Some people say we fall in love with a place because of sentimental reasons such as we liked a person in that place or we remember somethings happened in that place. But I think sometimes we fall in love with a place simply because our heart resonated with the place, even with the sound of silence - such is the camps of Marianapolis Preparatory School, in which my son spent last two years of his life.
The drive down from our home to there was under the canopy of mature trees nearly the entire way. Pass the Lord Thompson Manor, an impressive collection of buildings and woods, I came upon a quite-missable turn-off from the main road. Following this narrow road, I passed what seemed a house from Rivendell, long forgotten, half hidden in the lush green. When my eyes stoped marveling at the mysterious house, and refocused on the road ahead, silence fell upon me. My heart swelled, and my breath slowed; my eyes wondered, and my soul danced... I could feel a smile creeping up from my belly, drew the corner of my lips up, and tears ran down my cheek. I fell in love with that place upon the first sight.
Then the days my son spent on campus began, the campus became his world. He ate two meals a day on campus, ran through the woods in the fall, sometimes even on snow-covered grounds; sang in the choir; acted in plays; and tried his own version of teenage rebellion... Yes he is a teenager after all, and he needs to push boundaries just as everyone else.
In between classes, the youngsters meet at their tree, some on it some under it, and discuss their simple yet complicated lives. Very little things of real consequences were discussed, as I was told, but the ritual of "meeting at our tree" seemed more important. So important that the group, after some growing apart, resembled again, under the same tree, just to impress upon him that he is not to leave the school. "I do not give you permission to leave." Each one of his friends said to him. He wept, sitting next to me in the car, turning his face away from me. "I have invested my life there." My heart ached, the kind of ache that happens when the Andante section starts in the first movement of Tchaikovfsky's sixth movement – a warp of nostalgia, a waft of tenderness, woven a satin of longing pulling on my heart.
"What would you miss the most if you stayed here and we moved?" I asked him one day, driving under the newly budding trees on our way home. "...I would miss the girls growing up." He said. The answer took me by surprise. I thought, after two years of living a somewhat socially disconnected life from his sisters, he would be gladly live apart from the girls. Yet, the answer comforted me. Marianapolis, you have helped me to raise a son who understand that aside from God, family comes first!
It took him and I an entire month to make the decision, and part of my heart still pines for the allure of that gateway. I can still hear the trees calling me, the firie maple, red-yellow laced oak, golden hickory and birch in the fall and the snow-covered branches in the long New England winter, calling me for yet another quiet conversation with God my maker as I drive down to the magical gateway. Yet I cannot. Thank you for the refuge. Thank you for providing a safe heaven for my son, who at age 16 still possesses that innocent goodness, and able to make choices worthy of his intelligence. Thank you for helping him in growing that quiet strength.
I fell in love with Marianapolis Preparatory School in Thompson, CT on the first day I took my son there. Every drive down there has been a personal retreat. Then I learned to love the faculty and staff of the school. The way we fall in love with a place may have nothing to do with people who dwell there or things happened there; it may just be a heart string being plucked at that moment. But then, the people who dwell there resonated with this sound and made a symphony, and now that love has become an experience that holds my heart at ransom.
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