Whispered Belonging

My classrooms have always been my sacred space. I loved school as it was an oasis for all that was wrong at home. This day was special though. Paper decorations from Woolworth’s covered the walls and door. Witches with crooked noses, vampires with mouths wide open waiting for the unsuspecting, mummies with arms outstretched always reaching, scared black cats, bats and cauldrons all reminding us how long we had been waiting for this day. Black and orange paper chains hung from the chalkboard and a pumpkin marked this magical day on the calendar. Earlier we had cider and doughnuts, chocolate crumbs littered the floor and the trash was filled with paper cups. These are treats I never had at home, and they still fill me with such a strangely delicious feeling that I save them for special occasions even now, thirty five years later.

My classroom had very large windows. The kind that go almost from floor to ceiling and inward at the bottom. We were allowed to open them if we asked permission. Once I got it I held the brass lever in my little hand and turned. At that moment I looked up, there were gathering clouds. I pulled the window open and could smell everything that mattered to me. The day darkened quickly. The excitement ran through the room like a current, and a few looked toward the window and the wind picked up. Fallen leaves, woodsmoke and electricity filled the room with that perfect autumn aroma. The clouds became fuller and darker and I felt a chill run through my very bones. It was not coming from the quickly cooling air. Light glowed and rolled through purple and black, thunder spoke from a distance.

Around the room children wore plastic coverall costumes with heavy rubber masks that were left on desks. Greasepaint on small faces now smeared and wiped away in some places, attic found clothing far to large fell from little shoulders. They were perfect in every way. Safety scissors cut through thick paper of orange and purple and black, a sound I now remember with such fondness it can bring tears to my eyes. Glitter winked and shimmered from every surface as decorations took shape that would be held in little hands like gold. White paste bottles shared, crayons passed around making a symphony of small sounds and movements that every teacher knows. It was perfect.

I turned back to the window. The clouds were full of ghosts and specters, anyone could see that. Those dark colors churning and opening in a sudden intake of breath, began to weep on the ground below. Rain splattered the windows. The smell of wet grass and puddled black top washed away over me. The wind whispered through those windows and I just knew it was the dead, come to see us celebrate them, not with sacrifices as we had done, but with thick paper and sticky hands. I heard them and closed my eyes as the storm pushed at the windows. I would be unbothered tonight, I would be on an adventure afraid of nothing when others jumped at everything. I belonged here, in this moment. I came to understand that day with a certainty unmatched that this is where I was supposed to be. Here among the unseen, the mysterious and the dark. The storm pushed on and the lights flickered. Squeals of delight and feigned terror echoed around the room. I made no sound, absorbing the sparks and drops that still fell just a few inches away. I was never afraid of the dark, or what was hiding in it. My fear was never so simple. The rain kept coming.

That perfect moment on that perfect day changed me fundamentally. It is a moment that was forever tattooed in my mind. That day taught me more fully who I was than in all the years of searching as an adult. It was so simple, so strange. I shunned sunny days after that day, then and now. I came to understand fully that there is so much more beauty in the mist and the rain. My soul reaches out for it constantly. I feel sane in the Autumn. At peace. I feel safer on a grey, misty beach than I ever have in sunlight. Because for me, I was claimed that day in third grade. I was claimed by the storms, the dark and the departed.

That sacred classroom on that perfect day still causes the hair on the back of my neck to go up, and my stomach to flutter. It was the most parented and cared for I had ever been. I wait for October, once again, to have chocolate cake doughnuts and hot cider. I wait for the storms to come again. I turn with the wheel, waiting to be brought home.