Taking My Leave: The Too Long Goodbye

When Atticus was a little boy, full of feelings, we would sit together on the staircase at Lyman House. I taught him this poem by A.A. Milne: 

Halfway down the stairs
is a stair
where i sit.
there isn't any
other stair
quite like
it.
i'm not at the bottom,
i'm not at the top;
so this is the stair
where
I always
stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up
And it isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!

Together, we would talk about whatever was on his mind, tucked in together, on a single carpeted step, the bannister on our right, our hobbit-like front door at the bottom of the staircase. It was our ritual. 

In this chilly spring season of lasts, I am having a half-way down time of it, caught between staying and leaving, coming and going, expectation and dread, acceptance and denial. The end of my time as Headmistress approaches.  I directed my last middle school play, finished my first and last play with the fourth grade, continue to work with the fifth grade on their poem for their moving up ceremony. When I’m not at school, I rattle around our almost empty house, the rooms hollow without rugs and furniture, most of which has already been moved to Pennsylvania. I try to imagine our next chapter. I lie on the bed, looking out the leaded glass window I love; I am homesick in advance for Lyman House, for students whose Senior Speeches I will not hear. I am in the midst of anticipatory grief, and I’m slightly irritated with myself. Enough already.

I am still the headmistress, but I understand that this long, long goodbye is hurtling to its end. For months, I have felt as if I ought to be paying closer attention, so I remember all I might want to write about when I have time to write again. But, the endless to-do list gets in the way; my calendar is packed; there are still issues to resolve, and, suddenly, after months of anticipation, here we are. Spring has sprung; the lilacs have finished blooming; the iris stand proud in the mostly empty garden beds. I planted nothing new because I will be gone by the third week of June.

Last weekend, I was fêted at Alumnae Weekend—an elegant portrait of me has been painted and hung on the wall of the Alumnae Room, and I received a lovely volume of recollections written by students and alums.  I did not cry. At the chilly community brunch, I thanked the guests for the privilege of leading the school, for the privilege of watching children grow up and leave—such is the natural order of schools and, at Laurel, we are so lucky to have the Butler Campus that reinforces so many important lessons about change and growth. I taught my last two writing classes on Wednesday. We ate cookies; the girls shared a piece of writing they had completed this semester—in particular, they loved making lists.  And then, class ended. The girls hurried to their next class, and I stood alone in Laffer, admiring the stained glass, noticing my handwriting on the white board. Just like that, 43 years of being a teacher ended. I’m not sure what I expected. A thunder clap? Fireworks? I had been worried I might weep a little, but I didn’t.

Over the course of the week, I worked on packing up my office—though most of the furniture is gone, there are still too many files to sort. Older girls dropped by for candy or to write on my white board or to ask for a toy to remember me by. I wanted to slow down time to better notice and imprint every detail of those lovely celebrations, the meaningful moments with alums and colleagues. But I cannot stop the inevitable.

Mother Nature doesn’t care that May weather is supposed to be warm. I stood at the school’s front door each morning last week greeting the girls, wishing I had not already sent my winter coat to Pennsylvania. Meera told me all about a dead mouse, whose corpse she handled all by herself. I told her how proud I was of her. Max doffed his rhinoceros hat, grinning when I reminded him we only admit boys and girls to Laurel School, not scary rhinoceri. We have had this running joke for several weeks. The many Upper School students who had presented at the Capstone Symposium accepted my congratulations, laden with Starbucks drinks and Stanleys and lacrosse sticks and backpacks. Giulia and Everly stopped for hugs, as they always do. 

Over the past serveral weeks, when well-meaning people asked, “How are you, really?”  I smiled and answered that I was fine and meant it. I was proud of myself for retaining my equilibrium. I felt a little smug, the way I feel about retaining my 212 cell phone number all these years.

“Will we see you again before summer?” a third grader asked, arms around my waist as I handed out bracelets printed with mantras from Laurel’s Center for Research on Girls.

“See me? Of course you will. Summer is a long way off,” I chided.

“It’s next week,” she corrected.

“Next week?” I looked at her, puzzled; her sleek brown hair reminding me of an otter.

“Our last day of real school is Thursday,” she explained. “Then it’s Green & White Day; then, it’s summer.”

“I’ll see you,” I managed, off balance. Next week?  How could that be? The real end of the year has caught me by surprise, despite my long anticipation, despite my noting all the lasts. In the long poem, John Brown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benet, a Civil War saga, which I adapted for the stage in 1985, the characters chanted, “This is the last, this is the last.” That refrain beats in my head.

In Our Town, a play I know almost by heart, Emily, returning to witness her 12th birthday, weeps because people don’t stop to look at one another, because of all she hadn’t noticed when she was alive. Like Emily, I am astonished by all I haven’t taken notice of, all I have neglected to record, to remember.

My pride about holding it together so well was secretly a big act. If I allowed the enormity of what it feels like to leave this school I love, I’d crumble—even though it’s the right time to leave, even though I’m excited about whatever will come next. Some wise part of me knows that I can’t be the grown up I need to be or the competent headmistress I have prided myself on being for more than two decades if I am falling apart every day, every minute. If I allowed reality to truly sink in, I’m afraid I’d be sunk. At our all-school Thanksgiving assembly last November when the fifth grade sang about wild geese flying away each autumn, I lost it. I was horrified. It was far too early to cry. I wept again in March at Into the Woods when they sang, No One is Alone. I sat, sobbing in the front of the theatre. And when the Upper School sang the refrain from For Good from Wicked to me at the Flower Assembly a few weeks ago, I needed to use my hankie to not so surreptitiously wipe my eyes. It’s okay for the girls to know I love them and that I’ll miss them; it’s not okay for me to be a mess from now till Commencement.

Perched on the aqua carpet on a Lyman House step, I have a stern talk with myself. “Have your feelings,” I tell myself. “Don’t pretend to be stoic, but don’t ask the girls to prop you up; don’t make them sad, too.” Even as I leave, I want to model how to exit. As a Senior in high school, I was cast as The Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, doffing a big-plumed hat as I left the stage, announcing, “Every exit is an entrance somewhere else,” which I then used on my yearbook page. I believe that’s the case. We compose our lives in many chapters. Long goodbyes are hard on everyone. It’s time to go. It’s hard to leave.

Driving to Pennsylvania on Friday afternoon for Memorial Day weekend, I took deep breaths. consciously lowering my expectations about what I’d be able to accomplish. I still have several talks to write, award citations to compose, a script to rehearse with the fifth grade, a play to act in on Tuesday. Our new house would be crammed with unpacked boxes. We would have a number of guests. The weather forecast was cold and gray. “All will be well,” I told myself. After all, we’ll have the rest of our lives to unpack.  And, out of the lowering clouds and unrelenting gray, a rainbow bloomed in the gloom, brightening, pulsing, shining, glowing. I could barely keep my eyes on the road. The purple—my favorite color—was especially vibrant. “All will be well,” the natural world whispered, sending me a sign. I watched the rainbow for a long time, seeing its double, there and not there, witnessing the arch fade and brighten and extend as we chased it, knowing that it’s not really a colorful arc in the sky, but a gorgeous trick.   

The girls, the school, my colleagues—they will all be fine. They will thrive and grow at Laurel. My portrait on the wall will gaze at future Laurel girls benevolently. In a few years, no child will remember this particular headmistress, but I will remember all the children I’ve loved. That rainbow reminded me. I will remember it all.