Not One of Us

Dear Reader,

I went to several boarding schools from the age of eight and never felt happy in any of them although I think some people really enjoyed their boarding schools.  The type of person who was confident and good at sport, came from a secure home and loving parents did seem to settle well and liked being there.
I was not one such person.  Hopeless at sport and rather shy, bespectacled and plump I found each term terrifying and simply to be endured.  One of these schools I was sent to was a convent in Paris which made Dothboys Hall seem quite civilized, french only spoken and I didn't speak french.  And nuns are not quite what they seem.

Not One of Us

Asmall figure at school in
a hot, strange land.  The
children left her alone,
she didn't speak their language
or know their games or rules.
She was not one of them.

Winter now and an English
boarding school, where the rules
were known, but not to her.
She was clumsy, wore spectacles,
couldn't tie her tie, dropped the netball.
couldn't master dance steps gracefully
to the music of "Greensleeves",
was not an asset, wouldn't do.
She was not one of them.

She simply asked,
why do the safely-grounded
hear the beat of a terrified heart
and seek to silence it? Is the beat
too loud, something not understood,
something to frighten?
Are things better when the group
destroys the alien in its midst?

She never knew,
she was not one of them.

            *
A short musing this week...

I had my grand daughter to stay this week.  She is fifteen years old.  A very pretty and sophisticated young girl and strangely wise and completely delightful.  So I was thinking, whilst washing up the dishes last night, how very very different girls are today from sixty years ago when I was fifteen.. In those days I devoured books of a romantic nature and really believed and dreamed that one day a prince, such as Cinderella found, would whisk me away to love and marriage and happiness ever after.   That was my age of innocence but when does the age of innocence leave us today?  Rather, I think, sooner than it used to.

Best wishes, Patricia