Freshly Laundered & Hanging Out to Dry: Chapter3, Part1

Chapter 3
Transition

Every one of us has weaknesses that we have inherited from parents
and grandparents, and so on. We have to accept this
and by overcoming those weaknesses in ourselves,
we liberate both past and future generations.
In that way we can break the line of transmission. _JG Bennett

I have no trouble finding Mick when I’m ready. It’s as if he pops into existence when needed. After we visit the broom closet, he starts me sweeping a wide seemingly endless hallway that runs the full length of the first floor upstairs—a tedious task when I’m feeling so tired and the floor looks so clean.
Mick shows up again just about the time I arrive at the turn of the corridor, where a deep paneled wooden door, maybe twice the height of an ordinary one, stands ajar.
“Come here,” he says, crooking his finger. He opens the door fully to reveal an elegant ballroom with a sparkling crystal chandelier, plaster swags along the top of panel moldings on several walls, a grand piano at the far end, and an expansive well worn, yet shiny hardwood floor. Also, bewildering to see in that baroque room, are two six-by-fifteen foot expressionist paintings hanging on the long wall where the entrance door is. They’re more like graphic designs, crisp, with bold brush-like strokes but larger than any brush I’ve ever seen. They are red, white, and black with no mixing of colors.
“This is the room where we do Morning Exercise, the morning meditation,” Mick tells me. “Most of the Movements classes are in here, too.”

What he really wants to show me, though, having learned that I’m an artist, is the superb craftsmanship of the solid wood door that led us into the room. We return to it, standing outside the room once again.
“It must weigh hundreds of pounds.” With reverence, he points out, “Look how perfectly it’s set on its hinges.”
Then, with his index finger, he gives the massive door a gentle push, sending it soundlessly toward the jamb until the hardware clicks into place. We both stare at it in dumb admiration. Perhaps he shares with me the notion that craftsmanship provides clues about the Great Creator.
Over the next few days, I become familiar with the estate, my home for the next eleven months. We follow the same schedule that will be used once school begins, though I am given to understand that what is referred to as the current informality will soon be replaced with demanding and mostly silent intensity. To me, the fact that every minute of the day is accounted for is demanding enough.

Each day, new work assignments introduced me to a few more members of the sparse and fluctuating population. I was told there were about sixty people there but the house and grounds were so generous I hardly ever saw more than a few at a time except at meals.
Fifteen or twenty of us pulled weeds in the vegetable garden, three or four helped the cook by washing or cutting vegetables, one or two cleaned pots and utensils as meals were being prepared and then washed more cooking vessels after the meal. Maybe four people served food and washed dishes and the stainless tableware after meals. Additional practical work included washing and ironing sheets, painting rooms, patching walls, sweeping floors, and scraping the old finish off of wood trim.
Everyone also helped feed and care for sheep, a horse, two donkeys, and chickens from which we collected 50-60 eggs a day. Another part of our work was maintaining the buildings and grounds. One minute a person could be glazing windows and, the next, putting up beets for the winter. I loved the idea of so many practical activities, at first looking forward to them with relish. It was, at least in part, a reaction to having done so much rote work in school. Until the course began, however, no classes existed to break the monotony of daily tasks.
When I met other students, I was greeted with a smile and friendly conversation—usually about where we came from. There were as many Americans as Brits plus a few students from Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Ireland, and Germany.
Sometimes, when I was walking down a hall or garden path, when the purpose of my activity wasn’t apparent, people whom I assumed were staff members barked at me.
“Where are you going?”
“What are you doing?”
Unlike Mick, they were unsmiling. Why were they so grouchy? They brought to mind scenes with the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. I learned that in some cases they were first year students who took it upon themselves to police newcomers, intent on rescuing us from developing bad habits.

I have an existential map.
It has ‘You are here’ written all over it._Steven Wright

One afternoon, soon after my arrival, Mick extends our harvest of spinach for dinner by taking me on a tour of the gardens.
He points out how everything is still in fruition.
“Beans. Radishes. Potatoes. Herbs. We’ve eaten plenty, but there’s still a lot more to harvest. The weather is mild enough that we’ll be able to eat spinach and kale through most of the winter.”
We neophytes are inheriting the bounty of the first year students’ work before putting anything of ourselves into it. The more I think about it, the more I realize this is how it is in most aspects of life, but I have never before been so aware of it.

Once I saw the garden, if I overdosed on being surrounded by people or doing endless tasks, I would skip tea or spend the end of lunch hour by going out alone for visual nourishment. It was a fairyland of shiny-leafed knee-high spinach, white-stalked Swiss chard, claret-stemmed beets, red-caned rhubarb with leaves the size of elephant ears, squashes of all shapes and colors, the vegetables as beautiful as the flowers which grew tumbling among them and along a garden wall. At meals, simple as most of them were, I was reminded of what I’d often heard but never before experienced—that food fresh from the garden tastes exceptional.
On my forays, I noticed the beginnings of a rock garden and looked forward to a time when I’ll have the opportunity to work on it. Meanwhile, I managed in spare moments to rescue potted plants that had been abandoned in various parts of the house and organized them in a bright spot in one of the hallways. My childhood didn’t include conversation and despite growing up in the city, I learned to enjoy the company of plants in our tiny backyard. Outside, Mick had pointed out ferns that were very exotic to me though they grew all over England’s stone walls.

Securing from the kitchen an empty glass gallon jar that once held mayonnaise, I create a terrarium to add to the hallway garden. I also collect some grasses and flowers that are drying in the fields, making decorative bouquets to cheer us when the flowers are no longer blooming. I am desperate to feel connected to something.
This afternoon Mick invites me to help him gather squashes.
“These are marrows for dinner tonight,” he says, indicating some pale green ones as large as serving platters.
With fervor, he describes how he’s going to prepare them.
“I’ll cut them in half, stuff them with a tangy meat and vegetable mixture, and then bake them.”
Before heading back to cook anything, however, he suggests collecting a display of more colorful inedible gourds.
“We’re giving these to a local church as decoration for their harvest festival. How about making the quick trip with me by car to deliver them?”
This little outing off the property feels like a great treat. I eagerly follow him to the car and walk into his backside when he halts at the right hand car door. Realizing I’m not used to the English reversed driving sides, Mick needs to direct me to the passenger seat on the left side.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play
than in a year of conversation._Plato

Having grown up in Chicago, one of my initial worries at Sherborne was about the door to the building being left unlocked at all times. Images of Tribune headlines haunted me. An unknown killer recently sauntered into a government official’s home in the middle of the night and suffocated his twenty-one-year-old daughter with a pillow. My only solace to worrying was the fact that my room was two floors up. Here I was sleeping in a house with sixty strangers while fretting about the possibility of other strangers walking in on us. After several restless nights fighting off visions of murder and mayhem, sheer exhaustion finally banished the issue.

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