Letters from Boarding School Revisited

Farnborough Hill

Since writing about boarding school in the Retreat Reflection, sitting daily with the memories, the emotions, now so close to the surface, I found the courage recently to read the original letters I wrote to my parents as a little girl forty-five years ago. 

The week we spent waiting for Dad to die, in October 2005, is when I found my old letters, organized by year and in date order, knotted in bundles with string, tucked away in a desk drawer. I had the presence of mind to take them home with me, unread. They lingered at the bottom of a carry-on bag for five years, until earlier this year, when the little girl I used to be first started to make herself known. I opened that bag and tore into those neat little bundles. Even as I was reading them, I was separating them from their envelopes, getting them out of chronological order - making a mess of them, in other words. I read several out loud to my husband, who had tears in his eyes for that little Ali who was to become his wife. I didn't cry - I read them with wonder. The little girl who had written them felt utterly remote to me.  I zipped up the bag and put them away again, all mixed up, all chaotic. Until today, when I thought I need to take another look, to be honest with myself. Were my memories correct?

I found the very first ones I wrote from Farnborough Hill. (If you don't want to read all three letters, just scroll down to the part in red which describes That Night and below the line of asterisks).

 

The missing postcards I mention in the first letter talk about our nightmare flight from Haiti to Jamaica to New York to London: my first flight without my parents, alone with my sixteen year old sister Claude. I used to get sick on any sort of transportation so my mother gave me dramamine, which knocked me out. Claude was excited to have company on the flight only I was no use at all: I was asleep while the plane was still sitting on the runway. There was a blizzard in New York so we were diverted to Washington and bussed to New York. Once there, as 'unaccompanied minors', we had to wait until all the passengers were sorted before something could be done with us. (Of course we had missed our connecting flight). I remember vividly standing in the airport looking longingly at a hamburger stand and thinking if Dad were here, he'd be waiting in line and he'd send us off with Mum to get a hamburger. I started to cry, which set my sister off, and soon people were clustered around, thinking we were hungry, asking if they could buy us a hamburger. But we just wanted our parents. I thought how stupid these grown-ups were not to realize that. Of course we couldn't say it out loud, we had to be brave... The airline put us up in a hotel for the night and I remember perking up a little to see a television, such a novelty, there was none in Haiti. Eventually we landed in London...

                     ******************************************************************

Friday, September 17, 1965

Dear Mum and Dad,

Have you got our postcards? Golly, it was awful. And to top it off, we arrived at London at 9:30 on the V.C.10 and there was no-one to meet us! We stayed there till midnight and finally the stewardess in charge called the police to get the Timmins [my dad's childhood friend, who was supposed to meet our plane]! Luckily, they were just going to bed, so that was alright. We had a meal and went to bed at 1:00 a.m. We were woken up at 9:00 and had a gorgeous breakfast. Then we walked to Staines and bought my extra pair of socks. So don't worry about that. Oh, I say, what about my books, you know text-books? Are they coming? Have you ordered them? Good. At first when we got to school, I had a feeling like going to the dentist, but now it's all right. First Claude and I toured the school practically to find Alex [the headmistress, Mother Alexander] and Felicity [Claude's best friend]. I saw Claude's room and it's nice. Still, I'll let her explain it. We unpacked my trunk. Then we went to lunch and met Alex. I've met Maria, Gillian, Joanne and others but I don't know their names. I went to afternoon class and we had Geography, Religious Knowledge and French... There was tea but I wasn't very hungry and neither were some other girls so we skipped it. Now there's a study-period and I've almost finished this letter. When I have, I'll go and find Claude.

I wish you were here.

I've got to write again on Sunday, but I'll have more news so it won't matter. I miss you terribly.

PILES OF LOVE, Lots of love and lollipops, Love, Ali

Sunday, Sept. 19

Dear Mum and Dad,

My bed is terribly nice, it doesn't sag at all.

Yesterday I played netball for the first time. It's lots of fun.

I don't like Mrs. Hinton's sweets; they're nutty. Tell her they're very good.

This morning we had a meeting and Alex talked about rules and things.

I was almost late for breakfast as you have to wash (and the basins are MILES away) make your bed, and get dressed, all before breakfast. PHEW!

I've made three real friends, Susan, Maria, and Celia. Susan's my favorite. 

Oh yes, there are two clubs - Photo and Pottery. I'm in Pottery. We had our first lesson on Sat. We made coils of clay and next Sat. we're going to make a pot.

I can find my way around now. I don't know half the nuns names, but if you just say "mother" you're alright.

They've got super books here, Agatha Christie, you know.

Claude's got a terribly nice room. It wasn't before she put her junk around that it looked nice.

Our "dorm" as they say in Enid Blyton books, is meant to be the warmest in the school when the heating's on - unfortunately it isn't on now so it's about the coldest. However I'm quite warm.

