Ramblings of an old student....

 

My school is being sold this month. I’ve heard that they are going to build apartments there. 

Two years ago when they announced they would close, I didn’t feel surprise. The last time I was a part of the school, I was leaving a year early, running for a wide open university campus and possibilities and friends and experiences, with no intention of looking back. It was like I was slamming a book that had gotten old and tired and toxic shut, and starting fresh, crisp pages – a spine that creaks when you open it. I did not feel sadness leaving. I didn’t visit; I didn’t go to homecomings; I didn’t play in alumni games like I had always planned in sixth grade; I didn’t go to reunions. I had two close friends who have remained like sisters over the years – one I only see about once a year and one I see weekly; she is my daughter’s namesake.  I have list of teachers I will love forever. A smattering of friends who have also moved back to town and had kids at the same time, our lives overlapping again, like a different timeline. Some who have come back into my life either on social media or in life in a lovely way. I’m thankful for those people. 

But if I’m being honest, over the last two decades, the school itself has rarely crossed my mind. 

Now, this week, when I pause to think, to remember....there is some sadness. That the actual building will be gone. The shell that held 12 years of my life. 

Because even if I don’t revisit those memories, revel in them, idolize them… they’re still woven into the story that made me, the fabric from my childhood, my teenage years. 

Remember the tunnel? An old concrete cylinder that offered cool and shade and a wicked echo during recess, where you could sit with a friend with your legs kicked up the side, its delightful shape wedged between two trees where we could hoist ourselves to the top when it needed to become a rocket or truck or something magical. 

There was a collection of large rocks towards the top of the playground hill that made for a perfect House set up. A flat table-like rock with a dip in the middle, perfect for a cooking area where we mixed mulch and leaves and dandelions. Grouped slabs of rocks for beds. Arguments over who would be mom, and dad, and the kids. Some hyper boy who always wanted to be the dog. 

There was a big structure we called The Big Toy. It had a huge wide slide that 3 or 4 people could go down at once. A metal tunnel slide that only one person should go down, but multiple people tried anyway, needed ice for their heads after. Tires. Monkey bars. Wooden steps. Splinters. Intricately invented games. 

The teachers usually stayed at the black top, blowing their whistles, either when it was time to go or a car would drive slowly up the road to the Tabor Retreat House tucked behind the woods by our school. It never seemed odd to us, that there was this whole compound behind us where the nuns used to live when they ran the school. 

We had a fossil pile. You’d get grey film on your hands searching through, worth it when you found a coveted shark tooth. There was pride in the patience it took to sift through, careful, with eagle eyes, the sun beating on your neck past the collar of your uniform. 

On the side of the school there was a statue of Mary, where we had our yearly Blessings of the Animals and everyone got to bring their pet. My dad was allergic to animal fur, so I brought my stuffed bunny when I was little and my goldfish in middle school, like a true nerd. When we had to stay after school for older siblings or parent meetings, we would play near Mary’s statue, and offer gifts to her. Another thing that never felt odd. 

You kind of forget the memories until they all come piling back. The two water fountains in the elementary wing, hoping we could go to the tall one right near the teacher’s lounge, a place that was 100% off limits to students so naturally felt like a magnet. The other beside Ms. Emma’s closet, later Mr. Colombus’s, who was much friendlier than Ms. Emma, but likely for reasons I can understand better as an adult. Sometimes we would all get to go in the hallway and watch a movie on one of the roll-away tv’s. If it was raining at recess or it was a Saint’s Day, we’d sit on the hard linoleum, thrilled for a movie rather than our classroom. Prayer partner days. Free dress days. 

I loved every single one of my elementary teachers with a warmth in my heart that still glows when I think about them today. My dear third teacher is still at it, in fact teaching one of my friends’ sons this year at another local school, whose eyes widen when I tell him I was in the beloved and infamous Mrs. Shenigo’s very first third grade class when she moved to Lynchburg. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. England, later altered my mom’s 30+ year old wedding dress so I could wear it on my own wedding day, and her grandkids play with my children at the beach every summer. She taught 5th grade and on a special day each year, she’d bring her iguana in to roam the classroom for a day. The whole elementary wing would talk about it. 

I remember gym with Mrs. Moon, the plastic jump ropes and scooters and the sit-and-reach. Mr. Farringer, who cleaned, drove the buses, coached us in middle school, had three daughters with big smiles whom everyone loved, and always had a hug for a kid who needed it. Mr. Jones scratching sneaker scruff marks off the hallway floors, one of his pet peeves. Two buses, one to Amherst and one to Bedford. The curve of the carpool driveway. The bell at 3:10. 

I remember changing into PE clothes; forest green shorts with a gael on the side – mine all hand-me downs from my brothers. Feeling grown once the boys in your class noticed your bra straps showing through the white tshirt. 

