Place

 Yesterday Gray and I had some time to kill at Gray’s previous preprimary school while we waited for Eva to finish school (as it is her current school). Gray started at the school when he was one and a half and left last year at the ripe and mature age of five. 

He took me onto the field that adjoins the little school where he and his two best friends spent many an hour doing whatever it is that little boys do. He ran off to a far side of the field to a random little tree and then came running back. 

‘Mom I went to check and there is a place for you to sit, it’s a bit spikey. Will you come and see where me and David and Matt used to play?’ - David and Matt have also graduated from preprimary school and all three boys are at different schools now. 

I oblige and arrive at a fairly average little tree with an even more average, definitely spikey, tree stump next to it - I perch on the stump and engage my core for the first time in six months. Gray then shows me a pock marked tree trunk. ‘This is where we mine for tree blood.’ After recovering from the several odd images in my mind created by this statement I inspect the trunk and can definitely see the tell tale signs that it has withstood the continued poking of three little boys for the past four years. Their graduation day must have been a sigh of relief for this poor tree. 

Gray then says, ‘Mom you see that gate over there?’ He points to a gate in the fence that at some point may have led to something but which now leads directly into messy bush. ‘That’s where we keep our sticks.’ We amble over and sure enough there is a little pile of sticks secretly tucked away under the gate. You can see that they’ve been used in the ruthless mining of tree blood because they have blunted ends and have been shaped by the repeated imprints of grubby little boy hands and fingers. 

For Gray it is a matter of fact revelation of what will one day become a forgotten boyhood entertainment but for his nostalgic mom it isn’t. This is so much more than a pile of sticks for me. 

Incidentally this week Kearsney College turned 100 years old. Thanks to Covid an entire year of celebrations have been whittled down to one simple, yet meaningful event held this week. We were going to celebrate our centurion school until we were scared we would all get centenary birthday burnout - sadly we all got burnout this year but it was definitely not due to too many birthday celebrations. 

And so this week I found myself seated with the proper dignitaries of our old school, surrounded by the boys I teach, facing the new Centenary school block which was going to be opened remotely by the Bishop of the Methodist church. (Apparently we can even do that now.) 

A man who has served the school in every possible capacity, on every possible board, stood up to address and thank the donors who had made the building of these much needed classrooms possible. This man, who is a proper leader and visionary in his field, appeared to be deeply moved by this moment. Before he began his planned speech he commented on the importance of place and of the necessity to return to and show respect to the places that formed us and made us who we are. 

As he gazed down at the shaky, geriatric men in front of him, who could have very easily been my ardent Kearsney old boy grandfather, I could see the visible emotion in their masked faces and the way a few of them had to clutch their walking sticks a little harder to contain the tremendous upsurge of emotion that comes from returning to your place. 

I’m not saying that everyone feels this way about returning to high school (I certainly don’t) but these men have chosen to invest in the future of our school because it means something to them. 

I felt a similar way driving past my dear old little school, Winterton Primary School, this weekend. That was my place. A place where the whole school would play hockey on the frozen field before school, terrified that Shaun Dunne would hit the ball because he could klap it so hard it would maim you. And there’s the gum tree we would run to before we wrote exams  We would tear off a piece of bark and keep it in our desks until the exam session was over (what is with kids and debarking trees?). And there’s the box room which was ideal for hide and seek and the hill that Carl Freese tackled me down because I had stolen his jersey, splitting my chin in the process. First time I ever got stitches.  

Like Gray I too could have taken my children round that pretty average looking little farm school talking them through my precious memories. And I’m sure the benefactors of Kearsney would have regaled anyone prepared to listen with the stories that turned them from boys into men. Amazing that some 7% of the time one is alive can be so very important to us. 

But that’s the thing with places, specially the ones that come to mean something to us before our brains are fully formed. They hold memories in a far more magical, unrealistic way. They make space for fantasy and more forgiving, childlike versions of ourselves. 

And sometimes, even after some 70 years, we find ourselves returning to our places in search of our sticks.