The food's quite nice except today when we had bacon. UGH! All flabby.

Yesterday I reduced the whole table to laughter. I carried the tea tray to the kitchen and when I came back, I sipped my tea and said, "I feel like a char." [cleaning lady] I was sitting with St. Theresa's house (Claude and Felicity) and they roared. They thought they'd be stripped of their prefect blazers.

We're having a film tonight. Walt Disney, I think.

Anyway, I can't think of anything else. 

PILES OF LOVE AND KISSES, 

Lots of love,

Ali

Sept. 1965

Dear Mum and Dad,

Thank you for your lovely letter... Do write soon.

Answered Questions - Yes, mum, the pills [dramamine] were wonderful and though Claude felt a bit sick I was fine. I suppose you will have received our other letter by the time you get this one, and as they describe our trip, I won't write about London. I put on all of my woollen clothes and Claude the same, and the wind was blowing, and it was drizzling - BRRRRRRR! Still it was too bad. My first impressions, mum, was that it is quite nice, but now, after ten days without going out, I'm rather sick of it. The first few days I was lost but now, I know most of it. I go and see Claude in the evenings before bed. The first two nights, I wasn't homesick at all - but on the third - it must have been delayed reaction! I practically had the whole dormitory in tears. Then Claude came along and SHE started crying - it was GHASTLY. At last I stopped and Claude creeped up and gave me a packet of SMARTIES! Well, I had been on the verge of going to sleep, but I couldn't after that and so I just slept on and off. WHAT A NIGHT!! I'm alright, now, but I refuse to come to boarding school if Claude's not here.

Gosh, dad, the maths around here is VERY above my head. I have Mrs. Anscombe, who, you'll remember, kicked Claude and her group out and I'm sure I'll soon be following. We had these equations and I've never done them before, so I told her and she said, "What have you been doing then, learning your A,B,C?" Then she asked how old I was, and when I said eleven, she practically FAINTED! So I'm scared stiff I'm going to be moved down, but not if I can help it!

To go back to questions - I get a bath three times a week and otherwise I just wash my face and hands and teeth. I'm in 2C; don't worry, mum, it just is the name of our form-mistress, Mrs. Curren, do you get? Luckily, I sit next to the radiator which unfortunately, is not on. In the refectory I sit next to Yvonne, who you may have heard about from Claude, and a fifth-former called Helena something, they're both nice.

Yesterday, Sunday, Claude and my friends went out and so I stayed at school. Another friend is Bridget. She's very nice. Anyway, in the afternoon at Yateley, where the juniors go to school, there was a short procession to celebrate I don't know what. They wanted a few Farnborough Hill girls to be the choir. About 24 girls went and we sang in this procession. It wasn't very long and lots of parishioners joined and sang. Gosh, I practically had hysterics when this man with a deep voice started, "Sanctus...!" Golly, I nearly died! One old nun started singing in a quavery old voice and suddenly a young nun nudged her - she'd been singing the wrong tune!!! We got a nice tea there - biscuits and orange juice. It was much better than hanging around school!

Honestly, you know that K.T. [an ancient nun, mysteriously known by her initials] has a sweet shop [a closet] open on Sunday? Well, everybody came into the shop and was making a bit of noise, so she said, "I'm not putting up with this" and with that she closed the shop. What a SWIZZ.

Do you know at what time I am writing this letter? At around 7:00 in the morning! Gosh, it's the only time I've got time!

Yesterday, we didn't have too much homework so I wanted to finish it and write a letter to you in the rest of the time. But after tea, there was gym club. Susan and I have signed up for the same clubs; Alex said you had to join two clubs. We joined gym and dramatics, and I've got pottery, as well.

As I said, Susan is my best friend, but I'm friends with other girls, too. Susan's got a boil on her bottom and Mother Renny said she wasn't allowed to do games. She watched, though.

They're about 17 in the club and first the teacher, Miss Crofts, demonstrated different ways to do a head-over-heels. Then we had to do hand-stands (with someone holding us of course!) and end in a roll. After that, we had to vault over these huge boxes but I got stuck on top! Then you ran up this springboard, jumped over this bench, no sorry, vice versa, then end in a roll. It's lots of fun! Oh, mum, when are my shorts for Dicks and Jones [Dickens and Jones, department store in London that sold our school uniform] coming, because I had to do gym in my green knickers.

I sleep with my eiderdown lengthwise tucked in the bed (where I'm writing this right now!) though the pillow is very skinny, so I fold it in half.

Claude went out shopping on Saturday with Felicity and bought me some sweets and socks (long white ones). 

Well, the bell's gone off for getting up so I'll say ___ ____ ____ ____

PILES OF LOVE, ALI

P.S. Just think I'll be back in about 10 weeks and there you are!!!