The overhead projectors, and cleaning the reel of clear paper and dry erase marker. Washing chalk boards with a bucket of water and a sponge. Dreaded detention slips. The bathroom off the lobby where we put on make up, shared the news that we’d gotten our periods finally, cried after break ups or fights.  The stage where we sung choir recitals, royally screwing up the 12 Days of Christmas and parents thanking us for the laughs after, Mrs. Hubbard faithfully playing her keyboard and trying to keep us behaved and on key.  Rolling our kilts, and unrolling them when Mrs. Chase checked our hemlines. The tiny Spanish and French rooms right beside each other. Mrs. Keefer reminding us to believe in fairies, even in middle school. Mr. Formo’s room that always smelled of animal and science – he drove a yellow punchbuggie and Volkswagen van, and why we never asked about his hippie adventures before becoming a middle school science teacher, I’ll never know. We were so wrapped up in ourselves. Our drama. Our lives. I’d never want to go back, but if I did, I’d yell at myself to look up. Listen more. Notice more. Mostly people. The quiet ones who were probably far more interesting than I’ll ever know. 

I can hear the morning prayer and announcements, a routine so memorized it almost seems cult-like looking back. My best friend and I tried to see if we could remember the school creed the other day, and somehow the words are still engrained in our minds… We the students of holy cross school believe in purity of living, respect for authority, courteous manners, achievement through effort, loyalty, service, and integrity of character. We believe in living up to the best that’s within us at all times, whether alone or with many, and in keeping the faith within ourselves, our home, our city, our country, and our God.

The night before the school closed, it was open for school families to visit, but I didn’t go. Still, I had a dream that night that I couldn’t find my locker. I found my old boyfriend’s begrudgingly; I saw many old faces I haven’t thought about in decades; I glared at bullies, and hugged old teammates. I remembered the section near the stairs where my senior locker was, but I couldn’t find the number. And I thought, how will I get my AP Government book to Mr. Cloyd?? Ah, dreams. I woke up knowing that despite the disconnect of many years, this place still matters to me. 

I taught my first classes in the fourth grade classroom; after school, when my mom – who was the 4th grade teacher - was working after school, I’d open the English book to the apostrophe lesson and teach it to an imaginary class; I loved it. The chalk, the lesson, the power, imagined as it was. The school was small, so roaming it after the last bell rang was normal. Waiting for your parents or siblings to finish a practice. Helping a teacher. Getting in trouble. Looking for friends.

I had my first kiss in the auditorium in eighth grade slowing dancing to Aerosmith’s Don’t Want To Miss a Thing. I ate a note once in history class rather than read it outloud to the class. I saw my first fight in those halls. Drove my first car to the lot in the back where juniors and seniors parked. Had my first real boyfriend, and my first real break up. I discovered forensics – memorizing speeches in Mr. Cloyd’s room, speeches that opened up doors I didn’t even know existed years down the road. “If you’re going to talk this much,” he told me, “You might as well get a trophy.”  I remember throwing up on one of the tables in the cafeteria right before our Christmas party in first grade. I was devastated to miss the festivities, but recall loving watching a steady stream of Christmas movies when I got home. I remember my dad walking into school one time in the middle of the day – rare if it wasn’t for one of our games or events. He was scratched up and seemed distracted when I ran up to jump-hug him. I found out later that our old blue station wagon was totaled and there was a hubcap in the seat beside dad that had come through his window, and really, he was pretty lucky. I didn’t know that then.  I remember having a purse that held dimes only for 10 cent chocolate milk, and the occasional shape up for 25 cents. Lunch and vending machines and the day I stopped sitting at the ‘cool’ table. 

The gym though. I spent hours upon hours upon hours of my life in that gym. I can still see the old wooden bleachers, lines etched into them and silver circles on the tops of screws which you had to avoid when doing your homework at games. The gym seems smaller now; it was so big then.  The concession corner our parents worked during games. The locker rooms where we’d talk about basketball and the other team and getting hyped for games, but also where the older girls explained what a hand job was, where we cried over mistakes in love, some carrying heavier loads than I realized then. I remember practices with the snap pants you could rip off, changing into your basketball shoes, drills and sprints and plays that were simply second nature. The butterflies before games, the music, the diving for loose balls and pushing for a break away. I shoot hoops with my kids and husband on the driveway now, and every once and a while it crosses my mind how much I loved the game, how much basketball was a part of us growing up. I looked at pictures of coaches and friends cutting out pieces of the gym floor and nostalgia flooded back, because that’s the floor I learned to dribble on, learned what the game was, where we fell in love with it. 

There’s about a million memories. Some that aren’t so lovely and nostalgic. Some cruel, unfair, tragic. Ones that hurt my heart. Ones that shook me, shook my family. Ones that every once and a while haunt my memories. But I don’t really want to write those down. We lived through them. And that’s enough. 

The thing is, middle/high school was not the best days of my life, and I think that’s probably a good thing. There’s been so much life between when I walked out of those forest green doors till now, that the memories kind of fade and flicker. They aren’t active, but they’re there. And one day I think I’ll be glad to have it on paper, at least some of the memories of this place and what it meant to me. To allow myself to grieve the bulldozing of the grounds where we started. To be thankful for the pieces of good that endured, the people who stuck, and days on a playground where we searched for shark teeth and hung from monkey bars and jumped from swings, landing on our feet, ready to go.