A Sort of Homecoming

Over spring break I went to Ohio, where I’m from. I call Ohio home-home and LA home. I have a need to return two to three times a year. Not being able to visit these last few years has messed up my arc of what a year needs to include for my general well being. A trip home-home includes not only time with my family but a return to the land. This past trip included spotting a male cardinal in all his red glory, observing a squirrel taking a daily afternoon nap on the top of my sister’s fence, and driving by wild turkeys hanging out on the side of 33 (not, “The 33”). On April 1, it snowed and hailed, though buds were bursting their way through bit by bit, the Forsythia flashing their fantastic yellow first. 

My trips home are, of course, marked by family and food. I had third helpings of my Uncle Mike’s rice pudding and I couldn’t stop dipping my Wheat Thins into the cream cheese pepper jelly spread my sister Stavra had out. (She added red peppers canned from last summer’s vegetable garden.) We told stories about my dad’s cousin Lefty, how my dad called forsythias “For Cynthia’s,” discussed the war in Ukraine, and ran frequent weather reports with one another. It was consistently 40-something-degrees, gray, and most often raining which served as a perfect excuse for staying inside and eating Wheat Thins and rice pudding. I was aware of my worry for the flowers that had already arrived, wondering if they could survive the frigid cold. They can and they do each spring.  

I remember reading in college that Ernest Hemingway could only write about home when he was in Paris. In some ways, returning home-home to Ohio made me think more clearly about these last two years at Westland, and specifically Westland parents’ recent return to campus. We are now more fully together on campus than we have been in two years. I am aware of how being up close to the Westland environment and campus, “the land,” and, yes, even the food, are benefiting us as a community. It’s been a sort of homecoming. Parents haven’t been gone-gone, but they’ve been gone. 

There is a vibrant, pointed pulse beating each morning at Westland now that parents have returned to campus. The first day back from spring break, four Group Two children welcomed a grandparent and her grandchild holding hands and walking in to peek at the baby birds in the nest located in the entrance planters. “They’ve hatched! They’ve hatched!” the children exclaimed to the grandparent who calmly smiled at the scene, the baby birds or the children I don’t know. The other day I talked travel and bargain shopping with a Group One dad, our first conversation not from his car. I observed another parent checking in with their Group Three son on how their kasili fared over spring break, which led into a conversation between the two of us about the LA Times article on poachers wiping out white sage plants in California. A Group Four parent reflected upon how oddly bare the classroom looks following a culmination, causing me to think about how when the work leaves the walls, it’s now internalized in each learner’s mind and heart, process and content. Parents are bringing in younger siblings to see the baby chicks who’ve arrived in Group Two, a high-pitch, almost automated, delightful chirpy sound resounds in that classroom. The conversations weave in and out – personal and societal. 

And there’s food, too, as part of the parents’ sort of homecoming. The return of hot lunch also brings a special pulse on Fridays now. Scenes, sounds, and smells pop in my head. One veteran dad dipping a spoon in the pasta sauce and offering it to another dad for a quick taste test, with the ease of family. Smells of sauteing garlic and onion reminding passerbys of home and comfort. Persian Window Cookies (Nan Panjereh) exquisitely laid out as part of the new “Family Fare” tradition. Parents chopping and conversing, worrying a bit over timing in the best kind of self-deprecating way, many parents having recently and bravely stepped into their first hot lunch team captain role. A Group Five parent showing a Group One parent where the bathroom is. Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic'' filling the space to accompany the dishwashing, pan-banging, and wiping down of surfaces. Food is culture. Culture is food. Breaking bread together connects us together. When we are connected together, trust is grown, renewed, and deepened through talking and listening. It’s the reciprocity of conversations I’ve missed most. 

Back when I was in Ohio, I was attuned to some regional attributes around conversations. First, I noticed a pleasant and genial touch of light sarcasm during my visit. I caught it during our third trip to an indoor trampoline park where the young woman working the desk, Paige, said, “See you all next time.” I said, “In August! We’re flying back to LA tomorrow.” She smiled, “I’ll miss you!” There’s a little teasing to go along with any interaction to lighten many-a-conversation up. 