                      ***************************************************************

It's a strange sensation to come face to face with an early incarnation of yourself. My little girl lives, in these sheaves of paper decorated with blotchy hearts and flowers, in the messy writing, my first experience with a fountain pen, letters careening in all directions. I've put this little self so firmly out of mind, recalling her only in the abstract. After all, it is only in the last four years I have been able to admit to myself that boarding school was not a wholly positive experience. Typing out her words is entirely different to reading her words. The act of writing seems to fire up the traces of those original letters' paths in the brain and I feel again, as I did when I first wrote them, everything she isn't saying. She is so reticent! 

"Golly, it was awful" doesn't begin to cover it.  

By November, I have a motto: "Patience and Perseverance." I discover exclamation marks and pepper my letters with corny jokes and drawings of little girls with pigtails and a big smile, labeled ALI. I tease the nuns, get into trouble and make everyone laugh, including my parents. I learn not to write home about anything that matters. I am trying hard to adapt and fit in and make the best of things. How disorienting to more or less put my hand on the exact pages where the child I was morphed into this cheerful creature I became, veiling my anger, layering my hurt under winning smiles and a desire to please, no matter the cost.

I wondered how much to share of this story. Would it interest anybody? Then I remembered a getting-to-know-you exercise in a parent group years ago: Biography in a Bag. We had to choose five things that told something important about ourselves to put in a paper bag to share with the others. I brought my old school magazine, which had as its cover a photo of Farnborough. When I stood up to face the diverse group, I wondered if they would think me a privileged brat to share this experience. Would they think I was showing off? But when I talked about what it was like to be eleven years old and far from home, the women cried. That's when I realized that everyone has a boarding school story; everyone understands abandonment.

Victor has said we cling to our stories, we don't want to give them up, even, perhaps especially, the painful ones. Who are we without our stories? Like the Buddha meeting the man clutching handfuls of hot coals. The Buddha tells him,"Put down the coals! Your hands are burning!" "I can't!" says the man. "Why not?" "Because they are mine!" We fear we are nothing without them. 

Stephen Batchelor says, in Buddhism without Beliefs, "So what are we but the story we keep repeating, editing, censoring, and embellishing in our heads?" If I could let go of this story, would I? Without this story, don't I lose a big chunk of who I am? 

This is where it gets complicated, where the psychological and the spiritual work intertwine. They meet on the cushion and in my old letters. I close my eyes in meditation and I see my letters. They weigh me down. In my mind's eye, I write the words, uncovering the little girl in her own voice. Which was not a truthful voice. There was so much she didn't dare admit to her mother, to herself. I breathe - and the little girl breathes with me. She IS me. I focus on the body - our body - breathing, and feel what she felt then and what I feel right now. All I know today is a forty-five year old sorrow that finally I am safe enough, strong enough, to allow myself to feel. Today my little girl is free to finally drop her guard and let her heart go ahead and break. It's the only way to heal.

Part 7: Silent Meditation Retreat: So What Was the Lesson Learned?

I originally ended this reflection with these words:  

"I take away from the weekend the word "surrender". I hope I never forget it. The feel of it and what it means. Silent Meditation Retreat. No longer a challenge to be feared, but a safe and structured place in which to bravely attempt to find the gate. To be the gate. 

"Just this. Just this.""

Now, with more perspective, I can sound less like an inspirational text and a lot more honest. So what was the weekend all about? Does it end with naughty words and raucous laughter and we go on our merry way, with a little sanctimonious bit about "surrender", otherwise life as usual, as if it had never happened? Of course not. 

Deep breath. Here is what I learned: 

While my tile idea was a 'thought', it is still the closest I have yet come to being able to follow the breath, stay with it and not get lost in thought. At least for a little while! So a good thing. The realization of impermanence, the changing of everything moment by moment, was and remains awful. Literally, 'awe-ful' and awful, both. Having the shadowy little girl wrapped all over and around and through this realization makes it hard to separate what are her deep fears of abandonment from what is the Buddha's dictum: 'life is suffering, life is impermanent.' Though perhaps they needn't be separated, perhaps she is the specific who illustrates the general. The relative truth mirroring, for once, the Absolute Truth. 

The core fear is the fear of death. The child who trembled in her boarding school bed that night has been clinging on grimly ever since. "I will not die!" she vowed. And she hasn't. She hides her resolve with a happy face and winning ways. She is very good at getting what she wants which is basically everyone's love and approval. She is so frightened of death, she will do anything to keep the wolves far, far away from her door. The glimpse on the cushion of the moment by moment dissolution of life was enough to scare the hell out of her. Victor's talk : if you are your thoughts, and your thoughts are not real, where does that leave "you"? Further scary. Now her experience is being corroborated from the outside, from the trusted source, the teacher. No wonder Sunday Alison fell to pieces. Who was left to hold her together? In the miracle of life's endless cycles of death and rebirth, the child did rise again, reasserting herself as crudely as possible in that sacred setting, figuratively spitting at death. (And boarding school too for good measure).

