment, magic and fairies are stronger than any preachy drivel about what really happens when birds fall from the nest.  Isn’t that it, really?  The fear all of us have as mothers—that one of our own will crash, won’t have her landing cushioned, won’t be lifted back into the nest? In fact, if a baby bird survives a fall, we should not intervene.  Her mother is still watching—sometimes from as far as a block away--and she will do her best to feed and care for the baby as long as humans don’t interfere.  Lots of babies fall from nests.

Birds, nests, families, stages. 

As a child, I watched robins raise their broods each July in the snowball bushes that flanked our porch.  From the kitchen window, I could see the babies stretching their necks up for worms, the parents attentive to their demanding toddlers.  We would watch the flying lessons, standing quietly not so close that we made the mother nervous, but from a few steps away on the porch. I hated the occasional tiny bird, barely looking like a bird, which we discovered beneath the snowball bushes—a yolky, translucent, bloody, mass. 

Our nest’s contours don’t quite suit us as our children leave, return, leave more finally.  We are in the in-between time now. One is really gone; one about to finish college; one in sixth grade.  We will not have an empty nest for many more years.  What we have is an emptying one.  With two of our children grown—more or less—I wonder what the shape of my own mothering will become once they no longer live under my roof; once I am no longer charged with dropping impossibly long worms down tiny gullets or required to sit on top of all of them to keep them safe and warm.  I waited a long time for them to arrive, and with the gap between the girls and our son, I will wait a long time, too, for them to be fully gone, but I am already thinking, mourning, what it will be like to be without them.

What’s the moment when we understand our children are distinct from us? Our two daughters went to school with me from the time they were in sixth and fourth grades. I liked having them near, seeing their heads bent over their lunches, always noticing them in their places during assembly.  I miss the quick visit at day’s end, Cordelia bursting in: “Mom, do you have any money?  We’re going to get smoothies.” Or Miranda appearing, once she was old enough to drive, with a smile: “Hi, Mom, brought you a latte.”  I loved the immediacy of their lives unfolding around me.

Now, as our daughters skim into adulthood, I startle.  They are the age now that I remember being just a blink ago.

I watched them live their college experiences, happy to welcome us for a show or a dance concert, but during those weekends, I felt extraneous, a visitor trailing behind me scraps of their childhoods, out of place, unwelcome in a dorm apartment.  It is curious to observe one’s child at college, in her own nest, to resist the urge to tidy up unless asked, to greet friends whose names mean little to you because you never had a face to put with the name.  I scrutinize their desks, searching for confirmation via post-its and Polaroids and dried bouquets that they are well and happy.  These are their nests, not mine. They take us out for dinner, enjoy showing us their worlds as if we are tourists.  We disrupt their flight path when we’re there.  I recall my own mom visiting to see my plays in college.  I loved having her and couldn’t wait for her to leave. 

Our visits are important, though, to prepare myself for the fact that they are not coming home—for good. Going into their college space or into our oldest daughter’s first NYC apartment reminds me this is what it will be moving forward—me going to visit them; them coming home to visit, only to perch, not to land or nest.  Nest.  Twigs, sticks, floss, thread.  Insubstantial yet enduring.  Glued together with mud.  How do nests withstand weather anyway?  In Ohio, it’s not uncommon in the freeze of February to look up at a leafless tree and see a nest, exquisitely formed, still wedged in a tree’s limbs.  Waiting?  I find the work of raising the same family over many seasons hard; imagine if I had to start over several times every year, raising several batches of eggs and having them with me for only two weeks at a time?

Our house feels different when the girls are back and when they’re gone again, the molecules reorganizing.  Their much younger brother anticipates their return with huge excitement, so huge he is bound to feel disappointed.  They return, regress. They strew their possessions.  The house heaves, expanding to accommodate them.  We sit at the dining room table in our old places, eating meals, but the temporary feeling is excruciating; we are playacting what once was the rhythm of real life.  And then, they fly away again, those older two.  Their dad, brother and I stumble back into what it’s like to be without them each day, picking up a left-behind scarf, marveling, missing them.  We feel bereft and relieved.  Like visiting them at college in reverse.

It is late summer when we find the corpse of a baby bird in our back yard.  We know our two young cats are the culprits.  A few feet away, a second corpse, and then we see the third.  The mother robin shrieks, circling devastated.  The nest of birds we had so enjoyed watching has been decimated. It is too much, these helpless little birds murdered by our own feline boys.  My husband, Seth, brushes away tears with the back of his hand.  “It’s not their fault; they’re just doing what cats do,” he, always reasonable, explains.  We go inside, unable to withstand the mother’s desperate grief.  The nest, empty, reproaches us all fall, all winter.  “Do not build your nest there again,” I implore the robin when I see her again in the spring.  But she does.  Threads and grasses and straw are refurbished; mud is spread inside for a smooth finish, her chest a paintbrush.  And this time, the babies survive. 

Our own home is temporary.  We live on the grounds of the school I lead.  When I leave the school, we will need to go somewhere.  Two years ago, almost on a whim, we bought a little house that we will, one day, remodel for our inevitable retirement.  It’s down the driveway from our summerhouse, but unlike that one, this one is winterized and has a furnace.  Last August, I took a few friends over to show it off.  Though it is empty, it is full of possibility.  I imagine our grown children bringing their children to see us there at Christmas.  In the miniscule front yard, I crouch. An almost perfect robin’s egg winks up at me.  I lift it gently, look around for the nest.  Seeing none, I carry it inside with me and lay it on the windowsill, a reminder that feathering the nest is always the mother’s job, again and again.  Nest and re-nest.