I also noticed a leaning into “the hard stuff” when I was in Ohio. I vividly remember a conversation I had with a cousin-in-law, Amanda, on a day-trip my family took to Blufton, Ohio. She and her husband own a small organic farm and she needed to purchase some fresh milk from a nearby dairy farm as the new baby goats on their farm weren’t getting enough milk from their worn-out mamas. We passed “Froggy Pond” and sadly noticed a large dead buck alongside the edge of the water. I wondered aloud if the deer had gotten hit by a car, even though the pond was off the road a bit. Amanda, who grew up on a farm nearby, explained that sometimes if animals know that they are going to die, they’ll jump in a pond or lake and drown themselves. I had never heard of that and found the information haunting. I said, “That’s incredible,” and sat with the information and the image. Soon from there I thought the oddest thing as I thought about these last two years: “Well, that’s something I’d never learn in email.” 

And here’s the thing about parents’ return to Westland’s campus. We are not limited to email anymore, nor phone, nor Zoom. We’re talking. And we’re seeing others talk and hug and introduce themselves and make eye contact in wonderful combinations: teachers talking to parents, parents talking to children, teachers talking to teachers, and even just getting to observe the powerful interactions of how children talk to other children. We’re taking it in, in action, with all of the color of in-person hand gestures. Our now in-person casual conversations connect us more strongly together; we are engendering and growing trust. 

I have missed these casual conversations on campus, perhaps the most important communication currency in our community. What are the attributes of communication at Westland? Our topics range: high and low, serious and sweet, specific and comprehensive. Recently a parent asked me if I’ve noticed children making “Russia” jokes and how we support them in their thinking during these moments. I learned from him. Another parent pitched silly chicken names to me and I told him I’d see what I could do. A mom showed me the epic handcrafted sign she and her children made for the fair and explained the symbolism around the process and origins. As I was out on the patio, one Group Two child – whose not known Westland outside of a pandemic context (who doesn’t remember life outside of a pandemic context) – said to his friend in exacerbation: “Gosh, there’s so many parents hanging outside of our classroom!” What he didn’t know was that this is how it most always is in the mornings on the patio. The crowded patio is a return to what was. He will learn this. We will relearn this. 

In U2’s “A Sort of Homecoming,” Bono sings about “a time to heal.” I believe through our sort of homecoming we are arriving at a time of needed healing. I believe in the power of Westland’s environment and food traditions to be a source of that healing. Being together in person is a powerful part of the school experience. We did our best to be connected and in community when we couldn’t be on campus together. But man, is it the best to be in person again. 

Hope Boyd, a former Head of School for whom I worked and from whom I learned, used to describe an unfortunate phenomenon at schools: so often, there are two school cultures within one school community – kid culture and adult culture. I think parents returning to Westland has reminded me that there is one culture at Westland. A culture where we collectively endeavor to live out our mission. In Westland’s bylaws we use the word “membership.” Yes, we are members of democracy, curiosity, equity, and care. 

In a talk that included the importance of intergenerational exchanges between children and adults, modern progressive education leader, author, and matriarch Deborah Meier explained that American society has not, by a long shot, changed in the importance it places on family. She argues: “While families still exist in abundance as havens for the young, they are havens increasingly cut off from the larger social fabric. In short, they are not as critical to our learning how to be adults as they once were, and neither is the web of relationships surrounding them.” Due to COVID, Westland parents were necessarily “cut off” from campus. With parents’ return to campus, we are reweaving the healing webs of support for children and ourselves. We are showing children the powerful web of relationships that exist as well. We are modeling an adulthood marked by service, caring communication, community building, and joy. This modeling is an essential part of our children’s education. 

One of my favorite web weavers, Charlotte, from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, perhaps said it best to her dear friend Wilber: “We're born, we live a little while, we die...By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle.” At Westland, we do indeed lift up our lives by helping – be it one conversation at a time, one smile at a time, or one bite of something delicious at a time. And we do this together…on campus again.