The real gift of the weekend was bringing the child squarely into the light, for all to see, but especially me, to whom she has been hidden for so long, in true shadow form. The thing that everybody sees so clearly - 65% child and nobody disagrees! - and I remained oblivious. To see that Tran's assessment is based on evidence that I myself present, whoever "I myself" might be. 

Finally, that "I" and the child are one and the same!! This is huge for me, and a big yawn to everybody else. The child is not all bad: she is actually pretty great, with her enthusiasm and her energy, her big heart, her generosity, her courage, her ability to see wonders in just about anything. The child however suffers terribly. She is alert to any hint of falling out of favor, of being shut out, she desperately wants to be "good" in order to be accepted and safe, at whatever the cost to her own self.  She can sabotage the whole edifice of Alison all unknowing, and bring her down. 

Who is writing this reflection? Who holds the pen? The 5% adult chiefly functions as editor. Wise woman seems only interested in the big picture, the synthesis of worlds, inner and outer. Her voice is low and appears only when the child is written out. She comes and goes. Perhaps it is she who helps the child notice the miracles in the mundane. For sure it is she who is able to hold the child with compassion. But this leaves the child in charge! Manning the helm of the leaking canoe called self, in the treacherous and very adult waters of life. How did this happen?

And so back to "surrender". Child must feel safe enough to surrender to the other two; untried adult must step up and then surrender to wise woman; who must in turn surrender to impermanence; Life must surrender to Death. Surrender really is the key. Don't fight - embrace. What else can we possibly do?

Is this spiritual claptrap? 

Perhaps the most honest thing to say in the end is simply:

"I don't know. I don't know."

Part 6: Silent Meditation Retreat: Bad Words, Wild Laughter and the End of the Retreat

Too soon it was time for the last sits of the morning, the last dharma talk. Victor added a caveat to the Saturday talk, saying if you have been on the path for a long time, as a mature long time Buddhist practitioner, in the hands of a skillful teacher, then you will understand the teaching, "It's just a thought!" and it will be useful to you.  But if you are a child, the words will not comfort you, they will do you no good ... I thought of my symbolic peacock magically changing my mood and I felt very young, sure these words were directed at me. I felt like a fraud to be at the retreat at all, as though I had wandered into an adults only event scribbling blue crayon on the walls, some place where I had no business to be. 

At the same time, there was a faint lightening of the heart. A relief: I didn't know why, I needed to chew on it, but suddenly we're sitting in the Talking Circle, it's happening so fast, and I'm sad that it is over. The retreat is over. We can speak! So I speak because I can and don't say anything that matters. I don't even remember to thank Victor for his teachings and Tricia for her kindness and her care. (Tricia broke Noble Silence to go off property to the supermarket down the road to buy aspirin for my poor knees on Saturday night. And I forgot to thank her publicly).  Instead, I keep the spotlight on me, I make people laugh. I'm back in the business of Alison as usual. So much for Right Speech. 

But to redress the balance of the earlier terrible grief, I need to make myself laugh. This is instinctive and I don't fully understand it at the time. It happens within an hour of finding our words again.

Tran, Victor and I head to lunch together. I bound up the steps to the cafeteria two at a time. 

Victor asks, "What's with this going up the steps two at a time?" 

I say, "I've been dying to do that! I'm letting my inner child out." 

Victor turns to Tran, "'Letting her inner child out' - she IS her inner child." 

Tran says to me, "I've been thinking a lot about this. I think you are 65 % child, 5 % adult and 30 % wise woman."  

As one part of me is aghast-  65% - so the child within is rejoicing. Now she is rising from the ashes of her dark night. Now she lives again. 

Victor asks Tran, "And what do you think you are?" 

"I'm not sure," she says. "65% too?" 

"Oh, I wouldn't say that much," says Victor. 

At which point I - 100% child and irrepressible, triumphant, alive - shout, "HEY!!! I'm twice her age - she can't be less than me! F**k!!" just as we turn the corner  into the cafeteria - and three tables of women look up from their lunch in startled silence...

Victor says quietly, "Did she say a bad word?" (Tran and I can't speak) and mildly, "Alison, you're not setting a very good example for Long Beach Meditation, representing us just coming out of a silent retreat." 

Of course Tran and I are on the floor laughing.

Things deteriorated further over lunch (mercifully, they put us on the patio, out of earshot of those serious others). Wendy inquires brightly, "What does 'pudding' mean in England? I'm reading a book and they're always talking about pudding." Tricia pipes up helpfully with something about Yorkshire puddings. And I am overcome by the character my daughter Helen calls her 12 year old brother, and announce that there is a sweet pudding called... Spotted Dick! And then the child falls under the table in gales of laughter. Giddy with relief. Not abandoned. Not banished. Not dead. 

