Autumn

It has been a very full and very, very busy time for us all. As we live into our new school and home, we are collecting so many new impressions and experiences that each day, each weekend and each month leaves us wondering what has been happening and how we are managing to fit it all in.

On the school front, things continue to go very well for the girls. Aurora in particular is flourishing. Her teacher is very dedicated and focused, a trained scientist prior to become a Waldorf teacher and as such, intense and driven. This suits Aurora perfectly! Her class is also made up of strong characters with their own version of how things should be done which causes all sorts of tensions as well as moments of pure genius by all accounts. This too is great for Aurora.

Allegra is also doing very well. She is particularly enjoying the languages offered by the school, with Mandarin being her favorite subject. Her Spanish too is improving and is helped greatly as the language is so widely spoken in this area.

As it is autumn and the girls attend a Waldorf school, a celebration is to be expected. The great battle between good and evil, light and dark, St. Michael and the Dragon as normally highlighted in the Waldorf calendar is a thing of past. Greenwood school focuses more on the harvest, Mother Nature and the spirit of complete inclusiveness and as such, St. Michael is a bit too much of a Christian symbol.

The school has an annual Harvest Festival each November, which is an amazing event. Parents and family are invited to join the all school assembly at mid day, dressed in a costume of some sort and observe the classes making an offering of something that they gathered on their Nature day outings (they go into Nature one day each week) to mark the occasion. Allegra’s class put water and an acorn on the alter: Aurora’s class leaves and acorns as well.

After the offerings were made, each class performed either a song, a poem or in the case of the 8th grade, circus acts! As a Waldorf graduate myself, I did chuckle when some of the poems were recited as I can remember many an all school assembly where I heard them spoken before.

Once the assembly came to an end, the children were allowed to go to their classrooms and change into costumes themselves. They were asked by the school to chose something that best represented one of the elements: water, earth, air and fire. In addition, the school strongly recommended that the costumes be made at home, using materials around the house. Where possible, of course.

Initially, when I got that news, I braced myself. Knowing Aurora and Allegra, they were going to ask to be something pretty spectacular and I was going go have to make it. Sure enough, when I asked the girls what they wanted to be, Allegra asked to be a Mermaid. Gulp. Then Aurora asked…to be Water. When she said that, I started asking some clarifying questions such as, ‘do you mean, a jug of water? Or, a waterfall? A creature swimming in water? Something with form?’ ‘No’ she replied, ‘just water’. Great.

A Mermaid and Water. Not the easiest costumes for me to create. What was wrong with being a farmer or a vagabond as I was for pretty much my entire childhood? They were such easy costumes to make. Overalls, Dad’s shirt stuffed with a pillow and a bandana on my neck. Done. If I was feeling adventurous, I would add a walking stick but that only happened on one or two occasions.

How was I going to make these costumes? I decided to focus on Allegra’s first as I could more easily get my head around the idea of making a fish tail, decorating a shirt with seashells, cutting out star fish etc. I could not even get started with Aurora’s initially.

As luck would have it, the girls and I attended the Marin Waldorf School Harvest fair the weekend that Sven was in Wisconsin. As we were touring the vendor stands, we came across Sarah, the owner of Sarah’s Silks. She has such lovely things for children and their bedrooms. Well, guess what? She had a special on Mermaid outfits!!!! A cute little top, fishtail skirt, a crown and an arm band with a seahorse on it for $15.00. Allegra LOVED it and was over the moon when we found one that fit her perfectly. That transaction took about 30 seconds, as I could not buy it fast enough.

As the Mermaid outfit was sorted, I had to come out of my denial and start thinking about how to make an outfit that looks like water. Fortunately, I had just cleaned out the girl’s closet the day before as we finished building the chest of drawers and I came across a beautiful tie-dyed dress that looked quite like water itself. I quickly asked Aurora to try it on and fortunately it fit. I picked up a few blue and purple silks from Sarah’s Silks scrap end box and decided that somehow I should be able to put all of the pieces together to make it look like something.

When we got home, my sister was there. Allegra excitedly showed her the new Mermaid outfit and Aurora showed her the scrap pieces of silk and explained to her that she was going to be Water for the Harvest Festival. Trecey heard her out then said, ‘great. We will make you a mobile of fish, shells, starfish etc that can be hang under the silks to give it the impression of being under the sea. The dress will work well as a background etc’. Before I knew it, the costume had been designed and Trecey had my brothers were hard at work cutting out sea creatures and coloring them in. The result was utterly amazing. Aurora looked absolutely beautiful and very much like Water itself. When she changed into her costume, people could not compliment her enough on how wonderful her costume looked. Thank you Trecey!

Back to the Harvest Festival. After the assembly, everyone formed a long chain by holding hands and swirled in a spiral in the courtyard then unwound and headed over to the school’s satellite campus in the Red Wood Forrest where we had an all-school potluck and children played games. It was wonderful.

There was talk of the girls wanting to be something entirely different for Halloween but I drew a line. Trick or Treating as a Mermaid and Water would be just fine. I got little resistance.

We were invited to attend a Halloween party at the house of some of the parents at the school that Sven and I like very much. Their son is in Aurora’s class and a seriously bright boy. They also have a daughter in the 1st grade that Allegra gets along very well with. Fortunately they live just down the street from us so we were able to walk over to their house. However, we were not prepared for the sheer size of the gathering nor the serious fun each of us had there. It was great! A large portion of the school community had been invited so there were kids everywhere and even parents were dressed up! As I have been away from this country for such a long time and as I was really not sure what to be, I decided to dress as myself – a new mother. However, next year, watch out! Sven also dressed as himself.

While this has been going on, we received all of our belongings from Wisconsin that came in the form of 75 boxes and the majority of Sven’s workshop including flow form moulds. Our fish (two gold fish, two Coral fish and one Placostomis) also arrived last Friday, also shipped from Wisconsin. The cats are now learning what deep frustration feels like as they log hours and hours in front of the tank trying desperately to get a hold of a fish.

Life is pretty good…and I have not even mentioned the weather.