28 years ago, I arrived at Cape Byron Rudolf Steiner School to become Class Guardian for Grade Seven, then the last grade in primary school. The class had gone through challenging times and, still-part child myself, I had been tasked to ‘lift the spirits’ of the kids. A warm rich hum accompanied the day of my move into the classroom – as a hive of bees swarmed into the tree just outside – a new queen had arrived. And that encapsulates how it felt and still feels to be at the school: honeyed, soul-nurturing, aromas of beeswax and baking bread, kids laughing and singing amongst sunflowers, the good slow nourishment of biodynamics and watercolour angels of light – the world curving rather than linear.
My class and I played and played and played. We were often barefoot. Sometimes I’d say – who wants to pick wild raspberries instead of doing algebra? Guess the answer… Our year was themed around the Celts. We built shelters in the bush, beat each other up with swords and shields, but the Celts were vain too – so to see 12-year-old boys especially giving each other facials was priceless. The kids entered my night dreaming in ways that seemed to pertain to lifetimes. Trying to rescue one from a gladiatorial ring. Other eras and epochs. As if, perhaps, we had already travelled a lifetime or more together.
When the year ended, I was asked to join the high school as an English teacher, but the thought of not being with ‘my’ kids every day was then inconceivable and I had some travel to do. Travel I did, had my own children, and fulfilled a dream to study the Storytelling Beyond Words residential at Emerson college in the UK. Along the way, I’ve become an author and professional storyteller and have written 70 books. All those many and varied adventures transforming, as my dad always promised during any moment of existential moaning – into grist for the mill. I would become a writer.
This week, after 28 years, I curved also, back into a luminous intangible flow of something I can only liken to an energetic Celtic knot. The school has called me back. For the next month I’ll be teaching English Extension 2 for Alix, working with young writers on their projects.
As Alix showed me around, I was introduced to a man responsible for the school’s glorious gardens. But he already knew who I was. Sam was one of ‘my kids’. What you can’t see in the picture are my tears of surprised gratitude at being reunited with a beautiful boy who grew into a beautiful man. Only the sheer joy – it’s all there.