Balance was restored. I needed to laugh - I had cried so much. Victor would ask, "Who needed to laugh? Who had cried?"  The child, of course. The laughter - and especially the juvenile nature of that laughter - was a clue that this was a child come roaring back from the dead. From the place to which she has long been condemned, whenever she is shoved back into the past without a voice. It was the mad laughter experienced after a brush with death, on top of which the Mary and Joseph Retreat Center was so much like my old Catholic heap of a boarding school. It could only be words like "f**k" and "spotted dick", (which is the unfortunate name of a real pudding, by the way) from the mouth of the child, that would reassure her that she had not been annihilated.  Reprieve!  Reprieve! That was the feeling, though it didn't make sense until much much later. At the time, I just thought the terrible grief earlier in the day had been redressed by the gleeful schoolgirl: tears and laughter, life and death, and so the journey continues. 

Part 5: Silent Meditation Retreat: Surrender and Spiritual Birds

Eventually, in the present, at the retreat, I got up from my narrow bed, so reminiscent of school. I was completely oblivious to that connection, and to the fact that events of 45 years ago were playing so close to the surface.  I blew my nose, grabbed my notebook and sat on my favorite bench under a leafy tree, facing the rising sun. I gazed up into that tree and admired a spider's web, intricate and shiny in the light.  Once upon a time, I would have blotted out the tears, chosen the positive route and said well then, if nothing lasts, enjoy life to the full! But this required a deeper response. The key is surrender. That was the word that dropped into my mind and caused me finally to relax into the grief. (It was grief). If this is the way life is, what to do about it? Can't fight it, can't wish it were otherwise. If I surrender, then I accept life as it is. As Lao Tze writes, "Do enough without vying." No pushing. No struggling. No forcing things to be other than what they are. "Just this. Just this."

No sooner was there this acceptance than a bushel of busy thought full of anxiety and fear appeared. The next bit of course was then, how does one get through this life?? How to live with this knowledge that nothing lasts? Bad enough my own tiny part in it: when I imagined my little tile idea multiplied out to everybody in the world, everybody with their own perceptions, never mind their wildly divergent thoughts, I was in despair. Every step of the way is laced with misunderstanding! How can we ever communicate with each other? Our experiences are not - will never be - the same, and on top of it, they are changing inexorably every moment, as we are changing. The Eightfold Path, the Buddha's prescription for this terrible suffering, is all very well, but the beginning of it, Right Understanding, is already fraught with peril: who can claim to understand another? And then it's followed by Right Intention, but if it translates, as it so often does, into unskilful action or speech, then we can go our whole lives explaining ourselves, becoming more and more self-conscious until finally we are paralyzed, or in seclusion, away from people, away from the world. There at least we will do no harm. And obviously that's no good either.

Well, here I was drowning in a torrent of thought, all of it unskilful. Then I remembered what Victor had talked about on Saturday night: the wedge, the recognition that "a thought is just a thought!"  Stop it! I told myself. Let thoughts come - and go. They will not last! I knew that from working with the breath, moment by moment. I thought then that this was the ego who was shattered and madly trying to regroup, barking imperatives to DO something.

Back when I was a kindergarten teacher, I would tell my children that in all the history of the world, there had never been another one just like them, another Juan or Maria or Dylan, and that it was their job to be the very best they could be, to show us what a Juan or a Maria or a Dylan looked like. I had thought then that we had to mould and fashion our little clay container to make it as good as we possibly could. Now I see that the idea that 'there has never been another Alison' is true in a sense - Alison as container for the deeper truth within who is not Alison. But the point I believe is not to make Alison the 'best' she can be: the smartest, kindest, brightest, funniest, etc. The point is to crack the casing (the ego) and let the radiance stream out. And in that case 'Alison' will inevitably be the best she can be - how could she not? Only it is not consciously 'done' by 'Alison'. On the contrary, it is a letting go of Alison. It is - surrender. 

Sitting on my little bench, having these thoughts, I thought no wonder Victor tells us that Buddhism is not for children. This level of awareness is beyond the grasp of a child. No wonder I need to grow up. I wondered if I could even do it. Just then a peacock flew down (flew! I didn't know they could fly) and landed on the lawn in front of me. Victor had said that Jung believed that dreaming about exotic animals (like a peacock) was a sign of spiritual awakening. I thought how much more of a sign might be the actual bird in the flesh falling out of the sky? So I felt encouraged: not beyond reach, said the spiritual bird, you wouldn't have had the insight otherwise. Then it marched behind a hedge. I felt better. 

Part 4: Silent Meditation Retreat: Abandonment at Boarding School Revisited.

