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Sunday Greetings from the Head of School
One of the silver linings of our stay-at-home existence is that we are getting more sleep. But I wonder whether you have noticed a change in your dreams lately, as I have. Seven weeks ago, when things around here started shutting down, several articles came out about the anxiety and COVID-related dreams people were experiencing: Zoom dreams, food dreams, dreams about illness. NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly even began a segment by recalling her own weird dream: “The other night, I broke into my NPR colleague's apartment and stole all her toilet paper. She had dozens and dozens of rolls - so many rolls - stay with me here - so many I then had to steal a beach towel to carry them all, bundled, bulging, slung over my shoulder Santa Claus-style.” Maybe you had dreams like this? I certainly did. But lately, they are different. I find myself dreaming about people and experiences from long ago, ones that are no longer part of my life. I had forgotten: the Sunday road trips my family used to take just to explore areas in Connecticut where I grew up; reading aloud to my grandparents every evening in the summer; working at a summer resort in Maine with a girl whose entire existence revolved around horses; the slope of the hill on my hometown street where I first learned to ride a bike. My dreams have shifted, to some extent, from anxiety to mourning. Experts say that vivid dreams are normal, and even good. They are the brain’s way of working things out, and managing the flood of emotions that characterizes our days. There is plenty of advice out there about having calmer sleep: drink less alcohol, avoid screens for at least an hour before bed, make the room as dark as possible, etc. You know this advice; you have been trying to follow it already for years! And yet, I do not mind these dreams. This week, as we think very specifically about finishing the school year without being together, I (like many others) have gone into mourning overdrive. I can’t stop thinking about the seniors and the on-campus celebratory spring they will not get. Then I move to picturing the other classes, each of whom will miss the moments that celebrate the seniors, and also the myriad capstone events we design at every grade level to make the spring special and to finish the year with a sense of accomplishment and pride. Each student has made a remarkable personal journey this year, and each one deserves a moment of honoring that. It’s not that we will abandon all celebration. As I write this, we are planning versions of almost every spring event we typically hold–everything from Field Day to Prize Day to the Banner presentation to Ring Day. We are figuring out graduation. We are talking with the seniors about their preferences, and we are getting lots of wonderful suggestions from all quarters. What seems more noteworthy right now is the sense of loss we all have–the palpable, heavy feeling of something that can never be recovered. Shortly after my mother died–10 years ago now–a friend of mine gave me a metaphor for the feeling of that loss: she said that it was like walking through a door in your home, a door you walk through all the time, and then turning around and finding it locked so that you can never return again to that previous room. We are all feeling this, and we are feeling it about the big things and the little things. I try not to give myself a hard time about whether I am mourning a small thing or a big thing. All loss is loss, and all sadness is sadness. One tiny thing I miss is seeing seniors at the water cooler outside my office, filling their water bottles. I miss it so deeply. I think it’s because that is when they are simply going about their day, doing a small task, not needing to perform or organize or respond or prepare. I can say hello and hear how they are doing and they are just themselves in that moment. We each say whatever is on our minds right then; it’s spontaneous and human and affords me the pure joy of being together with them, and seeing them in a normal way. Mourning is a remarkably complex process, of course, and every situation and person is different. Right now we are mourning the things we have already lost, and the things we anticipate losing at some point soon. Our own mourning also–wonderfully, impossibly–reminds us of what we love in this world. Mourning brings into full relief our own values and priorities, and helps us tap into the essence of who we are. Honoring and talking about what has been lost is crucially important now, because above all we need to affirm our own values in this time of disconnection, anxiety, and uncertainty. So, on this first Sunday in May, perhaps you might try talking about what you are mourning. Talking about our losses may bring us into sadness together, but it will also certainly unite us in our shared sense of awe at the miracle of this life, and in our fierce commitment to come through this pandemic celebrating the people and the values we hold most dear. Sarah Pelmas Head of School |
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