Unicorns
At Laurel, the school I lead, certain traditions bind one generation to another. Women who were graduated more than fifty years ago speak with fondness about ceremonies and rituals they associate with their era: the Laurel banana—a cherished dessert featuring lemon juice and confectioner sugar on a banana; all-school assemblies that punctuate the year—today would have been the Snowflake Assembly, the gathering that sends us into winter vacation. As a alumna of a girls’ school myself, I am conscious of the value of shared experiences that connect a community. It is good for us to feel a part of something larger than ourselves.
But everything looks different this year. The school felt lonely without children this week; it was a little bit like Pompeii—without the lava—as if everyone had suddenly left what they were doing when we migrated to School@Home. Once upon a time, before Covid, most of our students went to school all in one building, little girls looking up to the older girls, imagining themselves trading jumpers for plaid skirts; older students looking back at the little ones and remember their own childhoods. It is civilizing, humanizing to be under one roof.
Traditions that have endured at Laurel are centered on girls’ love for their school. After Thanksgiving, the Juniors receive their class rings in a ceremony featuring a faculty speaker and a white rose for every girl, regardless of whether or not she chooses to get a ring—though any girl who wants a ring can have one. Alumnae have donated back their rings for girls who want them but cannot afford an expensive piece of jewelry. Typically, after the ceremony, we host a reception for families in the dining room, with cake and the girls busily twisting their rings as many times as the numbers of their graduation year. This year, I reached across six feet and pretended to turn rings for the Juniors who joined us in person, masked and manicured.
Right before winter vacation, the Upper School celebrates Song Contest, a tradition dating back more than a century in which the girls rewrite lyrics to popular songs to make them Laurel-centric. In performance, each class led by elected Song Contest Leaders, who choreograph and coach their classmates. Musical classmates accompany the singing. This tradition is both a superb example of authentic leadership and is utterly incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with our culture. A panel of alumnae judge the contest and the competition is fierce. It took me more than a few years as Headmistress to actually “get” it. My epiphany occurred when our oldest daughter invited her Senior Class to sleep over at our house the night before Song Contest, an invitation issued without my knowledge, but convenient for sneaking into the school to practice that evening. Secretly, I loved that the girls wanted to come, loved, too, that our daughter knew we would be delighted to host the whole crew. That afternoon, we stocked up on chips and cookies and soda, and after one more rehearsal in the gymnasium, they trooped across the chilly parking lot and packed into our living room. At the time, our young son was a light sleeper. As I retreated upstairs, I exhorted the girls to be quiet enough that they wouldn’t wake him. Then, I climbed into bed with a book. A few minutes later, I heard them. Sihan was playing softly on our apartment-sized piano and the girls were singing through their lyrics, quietly, quietly, but with so much love.
We belong to the green
We belong to the white
We belong to the numberless hours
Of work every night
Wherever we end up in the fall, we’ll always remember
We belong, we belong, we belong here forever
The girls belong to their school and we, their teachers, belong to them; it’s an extraordinary chemistry, made bittersweet for the Seniors by the knowledge that the countdown has begun. They will leave us. Time moves forward, inexorably, pandemic notwithstanding. When we do our work well, they leave us, ready for new adventures. They have been ours, but are ready to claim their voices, to take their seats at the table, lead with purpose, live with grace and ambition and empathy. They must go. That is the prescribed order. And, by and large, they are ready. But it’s hard to leave a place they know so well.
Sometimes, we worry that our girls are too comfortable at school; they whip off sweatpants or sweatshirts with too little regard for modesty—or decency. They lounge in the hallways, limbs extended until I remind them gently to allow passersby to pass. They leave their possessions all over the school, trusting that items will be there tomorrow—and, typically, they are. They storm and struggle and move in and out of friendship groups. Some classes and concepts come easily; some require persistence and effort. They forge relationships with one another, with older and younger girls. They connect with teachers, who routinely offer, so generously, their time and expertise. They make mistakes and, on a good day, learn from them. And then, in white robes on the stage of Severance Hall, they are graduated. Their day-to-day chapter as schoolgirls is complete. It goes quickly, as if in a blink they morph from middle school-ers to young women--competent, confident, capable. All summer I miss them. When school starts again, I look for those most recent graduates, expect to see them in the hallways, in my office, making announcements, giving Senior Speeches, but they are off to new adventures.
And then December. Home from college, recent alumnae typically return alone or in small groups, like unicorns--rare, prized, elusive. Transformed by a semester or two or three at college, some are shy visiting the landscape they so owned recently—now, they are tourists, steeped in recollecting their own past. They appear at the door to my office, and always, always, I ask the wrong questions, “Are you happy? Are things going well?” because it feels as if that is the compulsory script. We have passed over a bridge, these girls and I, and I have trouble reconciling their older selves with the girls who flung themselves onto the couch in my office, eating candy, talking about the details of their everyday lives at Laurel. Now, they are familiar strangers. I crave more time with each one of them; frequently, we have time only for a quick hug before I am committed to a meeting or another obligation. What I want to ask are questions too big for the moment: “How are you doing in the face of all I know you coped with at school? How is your mother, really? Has your broken heart mended? Do your parents know yet about your sexual orientation? Are you managing all the alcohol in college?” These questions visit me afterwards and I wonder why I dodged them in the moment? Social appropriateness? Changed intimacies? They are no longer ours.
But they feel as if they are…it is the way schools work; young people grow up within our walls and then go off to their next chapters. When they return, I sometimes can’t remember how long they have been gone—a year? three? I see each as she was: poised at the podium delivering her Senior Speech, racing down the soccer field, aglow in her role in the musical, head cocked in my ninth-grade English class. It is their job to change and grow. It is the school’s job to honor who they were and to celebrate who they are becoming.
This strange year, we have adapted, iterated, coped. We have missed being together, missed the small moments. We have suffered grief and worked to be the best school we can be for all girls. As the snow falls gently, I am thinking about how much I miss slender, brief moments of connection—in person, eye to eye. I am hoping each of our alums knows she is loved by her school, by her headmistress.