The little girl summarily dismissed with that perfunctory "Oh poor darling", I did sleep, like the dead. The bell next morning jarred me awake. I had to rush to my cushion for the first sit at 6:00 a.m.. Eyes barely closed, the tears began to fall. They continued through the walking meditation and back on the cushion throughout the next sit. I didn't imagine this had anything to do with the little girl. I still thought these were the tears of that general "sorrow".  My thoughts returned to my tile imagery of the first night and I found it shattering. How often had I heard life is impermanent, life is suffering; nodded and thought complacently, yes, of course. Makes total sense. And now here, crying on my cushion, I understood that until an intellectual concept is actively felt in the body, it is not truly understood. 

I skipped breakfast, went back to my room after the sit and exploded into sobs on my hard little bed, wracked with the sense that every moment, every breath: none of it will pass this way again. Good times too - irrevocably gone, moment by moment by moment. I had only ever experienced anything remotely like this when my mother died suddenly: it seemed that one moment, life stretched out before me, a wide sunny path; the next, it revealed itself to be a razor's edge, our hold on it perilous to say the least, great chasms dropping off to either side. There is a terrible clarity that comes with death: the things that don't matter fall away in sheets. But death is still a vast experience: this was microscopic. Breath by breath by breath. All changes. Nothing lasts. Nothing. 

Funny that I compared this to death early on in the writing of this reflection, unaware until much later, days after the fact, that it was death itself, MY specific death, that lay at the root of those tears. This was far closer to home than the axiom, "Life is suffering." My little girl, felt in the tight heart of the night before, was the one who was shattered. After spending an entire, excruciating year clawing her way into the light, now she is dismissed, and told she is "only a thought?" Oh no! This was a plunge back into darkest pit. This was that terrible night at boarding school all over again. What a place of nightmare for a child! Haunted country house of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, a Gothic pile of turrets and cupolas and secrets, up on a lonely hill in the south of England. The little girl, eleven years old, lying in her bed with the thin mattress worn to the shape of countless other little bodies before hers, listening to the other nine little girls breathe in the cold room with the high ceilings and blue velvet curtains that were never drawn, and the moonlight playing over the sleeping figures, everyone asleep except me, my voice quaking, "Aren't we going to talk?" and somebody saying sleepily, "We're too tired." And the realization that this was it, this was my life now, Jane Eyre in her orphanage, no waking up from this one, I was awake and still the nightmare continued, no getting up and padding off to find my mother, she was on the other side of the world. My crying disturbed the others so much, one of them went to fetch Mother Glendon, our dormitory mistress, who in turn went to fetch my sister, five years older, who was somewhere on the other side of the building in her own senior quarters. And when she arrived at my bedside with her friend and a packet of Smarties, and I sat up and reached for my dressing gown, so happy to see her, so sure all would be better now, swinging my legs out of bed, searching for my slippers, it was so cold, we had come from the tropics, and this English school was so cold, and my sister saying, "What are you doing?" "Coming with you," I said. "You can't!" Oh! And that was almost worse than anything - to imagine you are saved and no, sorry, you still have to face the monsters under the bed all by yourself, you must live through this night alone. No reprieve. I think I died right there, clutching my Smarties, eating the little chocolates one at a time, the only good thing about that dreadful night, so starting a weight problem that would continue from then on. I survived of course, that worst night of my life until my mother died. Next morning I vowed I would never cry like that again, and I didn't until Mum died thirty years later, and then I couldn't stop.

Part 3: Silent Meditation Retreat: "The thinker is the thought."

These were the thoughts of Saturday morning after breakfast when I returned to my room and wrote in my journal. At the words, "Ineffably sad", I went in search of a cup of coffee. I have learned in my journaling to pay attention to the moments when I distract myself. I am an old hand at steering clear of the hard emotions. It was no coincidence that coffee seemed like a good idea at the point of "sad". Nor is it coincidence that it has taken me more than a week to see what I was avoiding: I have so studiously refrained from revisiting this day, I didn't even write about it in my original reflection.

But back to that Saturday. Fortified with coffee, I let myself go on a facile pseudo-spiritual riff, words now that make me wince:

"Today the sun is so warm on the back, the birdsong so piercing, the sky so blue - what more could one want? Put the little self to bed, set it aside gently, watch the body breathe, watch the tummy rise and fall, don't think, don't think! It's easy, a baby can do it, we complicate everything, thinking it must be something tricky. Houston Smith talks about climbing the mountain - and then, much later, you realize there never was a mountain to climb. You are it - we are it - all along, we are it. And we have forgotten. We think we are more than - and less than."

Nothing wrong with the words as such, except that they flow too easily. La la la. Victor has talked about the ego, how clever it is: it will be whatever it thinks you want, including "spiritual". So this stream of commands to myself is ego's attempt to be deep. The words have no substance to back them up; they skim the surface.

I picked up my writing again after lunch and it was more of the same. Blah blah blah. The next few hours were very long, the overriding sensation: my knees hurt and I had a hard time sitting comfortably. Things became interesting at Victor's dharma talk, which was on thought. Someone wrote him a note, asking, "Who is it who is saying, "Who am I?" Who's saying, "I am thinking this?"" This talk, he said, would be his best effort to answer, the most thorough he had ever given on the topic. He told us how in Temecula, three or four days into a week-long retreat, upon waking up early to unlock the doors to the meditation hall, the thought came to him, "Why bother? What's the point?" (The people at the retreat had been falling asleep the night before and he was fed up). He told us he could have slid into that hell - that hole - and had a horrible day. Instead, the thought came to him, or rather his awareness: "It's just a thought!" and like that it was gone! He quoted Krishnamurti, "The thinker is the thought" and this is the point that's hard to grasp: we think there's our mind and then there's us. In fact they're the same. And if thoughts are "just thoughts" then we're not too solid either. And it's not just bad thoughts. We're not the good ones either - at least, they are all "just thoughts". He answered the question I had emailed him earlier about how he handled the terrible news of his old friend: how did he not sink into sorrow right then and there? "Same thing," he said. "It's just a thought." He told us about the night before the extraction of two of his teeth, lying in bed worrying and then being able to stop himself by saying, "I refuse to allow this thought to dictate to me!" - something like that. Refusing to give it power. Why spend a sleepless night when you don't know what will happen? I found this to be an empowering idea. Why indeed?

During the last sit of the night, the French song, 'Sur le Pont d'Avignon' popped into my head for no reason. This was a favorite sing-along in my family, trotted out on long car rides, and immediately brought to mind my parents, my French mother, my English Dad, both dead now. I realized that it was a year ago, the Monday after last year's retreat, that my mother came to me in a dream and said she would meditate with me. And when I sat and imagined her sitting with me, I burst into unexpected tears, overwhelmed with the feeling of love. It was clear then how much she had loved me, and that all she had done, she had done out of love: misguided, but love nonetheless. So now, a year later, and so much has happened to me in terms of my understanding...

Well, of course I couldn't simply stay with this feeling, which made my heart ache; I had to shape it into thought, form it into my beloved words and so find distance. Sitting up in my little bed later that night, I once more carried myself away on a stream of no-nonsense twaddle. I thought of my mother and assured myself that yes, yes, she loved me, this is by now old news. "I truly understand", I wrote confidently. "And if Victor's contention is correct - "It's just a thought!" - well then, why hang on to these painful thoughts from so long ago? I understand that because of my abandonment issues, I tend to cling and do too much and actually bring about the very thing I fear. But I don't see how I can go on feeling abandoned now that I understand all parties were only doing their best. What parents would deliberately set out to hurt their child? I was loved, I was happy - and really, the suffering came from boarding school which was what was 'done' in those days. I refuse to allow this ancient history any more space in my current life!! Victor will say I am thinking my way out of it. Yet this weekend I have cried, but in general terms of 'sorrow' - not anything specific. So I don't feel wracked with pain as I have done before. It truly feels behind me and now I can move forward with understanding." 

Those last two sentences should have set off warning sirens. Even as I was writing myself this bossy pep talk, I was aware that the body was telling a completely different story. In parentheses, I even wrote, "Why is my chest feeling tight? Is there something I'm not acknowledging? Breathe into it. Anxiety? No, anxiety is lower in the tummy. This is the chest. Tight. Like tears. Who needs to cry? Is it my little girl? Oh poor darling. But now I must turn out the light - it's time to sleep. We'll see tomorrow."

Part 2: Silent Meditation Retreat: Watching the breath

Victor Byrd, our teacher, was galvanizing that first night in his dharma talk. I had never heard him speak quite like that before: focused and forceful and deadly serious. He told us of his childhood friend, now gravely ill, and how he couldn't think of anything more important than this, what we were attempting to do. He challenged us, "Can you?" He was intense and compelling. He spoke of his tachycardia starting when he was ten years old with a heartbeat of 320 beats per minute. He told us how strange and weird it was to have your heart and your breath completely out of synch; that you could breathe great long slow breaths and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to that racing heart. It occurred to him that we are suffering from tachycardia of the mind (later he would coin the phrase: tachy-chitta - 'tachys', from the Greek meaning rapid or accelerated, 'chitta', Sanskrit for the mind), meaning that our minds are completely disconnected from our bodies. He reminded us that 'watching the belly' or 'counting the breath' is simply technique: what is the point beyond that? What are we trying to achieve? This weekend is about slowing down the mind, watching the body breathe, matching up mind and body for once. And if we do that, then maybe, maybe we'll have a chance to be silent enough to let the Great Matter, as the Zen masters call it, make itself known. No-one else can do it for us, not a teacher nor a book: it is something we must do for ourselves. We are at the gate. We are the gate. If we could only be quiet enough to see that. He urged us to try, in these two days, to work as hard as if we were on a two month retreat, to condense two months' work into two days. He made it seem entirely possible.

Since we couldn't speak, I have no idea how the others reacted to this. I know I was on fire to try, filled with concentration, awareness and resolve. We sat after this talk and I slowed my breath down and watched it. Eyes closed, in the darkened room now illuminated with tea lights and a single burning log, there was only sound and the sensation of the body breathing. I got the idea of each breath being like a little one inch square tile - each in-breath a tile, each out-breath a tile. And every noise I heard I imagined as a mark on the tile: a big black mark for a big noise, a small dot for a little one. Some noises continued over a single breath, but the noise would almost always change: it might start out loudly (and therefore be a black mark on that tile) and fade to a low hum on the next breath (and therefore be a lighter mark). I wasn't paying attention to what the sounds were, I wasn't identifying them: I was simply noting 'sound'. Because the room was so silent, it was unusual for there to be more than one sound at a time, which made it easy to note. Occasionally - very rarely - a sound continued at exactly the same pitch over two or more breaths. Then I added in another sense to differentiate between tiles: how about feeling? And then once again, each breath, each tile-shape, was different. Now there is a sharp pain in the knee; now there is a dull ache; now a fizz in the back, or a pressure on the ankle or whatever. The point was, when the breath was slowed down to the size of a tile, it was absolutely clear to see that everything changes breath by breath by breath. My first reaction on discovering this was exhilaration: every moment is as unique as a snowflake! I couldn't quite believe that it was so, but I put it to the test, breath by breath, and sure enough, every single one was different. 

It seemed incredibly poignant then, to see how fast everything changes, how nothing stays the same. Imagine if the eyes were open? Imagine if I added thought? I wondered if this is why we tend to spend so much time either reliving the past or anticipating the future. When we go over and over events, real or imagined, in our lives, we give them a certain heft. It makes us feel grounded and real. "I did this. I will do that. This is who I am." Instead of seeing the truth of it, that each moment is never to be repeated, as ephemeral as a wisp of cloud. The present moment, all we really have, and it's so swift - a breath! And gone. Ineffably sad. 

Part 1: Silent Meditation Retreat: What's It Like?

Silent Meditation Retreat. Every word is a challenge to me. Silent: but I'm constantly talking, if only to myself. Meditation: my mind is not easily quieted, inner silence does not come naturally. Retreat: hardest of all when my impulse is to reach out towards others, rather than inquire within.

"So what's it like?" people ask. I'll start with the easy part, the setting, the Mary and Joseph Retreat Center high on the crest of the Palos Verdes peninsula. The city of Los Angeles sprawls in a smoggy haze far below, while the center itself, unassuming, simple and very clean, sits comfortably on the leveled hillside. The many gardens were created for contemplation, with their winding paths, fountains and benches; wide open green lawn, shady trees and rose bushes; strutting peacocks and friendly cats. For this old Catholic, I am at home with the statues of Mary and Baby Jesus and the long suffering Joseph, whose birthday is the day before mine. The rooms are spare: two twin beds, a night table, a desk, a small chest of drawers, an armchair and a standing lamp. Each room has its own bathroom, with a shower of stingingly hot water, a pleasure for aching bones at the end of the day.

Soon after arrival, we move into the great rectangular hall with its round fire-pit in the center and windows on the two long sides. There is a small kitchen at one end, with hot coffee always brewing; there is the little gift shop next to that that we have to cross to reach the restrooms on the other side. Starved for reading material, we will find ourselves lingering here - or trying not to! - greedily eyeing the plaques and cards. In the great hall itself, a makeshift teacher's space has been artfully created out of screens and a small table upon which the Buddha presides with candle and purple orchids, a bushy blue hydrangea. Our mats are arranged in a wide semicircle facing this space, with chairs behind for those whose knees will protest at all the sitting. I set up camp on my cushion, marking my territory with schedule and sweater and blanket, yoga mat and coffee cup. And Kleenex. That tears will fall at some point is a given.

There is a lot of sitting. One and a half hours on Friday, three hours on Sunday, and a marathon six hours on Saturday. Not counting the hour we sit during the nightly dharma talks. But the sitting is also broken up by walking meditation and yoga, which helps. There are periods of 'rest' after every meal which also help. Saturday in particular is a very long day, beginning with a 5:30 wake-up, the first sit at 6 a.m., all the way until 'Sleep' at 10 p.m.. But there is an energy which is stoked by the knowledge that even if we're not making eye contact, we're all in this together. I inhale courage, seeing out of the corners of my down-turned eyes the measured tread of the others, their straight backs, their upturned hands, the little nests they too have created out of cushion and blanket and cup. We are all trying so hard!